Goodman Receives Lifetime Appointment as National Associate of the National Research Council

Posted August 4, 2016

Seymour Goodman, professor of international affairs and computing in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, has been honored as a National Associate of the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. This lifetime appointment comes in recognition of Goodman’s work within the NRC for almost three decades. Over the last several years he has chaired or co-chaired two cybersecurity studies and served a second term on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. He continues to serve on the Committee on Foundational Research in Cybersecurity.

Goodman came to the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2000 as professor of International Affairs and Computing and co-director of the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy. He was founding director and now director emeritus of the Sam Nunn Security Program. He used his time as a scholar to research international developments in information technologies, technology diffusion, information technologies and national security, and critical infrastructure protection.

 Goodman’s prolific career includes over 150 publications, many conference presentations and several editorial responsibilities, most notably almost 20 years as contributing editor for International Perspectives for the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In addition to his editorial duties, he has worked on numerous committees for the ACM; the Departments of Commerce, Defense, and State; the U.S. Congress; and the NRC.

Last year, Professor Goodman received an appointment as Dean’s Fellow for Interdisciplinary Research and Education in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Partly under this umbrella and as part of his activities as co-director of the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy in the Nunn School, he studies and teaches about policy and technological innovation and their influence on the conduct and outcomes of large-scale conflicts. The latter included the American Civil War, World War II, Cold War, and conflict induced and enabled by the information technologies.

This summer, one publication and two international conference presentations featured Goodman’s efforts.  The first of these is “Information Flows and Field Armies,” a book chapter in Barton C. Hacker, Ed., Astride Two Worlds: Technology and the American Civil War, Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, Washington, DC. Mobilization of both sides took a single antebellum army of 16,000 men to two armies with almost 3 million men in the only existential war in American history. About 20 field armies did most of the maneuvering and fighting. The study is about the tactical, strategic, and national information flows and the supporting information technologies that made it possible to effectively operate those armies.

Two international conference presentations covered the topic “Ironclad Strategies and Their Implementations in the United States and Confederate States Navies: Contrasts in Policies, Politics, Infrastructure, Results and Legacies.”  The first paper was about the first year of the war when both sides had remarkably clear strategies for what they might accomplish on their waterways, and they made their best efforts to make that happen. Goodman delivered this paper at the 59th Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) held at the National University of Singapore in June. The outcomes of the first year of the Civil War led both sides to revise their strategies and pursue them with renewed vigor which resulted in enormous commitments of resources for questionable results over the remaining three years of the war. Goodman delivered the second paper at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the International Committee on the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) which included the 11th Symposium on the Social History of Military Technology. The meeting was held at the University of Porto Portugal in July. (One of the founders of both societies was the late Prof. Melvin Kranzberg of the School of History and Sociology at Georgia Tech.)

Following the NRC appointment, Goodman shows no sign of complacency as he continues his research and teaching in the world of technology, policy, and international affairs. Ivan Allen College congratulates Professor Goodman on this new achievement in an already fruitful academic career.