International Security and Black Politics: A Biographical Note Toward an Institutional Critique

Abstract In this afterword, I claim that the distance that sets apart the study of black politics and international security is neither neutral nor natural but crafted through racism. Using the biography of John Herz, alongside other scholars, I shed light on an intellectual tradition that treats black politics and international security as mutually constitutive phenomena. I demonstrate, however, that during the Cold War their study was fractured into two discrete institutional configurations. I claim that academic institutions are entangled in the curtailment of the black freedom struggle in the US. To orient security studies towards the challenge posed by Black Lives Matter might require no less than an institutional reconfiguration of the field.