The Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University annually selects individuals and/or institutions to receive the William J. Perry Award for Excellence in Security and Defense Education. The 2014 individual recipient is Dr. Richard Millett, a Southern Illinois University Edwardsville professor emeritus of history.
The award recognizes significant contributions in the fields of security and defense education that reflect the Center’s mission: conducting educational activities for civilians and the military in the Western Hemisphere to build capacity and to foster trust, mutual understanding and regional cooperation.
Candidates may include any individual or institution that has made or sustained a significant contribution related to the security and defense sectors. They may be educators, practitioners, or institutions of defense and security from throughout the Hemisphere or from outside the region.
In a letter from the Perry Center’s Michael Mann, a strategic programs manager/StratComm/PAO at the National Defense University, Millett was advised that he was recognized for his “significant contributions in the fields of security and defense education that reflect the Center’s mission: the promotion of education, research, outreach, and knowledge sharing in defense and security issues in the Western Hemisphere that lead to enhancing professional security and defense capacity, advancing a cooperative international security environment, fostering effective civil-military relations and adhering to the Perry Center’s core value.”
Millett is vice president of both the American Committees on Foreign Relations and the St. Louis Committee on Foreign Relations. He was a Senior Fellow at the North-South Center and former Oppenheimer Chair of Modern Warfighting Strategy at the U.S. Marine Corps University.
Millett graduated from Harvard and earned both master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of New Mexico. He did postdoctoral work at The Ohio State University and is a graduate of the Air War College.
Millett taught at SIUE from 1966 through 1999. He also taught at the University of Miami, Saint Louis University, the Air War College, the Marine Corps University, Copenhagen Business School and four universities in Colombia.
He has published more than one hundred items, including Searching for Stability (2010), co-editor of Latin American Democracy (2012), Columbia’s Conflicts: The Spillover Effects of a Wider War (2002), Beyond Praetorianism: The Latin American Military in Transition (1996) and Searching for Panama (1993).
The Perry Center plans to host a special mid-day event in Washington, D.C. during the week of Sept. 14 to make the presentation.