International relations specialists have frequently questioned whether their academic research and teaching has any impact on the "real world." The record of success is generally believed to be a spotty one. While there is no denying that academics have informed aspects of policymaking, the concern remains that the great bulk of international studies research is too abstract, specialized, or linguistically incestuous to reach the light of day in policy circles. We argue that the relationship between the pursuit of peace and security and the study of it is more complex than is captured by the classic policy-research divide. The argument rests on two observations: First, to assess the public impact of peace and security studies, one must focus on how practices within a variety of institutional contexts, not just state policies, are transformed. Second, it is not scholarship per se that has a measurable public impact, but the interplay of research, practical innovation, and advocacy. We derive these observations from a review of the work of Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Program fellows over the fifteen-year life of that program.We live in an age when U.S. academic departments and research programs are often obligated to demonstrate to administrators and funders that what they do has an impact on the world beyond the academy. For the field of International Relations this task has been less menacing than it has been for fields like Comparative Literature. The subject matter that occupies IR scholars is often selfevidently central to the well-being and security of millions of lives everyday.Yet IR specialists have worried quite a bit about whether what they write and teach has any impact on the "real world" pursuit of peace, security, and human well-being~Newsom, 1995-96!. The concern has been well-founded historically. After all, not only were grave official decisions of war and peace often at issue in their work but so too were decisions about governmental funding of academic research programs. Over the past 50 years millions of research dollars have ridden on the persuasiveness of claims about "policy relevance" in research proposals~Geiger, 1993; Lowen, 1997!.International Studies Perspectives~2001! 2, 221-230.
As John Holdren points out in the introduction to this Innovations special issue, the world will need to produce huge quantities of energy in the 21 st century to meet the needs of a growing world population, while also working to lift billions of people out of poverty. Providing this energy at a reasonable cost, without causing unmanageable climate disruption, security risks, or other environmental devastation, will be one of the century's most daunting challenges. This challenge will be even more difficult to meet if nuclear energy does not play a substantial part. But achieving the scale of nuclear energy growth required while managing the risks of that growth will be a major challenge in itself, one that will require both technical and institutional innovations. Consider the scale of growth that is needed for nuclear energy to make a meaningful contribution to mitigating carbon emissions. One oft-cited 2004 analysis broke down the problem of shifting away from a business-as-usual energy path into seven "wedges"-different technologies that would each grow to displace a billion tons of carbon emissions per year by 2050 (see Figure 1). 1 More recent science suggests that 10 to 15 such wedges are likely to be required, as business-asusual emissions are higher than previously projected, the carbon-absorbing properties of the oceans appear to be weaker, and the atmospheric concentration of carbon required to avoid disastrous climate consequences seem to be even lower than once thought. For nuclear power to provide even one such wedge would require a
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