Institute of War and Peace Studies

The Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies (SIWPS) is a research center that is part of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in New York. It was founded in 1951 by President of Columbia Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Institute of War and Peace Studies (IWPS) and was led for its first 25 years by Professor William T. R. Fox. It was given its current name in 2003. By its own description, the institute's researchers analyze "the political, military, historical, legal, economic, moral, psychological, and philosophical dimensions of international relations."

The impetus for the institute's formation came from President of Columbia Dwight D. Eisenhower. The former general had written to a friend that he found it "almost incomprehensible that no American university has undertaken the continuous study of the causes, conduct and consequences of war." Eisenhower at first envisioned an endowed chair, or as he phrased it a "Chair for Peace", but the idea was then expanded into a full institute. In a March 1950 speech, Eisenhower said the purpose of the institute would be to "study war as a tragic social phenomenon – its origins, its conduct, its impact and particularly disastrous consequences upon man's spiritual, intellectual, and material progress." Eisenhower was also instrumental in raising money for the new entity, making use of his fundraising prowess among his network of wealthy friends and acquaintances, in particular Edward J. Bermingham and Clarence Dillon. Eisenhower, who was taken with the idea enough to mention it in a 1950 letter to Winston Churchill, regarded the creation of the institute as his "unique contribution" to the university during this time as president, and when he stepped down from his position and gave a farewell speech to the university, just days being inaugurated as President of the United States, he listed the institute as one of his projects for which "my hopes are especially high".

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