GPS professor Anna Feuer, the new director of the International Studies Program, doesn’t let disciplinary boundaries get in the way of solving international problems
Starting a new job can be a massive shift for anyone. But the task is even more formidable for a professor who moves from a liberal arts college with a total enrollment of 30 students (no, that’s not a typo) to UC San Diego, which has over 30,000.
But for Anna Feuer, such a dramatic change has equipped her for her new role as the new director of the university’s undergraduate International Studies Program, which is affiliated with the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS). In addition to that role, she has joined GPS as assistant teaching professor.
Feuer, a political scientist, is accustomed to examining issues from a variety of angles. She joins GPS from Deep Springs College, which is located on a working ranch in eastern California, near the border with Nevada. (The setting allowed her to learn how to milk a cow and ride a horse during her time there.)
The college’s small student body was taught by a commensurately small faculty, which meant that Feuer and her colleagues needed to draw on multiple academic areas. As the chair of social sciences, she taught courses that fundamentally reached across disciplinary boundaries; she didn’t shy away from teaching political philosophy and literature alongside her speciality of empirical political science.
“I had the chance to do some seriously interdisciplinary teaching outside of my area of expertise and my comfort zone,” she said. “That experience really made me a better teacher and a better scholar.”
Keeping an eye on new military technology
Feuer’s own research demonstrates how committed she is to integrating different fields of study in order to gain insights into some of the world’s most important issues. Her current focus is on studying new technologies that use artificial intelligence and augmented reality to enhance soldiers’ ability to conduct warfare.
She said that in the not-too-distant future, combat soldiers could be equipped with augmented-reality headsets that would superimpose real-time information about local conditions over their field of vision. She noted that some of these functions might seem anodyne. They could show the soldier his or her location on a map, for example, or automatically translate the language on signs — the kinds of tools that might look familiar to those who have played video games like the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series.
But Feuer noted that the technology could open a Pandora’s box, and soldiers might end up using the headsets in ways that are morally dubious. She talked about a potential future in which headsets use algorithmic or facial recognition technology to identify potential threats — which could be a lot more concerning than mere navigation tools.
And while technology like this hasn’t been deployed on the battlefield yet, she emphasized that it is important to address these ethical quandaries while there’s still time. To start this process, she analyzes the latest military technology and puts them in conversation with millennia-old philosophical questions about what counts as acceptable behavior in war.
“Augmented reality headsets are designed to aid soldiers’ decision making, rather than supplant it the way drones and killer robots do,” she said. “That makes the questions of accountability more complex. To what extent do those kinds of technologies influence a soldier’s judgment and autonomy? How does being integrated into this cybernetic network of information influence their ability to make decisions that are legally and ethically appropriate?”
Undergraduate major, graduate-level opportunities
These are big questions. But Feuer said she is looking forward to using her teaching experience and her own research at UC San Diego to help students understand the causes and consequences of globalization, challenging them to examine the consequences of an increasingly interconnected world from a variety of perspectives.
“The International Studies Program is organized around the study of the origins and consequences of global integration,” she explained. “Whether you define globalization as a phenomenon of the modern era or as a much longer historical process — it has shaped everything from our practices of local governance to our patterns of cultural consumption to our moral sensibilities.”
Since the International Studies Program is situated within GPS (where she will also serve as an assistant teaching professor), Feuer said that she hopes to help students in the program engage with all that the school has to offer by encouraging them to attend GPS events, support professors’ research and pursue exciting opportunities like the APRU Undergraduate Leaders Program.
These opportunities are even more abundant when students pursue the concurrent degree program, through which they graduate in five years with both a bachelor of arts in international studies, and a master of international affairs degree from GPS.
“It’s exciting that the International Studies Program allows students to complement their main disciplinary focus with opportunities to develop some regional expertise, language skills and other opportunities for interdisciplinary exploration,” she said.
These skills aren’t put to use just for their own sake, though. She emphasized how students gain an edge in whatever field they decide to pursue after graduation because of the broad understanding of the world they develop through the program. Alumni of the program have gone onto careers in law, the humanitarian sector, international finance, business and education.
“If you want to work in tech, for example, it’s not just helpful but essential to understand human rights and humanitarian considerations,” Feuer said. “You need those concepts so you can ensure that technological development is just and inclusive.”
