Warner Roller Schilling (May 23, 1925 – October 20, 2013) was an American

political scientist Political science is the science, scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of politics, political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated c ...

and

international relations International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such as ...

scholar 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 ...

(1954–1957, 1958–1996,

emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

1997–2013), where he was the James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations. He was director of the university's

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. Eisen ...

from 1976 to 1986.

Biography

Schilling was born in

Glendale, California Glendale is a city in the San Fernando Valley and Verdugo Mountains regions of Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, California, United States. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. Census the population was 196,543, up from ...

, but grew up in

Greater St. Louis Greater St. Louis is a bi-state metropolitan area that completely surrounds and includes the independent city of St. Louis, the principal city. It includes parts of both Missouri and Illinois. The city core is on the Mississippi Riverfront on t ...

. He served as a

radio operator A radio operator (also, formerly, wireless operator in British and Commonwealth English) is a person who is responsible for the operations of a radio system. The profession of radio operator has become largely obsolete with the automation of ra ...

with the

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

from 1943 to 1946. He received his bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1949, 1951, and 1954, respectively. As an undergraduate at Yale he belonged to

Saybrook College Saybrook College is one of the 14 residential colleges at Yale University. It was founded in 1933 by partitioning the Memorial Quadrangle into two parts: Saybrook and Branford. Unlike many of Yale's residential colleges that are centered on one ...

, was a member of

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

and the

Yale Political Union The Yale Political Union (YPU) is a debate society at Yale University, founded in 1934 by Alfred Whitney Griswold. It was modeled on the Cambridge Union and Oxford Union and the party system of the defunct Yale Unions of the late nineteenth and ...

, and was pictorial editor for '' Yale Scientific Magazine''. He was part of an era of students motivated to study international relations following

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

because, as he later said, "We thought that by studying international politics and foreign policy we might have a part in moving the world in happier directions." He was a research fellow at the

Center of International Studies The Center of International Studies (CIS) was a research center that was part of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in Princeton, New Jersey. It was founded in 1951 by six scholars who came to Princ ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

during 1953–54, a lecturer and research associate at

from 1954–57, and an assistant professor of international relations at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

during 1957–58, before coming to Columbia for good in 1958. He married the former Jane Pierce Metzger in 1951 (she had been a teacher of economics who co-authored the 1954 book ''The Impact of Strikes'' and would later serve as editor for some of the Institute of War and Peace Studies' published works). The couple raised two sons and lived in

Leonia, New Jersey Leonia is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States census, the borough's population was 8,937, a town where a number of other Columbia professors lived. He sometimes engaged in academic-oriented presentations and debates in Leonia itself and in surrounding

Bergen County Bergen County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Schilling was the co-author of the book ''Strategy, Politics and Defense Budgets'' (1962) along with

Paul Y. Hammond Paul Young Hammond (February 24, 1929 – March 9, 2012) was an American foreign policy and security studies scholar. He was Distinguished Service Professor (Emeritus after 2004) at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and Interna ...

and Glenn H. Snyder. Writing for the journal ''Defense Analysis'' in 1989, Michael D. Yaffe wrote that 25 years later the three authors' "insights about defense planning still ring true" and that the book was a landmark of defense-policy literature. Schilling's portion, ''The Politics of National Defense: Fiscal 1950'', was an examination of the process by which the U.S. defense budget was arrived at during a time of fundamental change for U.S. security policy and an analysis of the forces at play that made rational choice so difficult. An influential work, two decades later,

John Lewis Gaddis John Lewis Gaddis (born 1941) is an American international relations scholar, military historian, and writer. He is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. He is best known for his work on the Cold War an ...

commented that it was still the "classic discussion" of defense spending during that period. Robert J. Art has labeled Schilling, along with contemporaries

Richard Neustadt Richard Elliott Neustadt (June 26, 1919 – October 31, 2003) was an American political scientist specializing in the United States presidency. He also served as adviser to several presidents. He was the author of the books ''Presidential Power' ...

Roger Hilsman Roger Hilsman Jr. (November 23, 1919 – February 23, 2014) was an American soldier, government official, political scientist, and author. He saw action in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II, first with Merrill's Marauders, getting wo ...

