Matthew Connelly
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Matthew James Connelly (born November 25, 1967) is an American professor of international and global history at
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
. His areas of expertise include the global Cold War, official secrecy,
population control Population control is the practice of artificially maintaining the size of any population. It simply refers to the act of limiting the size of an animal population so that it remains manageable, as opposed to the act of protecting a species from ...
, and
decolonization Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on separatism, in ...
. He is the author of ''Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population'', ''A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era'', and articles on international and domestic politics for ''
The ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
'' ''Atlantic Monthly'', ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', ''
The National Interest ''The National Interest'' (''TNI'') is an American bimonthly international relations magazine edited by American journalist Jacob Heilbrunn and published by the Center for the National Interest, a public policy think tank based in Washington, ...
'', and ''
Le Monde ''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...
''. Connelly is also the founder and principal investigator of History Lab.


Career

Matthew Connelly earned his BA in history from Columbia University in 1990, before earning his doctorate from
Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
in 1997. His dissertation, “The Algerian War for Independence: An International History”, written under the supervision of
Gaddis Smith George Gaddis Smith (December 9, 1932 – December 2, 2022) was an American historian who was the Larned Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University and an expert on U.S. foreign relations and maritime history. Biography Born in Newark, New J ...
,
Paul Kennedy Paul Michael Kennedy (born 17 June 1945) is a British historian specialising in the history of international relations, economic power and grand strategy. He has published prominent books on the history of British foreign policy and great pow ...
, and William Quandt, formed the basis for ''A Diplomatic Revolution''. Prior to his appointment at Columbia University, he taught in the Department of History and Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the
University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
. He has also been a visiting professor at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), the
University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...
, and the
University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's ...
. He is also the co-director of the
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy The Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) is the research arm of the social sciences at Columbia University, formerly known as the ''Paul F. Lazarsfeld Center for the Social Sciences''. ISERP works to produce pioneering soci ...
at Columbia.


Academic work

Connelly's research predominantly focuses on the history of the 20th century. His work employs novel and innovative approaches to historical study, including examining the past through a global or transnational lens, and applying data-mining techniques to historical research.


''A Diplomatic Revolution''

Connelly's first book, ''A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era'' (2002, Oxford U. Pr.), examines the international diplomacy of
Algerian independence An independence referendum was held in French Algeria on 1 July 1962. It followed French approval of the Évian Accords in an April referendum. Voters were asked whether Algeria should become an independent state, co-operating with France; 99 ...
. It is a revisionist account that analyzes the transnational networks through which Algerian statesman struggled for liberation, rather than adopting a traditional focus on the national aspects of the movement. Foreign Affairs magazine observes that "Connelly weaves into his story the changing roles of the United States, Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia; the ebb and flow of FLN relations with the soviet bloc; and much more". ''A Diplomatic Revolution'' is notable in locating fundamental shifts in international society as occurring during the Algerian independence movement, arguing that "population growth, environmental scarcities, international institutions, new media, and, not least, the conscious agency of colonized peoples were already combining to cause radical change— of a recognizably new kind— when some might assume the international system was frozen into an ideological contest between East and West". The book has also been revised and translated into French as ''L'arme secrète du FLN'': ''Comment de Gaulle a Perdu la Guerre d'Algérie.''


''Fatal Misconception''

''Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population'' (2008, Harvard U. Pr.) charts the history of global efforts to control population growth. The book documents the diverse and often disturbing methods used by countries, foundations, and organizations to control populations, particularly in the Global South. Helen Epstein of the
New York Review of Books New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...
notes that "Though painful to read, atal Misconceptioncontain many valuable lessons for anyone who cares about making development programs work, both technically and politically.” Some reviewers express concern that the book's arguments might be appropriated by contemporary anti-abortion advocates.
Nicholas Kristof Nicholas Donabet Kristof (born April 27, 1959) is an American journalist and political commentator. A winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, he is a regular CNN contributor and an op-ed columnist for ''The New York Times''. Born in Chicago, Kristof wa ...
, in a review for the
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
, argues that "the family planning movement has corrected itself, and today it saves the lives of women in poor countries and is central to efforts to reduce poverty worldwide. If we allow that past to tarnish today’s efforts by family planning organizations, women in poor countries will be doubly hurt by." Connelly emphasizes the importance of freedom of choice and individual rights in how we justify family planning. In an interview documented in Salon, he asserts that: "it’s important that we make our stand on reproductive rights when we’re arguing for family planning services, and for safe and legal access to abortion."
Mahmood Mamdani Mahmood Mamdani, FBA (born 23 April 1946) is an Indian-born Ugandan academic, author, and political commentator. He currently serves as the Chancellor of Kampala International University, Uganda. He was the director of the Makerere Institute o ...
, a professor of Government at the
School of International and Public Affairs The School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University (SIPA) is the international affairs and public policy school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university located in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City. ...
, says of ''Fatal Misconception,'' “Connelly raises the most profound political, social, and moral questions. His history reveals that the difference between population control and birth control is indeed that between coercion and choice.”


