The work of John R. Emery, Ph.D. (Political Science) broadly examines national security, ethics of war and peace, and technological innovation in International Relations. For the 2020-2021 academic year, he will be a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), During this time, he will be conducting research on ethics and nuclear wargaming, focusing specifically on archival research conducted at the RAND Corporation on 1950s political-military wargaming. This work probes the origins of many contemporary security concepts like deterrence theory, the psychology of escalation, and the role of politics and culture in nuclear brinksmanship. This research was the runner up winner of the Janne Nolan Prize for the best article on national security and international affairs, presented by Johns Hopkins SAIS Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, in collaboration with CSIS and the Texas National Security Review. Previously, he was the recipient of the 2019-2020 Tobis Fellowship at the Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality at the University of California, Irvine. There he completed an article entitled "Probabilities Toward Death" that analyzed on the rise of collateral damage estimation algorithms and the impact of human-machine interactions on ethics of due care in war. During the 2017-2018 academic year, he was awarded the Technology, Law, and Society fellowship funded by the Early Concepts Grant from the National Science Foundation. This interdisciplinary working group that culminated in the 2018 Technology, Law, and Society Summer Institute sought to drive discussions of the impact of technological innovations in AI, Big Data, and algorithms on law and the social sciences. Dr. Emery along with four colleagues from anthropology, sociology, computer science, and law currently have a forthcoming paper in Law & Policy that sets forth a research agenda for integrating technology into law & society scholarship. He has taught as a lecturer of National Security (M.A.), Technology and the Ethics of War (M.A.), Vietnam: War, Peace, and Legacy (B.A.) at Chapman University and Theories of International Relations (B.A.) at Pepperdine University. His area of study is at the intersection of International Relations, security studies, U.S. foreign policy, science and technology studies, ethics of war and peace, and intellectual history. Previous publications have centered on U.S. drone warfare in Yemen and Pakistan, creating a hybrid ethical framework between the law enforcement and just war paradigms for evaluating targeted killings outside of declared war zones. Additionally, he has focused on the adoption of drone technology by humanitarian organizations like MSF and UN Peacekeeping missions, analyzing and problematizing the emerging category of humanitarian drones. This article was featured in the 30th Anniversary Volume of Ethics & International Affairs for its excellence in bridging the gap between theory and practice. His work on war, drones, ethics, and counter-terrorism has been published in Peace Review and Ethics & International Affairs as well as book chapters in Georgetown University Press and New York University Press. Building upon previous research current projects are concerned with the way in which technology is seen as the solution for making war an inherently more ethical space. Both contemporary with the ethics of soldier enhancements (cognitive and biological), and historical tackling issues of waterboarding and colonialism in the U.S.-Philippine War. Drawing upon a rich tradition in intellectual history his work proffers casuistic ethical theorizing to answer the difficult questions of the ethics of war and peace in the era of Big Data, AI, and machine learning. Other areas of interest include: nuclear security, constructivist International Relations, U.S. foreign policy, time and temporality in International Relations, international law, intelligence studies, terrorism/counter-terrorism, and the preventive use of force short of war.
Contact: jremery@stanford.edu
Contact: jremery@stanford.edu