, and Samuel Huntington, as part of the "first wave" of scholars of foreign policy making. He was also co-author of ''American Arms and a Changing Europe: Dilemmas of Deterrence and Disarmament'' (1973) and co-editor of ''European Security and the Atlantic System'' (1973). In addition, he published a number of scholarly articles. One of those was regarding the decision by the President

Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...

and the U.S. government to proceed with development of the hydrogen bomb in 1950; in the mid-1950s Schilling interviewed virtually every participant in that decision, and gave public lectures on the subject, but a book-length treatment of the decision did not incorporate these interviews until after his passing. He was recipient of one of the Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 1964. At Columbia, he became a full professor in 1967. He served on a faculty committee investigating university recruiting policies. At one point in 1967, he was mentioned in the ''

Columbia Daily Spectator The ''Columbia Daily Spectator'' (known colloquially as the ''Spec'') is the student newspaper of Columbia University. Founded in 1877, it is the oldest continuously operating college news daily in the nation after ''The Harvard Crimson'', and has ...

'' as a possible candidate under consideration to become Dean of Columbia College During the

Columbia University protests of 1968 In 1968, a series of protests at Columbia University in New York City were one among the various student demonstrations that occurred around the globe in that year. The Columbia protests erupted over the spring of that year after students disc ...

that split the faculty and campus, Schilling was considered one of the more vocal of the conservative faculty members, opposing the demonstrators and their spokesperson

Mark Rudd Mark William Rudd (born June 2, 1947) is an American political organizer, mathematics instructor, anti-war activist and counterculture icon who got involved with the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Rudd became a member of the Columbia Unive ...

and supporting the position of the university administration. (Off campus, the politics of any of these "conservatives" was often anything but, and they were uncomfortable with such labels when their goal as they saw it was simply the restoration of order in American and European academies.) Shortly after midnight at the start of April 25, 1968, the third day of student protests and occupations, Schilling was part of a faculty delegation unsympathetic to the protesters that entered the occupied portion of Low Library to attempt a dialogue with them; it went nowhere. That evening, he spoke to a large gathering of like-minded students and faculty at Wollman Auditorium and gained applause after proclaiming, "if Mark Rudd is still at Columbia in the fall, I will not be." On the evening of April 26, he was part of a press conference in which several faculty members endorsed a moderate student group called the Majority Coalition that wanted to prevent the granting of amnesty to the occupying students; Schilling said he had "high admiration for heconduct" of the counter-demonstrators. He was one of several professors to propose that the faculty themselves cordon off Low Library to prevent free entry and exit of the demonstrators and seize the university identification cards of those leaving. On April 28, he was part of a line of faculty formed outside Low Library that sought to prevent violence among students. He supported the administration's April 30 decision to bring in the police to clear the buildings, saying it was "a horrible decision to make utthe right one". Schilling subsequently faulted colleague

Alan Westin Alan Furman Westin (October 11, 1929 – February 18, 2013) was a Professor of Public Law & Government Emeritus, Columbia University, former publisher of ''Privacy & American Business'', and former President of the Center for Social & Legal Resea ...

, leader of a faculty group more sympathetic to the demonstrators, and others in that group, for engaging in behavior that turned what he thought would have been a manageable student-administration conflict into "a disaster". In 1973, Schilling was named the James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations. He served as director of the university's

from 1976 to 1986, taking over from Professor William T. R. Fox, who had founded the institute twenty-five years earlier. Schilling had previous served as associate director of the institute beginning in 1968. (Schilling was one of those influenced by Fox, having been his student back at Yale.) As director, Schilling endeavored to keep the institute's funding sources and physical space from being encroached upon by other parts of the university. Schilling also lectured at the

National War College The National War College (NWC) of the United States is a school in the National Defense University. It is housed in Roosevelt Hall on Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C., the third-oldest Army post still active. History The National War Colle ...

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...

, the Army War College, the

Army Command and General Staff College The United States Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC or, obsolete, USACGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is a graduate school for United States Army and sister service officers, interagency representatives, and international military ...

, the

Air Force Academy An air force academy or air academy is a national institution that provides initial officer training, possibly including undergraduate level education, to air force officer cadets who are preparing to be commissioned officers in a national air forc ...