''The Declassification Engine''

''The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets'' (2023, Pantheon) documents multiple concerns with official secrets in the U.S. These include, "Three major lessons from Pearl Harbor": # Secrets are often kept to hide incompetence. # tastrophic attacks almost never come out of nowhere. ... aders prefer to pretend they had no warning. In fact, claiming that an attack is completely unexpected can help legitimate more espionage, domestic surveillance, and military spending. # r leaders think we can’t handle the truth and wouldn’t support their plans if we knew what they were. Connelly documents that the Franklin Roosevelt administration wanted to get into the war in Europe before the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the U.S. Congress refused to support it. The
Tripartite Pact The Tripartite Pact, also known as the Berlin Pact, was an agreement between Germany, Italy, and Japan signed in Berlin on 27 September 1940 by, respectively, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Galeazzo Ciano and Saburō Kurusu. It was a defensive milit ...
of 27 September 1940 strengthened the Axis alliance of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The U.S. responded by embargoing first scrap iron and eventually oil exports to Japan. Roosevelt hoped he could "maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves". Connelly does ''not'' mention the Gulf of Tonkin incident, but it seems similar to Pearl Harbor: Lyndon Johnson, U.S. president in 1964, was concerned he might lose that year's presidential election from being perceived as soft on Communism. So he worked to provoke an attack. Events in the Gulf of Tonkin on 4 August 1964 were described by the Johnson administration as an "unprovoked attack". That led to a request for Congressional approval of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the subsequent U.S. military actions in Vietnam until Congress finally stopped funding that war, leading to the
Fall of Saigon The Fall of Saigon, also known as the Liberation of Saigon by North Vietnamese or Liberation of the South by the Vietnamese government, and known as Black April by anti-communist overseas Vietnamese was the capture of Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, t ...
in 1975. He does mention the
War on terror The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant ...
; other sources provide more detail to support Connely's claims regarding the War on Terror. Part of the problem with the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
, and many other national security issues is that the "need to know" requirement of the U.S. system of classified information makes it relatively easy for military and civil servants to be less than forthright and even deceptive with their superiors, including the President. He also says that the "need to know" requirement often makes it hard for intelligence analysts to get the information they need, and ultimately, "a lot of secret intelligence is not actually secret, and what is secret is often not intelligent". This claim is supported by Tetlock and Gardner (2015), who developed a "Superforecasting" methodology, which they claimed "performed about 30 percent better than the average for intelligence community analysts who could read intercepts and other secret data." Connelly also claims, "There is nothing more dangerous—both to itself, and to others—than a nuclear-armed superpower that is not even answerable to its own people." He further says, "In some cases, the U.S. military itself has prepared to launch nuclear weapons based on false warnings. We still live in fear of surprise attacks, as shown by the panic created in Hawaii in 2018 after an alarm indicated an imminent missile strike. We should actually be more alarmed by the very real risk that all our preparations for war will result in the United States’ provoking just such an attack, or accidentally launching one of our own. He claims that prior to the run-up to World War II, the US had prided itself in its "radical transparency", not even encrypting diplomatic communications. He said, "The early republic also fostered a culture of information sharing by delivering newspapers at long distances at little cost through an ever-expanding network of post offices, where they were often displayed for public consumption." A conclusion that justifies the title is that the ''declassification system'' in the US is woefully underfunded. The US government produces many times more classified documents than can possibly be reviewed with the existing budget. Some records are destroyed or deliberately not written down to make sure they never come to light. This is a major threat to democracy, because citizens can't get the information needed to decide how to modify government policies if important details of how the system has worked in the past are never available to the public. Part of the problem is that the incentives are wrong: There are rarely any penalties to refusing to declassify something, but one's career can end if someone else with sufficient authority decides you've declassified something that should have been kept secret. Connelly's solution is to train an
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...
system to manage the declassification process. This recommendation is supported by research by Daniel Kahneman and others. Kahneman and Klein (2009) determined that genuine expertise is usually acquired by learning from frequent, rapid, high quality feedback. Very few professions get the feedback required to develop such expert intuition. Consequently, most exerts can be beaten by simple heuristics developed by intelligent lay people, and artificial intelligence can do even better.


Professional work


Secrecy

Connelly is also the principal investigator at ''History Lab,'' a collective of Columbia University data scientists and historians that apply data-mining techniques to historical documents. ''History Lab'' has aggregated the largest online database of declassified documents anywhere in the world, while developing tools for researchers to explore these documents. The project is also attempting to find a solution to the growing crisis in government declassification. In an article for the ''New York Times,'' Connelly and Richard Immerman observe that "in the late 1990s more than 200 million pages of documents were being declassified each year. Today, that figure has stagnated at around 30 million, despite a huge increase in classified data." ''History Lab'' hopes to develop tools to machine-assist the declassification process. This would improve the efficiency and security of declassification, while also providing academics and researchers more data to understand government policy. ''The New Yorker,'' in an article on the initiative, states that the "researchers hope the project will help illuminate the space between necessary secrets and over-caution."


Awards and honours

*2002
George Louis Beer Prize The George Louis Beer Prize is an award given by the American Historical Association for the best book in European international history from 1895 to the present written by a United States citizen or permanent resident. The prize was created in 1923 ...
, ''A Diplomatic Revolution''


References

* * * *


Notes


External links


Connelly's Official Page



History Lab Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Connelly, Matthew 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Columbia University faculty 1967 births Living people Columbia College (New York) alumni Yale University alumni American male non-fiction writers