, and the

Foreign Service Institute The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the United States federal government's primary training institution for employees of the U.S. foreign affairs community, preparing American diplomats as well as other professionals to advance U.S. foreig ...

in the U.S., and the

Imperial Defence College The Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS) instructs the most promising senior officers of the British Armed Forces, His Majesty's Diplomatic Service and Civil Service in national defence and international security matters at the highest level ...

and the Royal Naval College in the U.K. His appearance in Japan in 1969 to discuss the impact of MIRV warheads on the strategic nuclear balance was covered in the ''

Yomiuri Shimbun The (lit. ''Reading-selling Newspaper'' or ''Selling by Reading Newspaper'') is a Japanese newspaper published in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and other major Japanese cities. It is one of the five major newspapers in Japan; the other four are t ...

''. He also served as a consultant for the

U.S. Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...

and

Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philipp ...

, as well as for the U.S. Senate's Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery. He was a resident fellow at

The Bellagio Center The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Car ...

in 1975. He was a member of the

International Institute for Strategic Studies The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) is a British research institute or think tank in the area of international affairs. Since 1997, its headquarters have been Arundel House in London, England. The 2017 Global Go To Think T ...

and the

Council on Foreign Relations The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, mi ...

. At Columbia, he was associate director for the Council for Atomic Age Studies. Schilling made a number of media appearances, including on

Edward R. Murrow Edward Roscoe Murrow (born Egbert Roscoe Murrow; April 25, 1908 – April 27, 1965) was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He first gained prominence during World War II with a series of live radio broadcasts from Europe f ...

's ''Hidden Revolution'' radio series in 1959, where he described the effects of a surprise Soviet nuclear attack on the United States; on

National Educational Television National Educational Television (NET) was an American non-commercial educational, educational terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It o ...

's debate-style ''Court of Reason'' in 1963, to discuss Western alliance policy regarding nuclear weapons; appearances on the nationally distributed ''

Columbia Lectures in International Studies The ''Columbia Lectures in International Studies'', also known as the ''Columbia Seminars in International Studies'' or as just the ''Columbia Seminars'', was an educational television series of the early 1960s. It consisted of a series of half-ho ...

'', for instance in 1964 to talk about "The Likelihood of Limited War"; on New York local television station news and public affairs programs to discuss international events; and on the ''

CBS Morning News The ''CBS Morning News'' is an American early-morning news broadcast presented weekdays on the CBS television network. The program features late-breaking news stories, national weather forecasts and sports highlights. Since 2013, it has been anc ...

'' in 1982 to discuss the ongoing

Falklands War The Falklands War ( es, link=no, Guerra de las Malvinas) was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and its territorial de ...

. He was quoted in newspapers over several decades, often emphasizing the need to appreciate a broad sweep of history to understand current developments. A 1986 front-page story in the ''

Portland Press Herald The ''Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram'' is a morning daily newspaper with a website that serves southern Maine and is focused on the greater metropolitan area around Portland, Maine, in the United States. Founded in 1862, its roots e ...

'' displayed his quote, "Statesmen very rarely decide to have a war – they usually decide to risk a war," meaning that miscalculations in those risk assessments sometimes result in wars taking place that they never would have chosen. Schilling was known for his teaching, which included courses such as "American Strategies in World Politics", "Causes of War", and "Weapons, Strategy, and War". The last of these was a popular course that, according to the university, "became legendary among undergraduates and graduate students", and which he was still teaching well into his eighties. Each year, while observed by a university security officer, he brought an unloaded,

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

-era rifle to class to allow students to physically imagine what using it in battle would be like. A panel session at the

International Studies Association The International Studies Association (ISA) is a US-based professional association for scholars and practitioners in the field of international studies. Founded in 1959, ISA has been headquartered at the University of Connecticut in Storrs since ...

2009 annual conference in New York commemorated his teaching and mentoring contributions in the field of

security studies __NOTOC__ Security studies, also known as international security studies, is an academic sub-field within the wider discipline of international relations that studies organized violence, military conflict, national security, and international s ...

. As Stacie E. Goddard, one of the organizers of the session, said, "We all felt it was important to recognize the influence Warner has had on our teaching." In a 2003 profile by ''

The Christian Science Monitor ''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper ...

'', Schilling said that students were more oriented towards academic careers than they had been in years past, but were less knowledgeable about history and geography and less personally vulnerable to decisions about war and peace. On the importance of studying history, he said, "There are a whole host of questions that, even if you are only interested in the here and now, can best be answered by looking backward. It requires a greater leap of faith than I am willing to undertake to think that people are brighter in the year 2003 than they were in 1903 or 1803 or 1703. There are some things which have changed, but I don't think there have been any major new innovations in human intelligence or human emotions. If you are interested in the human animal and how the human animal behaves in different circumstances, a study of past behavior, or in this case, history, is one very useful way of building up your working capital, insight, and knowledge." He died in

Englewood, New Jersey Englewood is a city in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, which at the 2020 United States census had a population of 29,308. Englewood was incorporated as a city by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 17, 1899, from por ...

, on October 20, 2013, at age 88. Schilling was a perfectionist who had trouble finishing writing projects during his lifetime. After his death, unfinished works of his – regarding assassination as an instrument of foreign policy, and his interviews and conclusions regarding the aforementioned H-bomb decision – were published in collaboration with other authors and scholars. The latter project took the form of the book ''Super Bomb: Organizational Conflict and the Development of the Hydrogen Bomb'' and was written by British academic

Ken Young Kenneth George Young FAcSS FRHistS (3 January 1943 – 20 February 2019) was a British political scientist and historian who was Professor of Public Policy at King's College London in its Department of War Studies. Earlier he was instrumental i ...

. A review in ''

Foreign Affairs ''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and ...

'' characterized the result as "a compelling book" that presented "a fresh look at the defeat" of those opposing the weapon, a review for the

Association of College and Research Libraries The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association, is a professional association of academic librarians and other interested individuals. It is dedicated to enhancing the ability of academi ...

found value in the "illuminating contemporaneous interviews" that Schilling had conducted, and a review in '' Perspectives on Politics'' pointed to the "sixty years of gestation" back story behind the book as "highlight ngwhy it constitutes a unique contribution to the historical literature and to our understanding of bureaucratic politics".

Publications

; Books * ''Strategy, Politics and Defense Budgets'' (Columbia University Press, 1962) [co-author with

and Glenn H. Snyder] * ''American Arms and a Changing Europe: Dilemmas of Deterrence and Disarmament'' (Columbia University Press, 1973) [co-author with William T. R. Fox, Catherine M. Kelleher, and Donald J. Puchala] * ''European Security and the Atlantic System'' (Columbia University Press, 1973) William_T._R._Fox.html" ;"title="o-editor with William T. R. Fox">o-editor with William T. R. Fox* ''Super Bomb: Organizational Conflict and the Development of the Hydrogen Bomb'' (Cornell University Press, 2019) [co-author with

] ; Selected articles * "Civil-Naval Politics in World War I", in ''World Politics'' Vol. 7, No. 4 (1955), pp. 572–591. * "The H-bomb Decision: How to Decide Without Actually Choosing", in ''Political Science Quarterly'' Vol. 76, No. 1 (1961), pp. 24–46. * "Scientists, Foreign Policy, and Politics", in ''American Political Science Review'' Vol. 56, No. 2 (1962), pp. 287–300. * "All You Ever Wanted to Know About MIRV and ICBM Calculations But Were Not Cleared to Ask", in ''Journal of Conflict Resolution'' Vol. 17, No. 2 (1973), pp. 207–242. Lynn_Etheridge_Davis.html" ;"title="Lynn_E._Davis.html" ;"title="o-author with Lynn E. Davis">Lynn Etheridge Davis">Lynn_E._Davis.html" ;"title="o-author with Lynn E. Davis">Lynn Etheridge Davis* "U.S. Strategic Nuclear Concepts in the 1970s: The Search for Sufficiently Equivalent Countervailing Parity", in ''International Security'' Volume 6, No. 2 (1981), pp. 48–79. * "Decision Making in Using Assassinations in International Relations", in ''Political Science Quarterly'' Vol. 131, No. 3 (2016), pp. 503–539. [co-author with Jonathan L. Schilling]

References

External links

Faculty page at Columbia University Institute of War and Peace Studies

Warner R. Schilling papers, 1958–1975 at Columbia University Libraries Archival Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schilling, Warner R. American political scientists International relations scholars 1925 births 2013 deaths United States Army Air Forces soldiers Yale University alumni Columbia University faculty People from St. Louis County, Missouri People from Leonia, New Jersey