The Centre for International Policy Studies will be hosting its first Twitter Conference on September 30, 2020. The theme of the conference is Understanding the Five Eyes. 

The Five Eyes is the world’s oldest intelligence network and arguably the world’s most functional security partnership. Most commonly, the term refers to a unique signals intelligence pooling club of agencies from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. But FVEY, as it is also known, also refers to a large and growing number of special relationships and trans-governmental policy networks that bind these five states in virtually all areas of security.

The conference will consist of two major components:

  • Projects presented as Twitter threads 
  • A symposium of the projects on the CIPS blog

Along with CIPS staff, Srdjan Vucetic will moderate the Twitter conference and will also edit the posts for the CIPS blog symposium, “Understanding the Five Eyes”. 

The Twitter threads will be posted as two panels, with threads shared by participants themselves and by the CIPS account (@uOttawaCIPS). One panel will take place in the morning and one will take place in the afternoon on September 30, 2020. 

All Tweets will include the hashtag, #5EyesCIPS, so that viewers may follow along. Questions are welcome following presentations.

Panel 1

Chair: Rita Abrahamsen

Presentations:

Tim
Legrand
University
of Adelaide
From Insularity to Exteriority: How the Anglosphere Is Shaping Global Governance
Brendon
O’Connor
University
of Sydney
Why Does the US Trust Australia With its Secrets? The Five Eyes Alliance, Race, and
Loyalty
Nathaniel
Hailu
University
of Ottawa
Est-ce que l’affaire Cryptoleaks représente un abus de pouvoir dans le domaine des
renseignements privés et publics et faut-il s’en méfier?
Steven
Loleski
University
of Toronto
Beyond Intelligence Sharing: Exploring the Evolution of Cyber Operations in the Five Eyes
Community
David
MacDonald
University
of Guelph
New Zealand in the Five Eyes Intelligence Network: Assessing the Challenges and Benefits of
Membership
John
Mitcham
Duquesne
University
Jan Smuts and the Racial Origins of Five Eyes
Tania
Zeissig
University
of
Adelaide
The Anglosphere Mythscape in Australian Prime Ministers’ Speeches

Panel 2

Chair: Caroline Dunton

Presentations:

Hager Ben
Jaffel
National Centre for
Scientific Research
Britain’s European Trajectory: What’s beyond the Five Eyes?
Andrew
Mycock
University of HuddersfieldThe Anglosphere or Anglospheres? The English-Speaking World in Flux
Jack
Holland
University of LeedsSelling War and Peace: Syria and the Anglosphere
Wesley
Wark
University of OttawaWill the FVEY Alliance Persist?
Greg FyffeUniversity of OttawaIs it Time to Expand the Five Eyes?
Bill
Robinson
Citizen Lab, University of
Toronto
Five Eyes Minus One: Thinking the Unthinkable
Helen
Baxendale
University of OxfordOur Way or Huawei: Fissures in the Five Eyes Alliance in the Face of a Rising China 

To learn more about Twitter conferences, prospective participants may consult the proceedings of the Women In International Security Canada (WIISC) Twitter Conference 2020, “Future Security Challenges Facing Canada: Insights from Women in International Security” (We thank Veronica Kitchen and Tanya Irwin for sharing the lessons of this Twitter conference with us at CIPS.)

This conference is supported by the SSHRC Exchange Grant.

Panelists:

Tim Legrand is Associate Professor of International Studies at the University of Adelaide, adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Canberra and adjunct Research Fellow of the National Security College at the Australia National University. His research is concerned with the transnational dimensions of public policy, with a particular concern with the networked security communities of the Anglosphere and the politics of security. He is the co-author of Banning Them, Securing Us? (with Lee Jarvis, Manchester University Press) and his research has been published in leading international journals including Public Administration, Political Studies, Review of International Studies, Security Dialogue, Policy Studies, British Politics, European Political Science, and the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. 

Brendon O’Connor is jointly appointed between the US Studies Centre and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney as an Associate Professor in American Politics. He was a Fulbright Fellow at Georgetown University in 2006, a Visiting Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC in 2008 and 2015, and life member of Clare Hall at University of Cambridge. Brendon is the editor of seven books on anti-Americanism and has also published articles and books on American welfare policy, presidential politics, US foreign policy, and Australian-American relations. In 2020 his Anti-Americanism and American Exceptionalism: Prejudice and Pride about the USA (Routledge) was published. In 2019 he co-authored Ideologies of American Foreign Policy (Routledge). He is a regular commentator in the Australian media on American politics and foreign policy.

Nathaniel Hailu est un étudiant de deuxième cycle à l’école Supérieure des Affaires Publiques et Internationales. Mes intérêts se concentrent sur les relations internationales, la diplomatie, ainsi que les politiques monétaires et fiscales. Diplômé de l’Université de Windsor en kinésiologie, j’entreprends mes études dans une variété de sujets afin d’évaluer les enjeux des politiques qui nous touchent.

Steven Loleski is a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto broadly interested in the relationship between intelligence and cyberspace. His dissertation advances a framework for explaining intelligence transformation in and across the Five Eyes community.

David MacDonald is a full professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Guelph, where he just finished a three year position as a University Research Leadership Chair for the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences (July 2017 – July 2020). From 1999-2002, he was Assistant Visiting Professor at the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris (now ESCP-Europe), part of France’s Grande École system. From 2002-2007 he was a Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer in the Political Studies Department at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His research focuses on Comparative Indigenous Politics in Canada, New Zealand, United States. Website and blog: www.davidbmacdonald.com

John Mitcham is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. His first book, Race and Imperial Defence in the British World, 1870-1914 was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016 and was a finalist for the Templer Medal.  He is currently finishing a new book entitled The Empire Club: Imperial Politics, White Supremacy, and the Origins of the Commonwealth. John is the new General Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Britain and the World published by Edinburgh University Press.

Tania Zeissig is a doctoral candidate at the University of Adelaide. Her research investigates the electoral integrity and civic rights consequences of the 2017 anti-terrorist proscription regime in Cameroon. Her research interests include electoral integrity, human rights, identity and discourse.

Hager Ben Jaffel graduated from King’s College London with a PhD in Interntaional Relations in 2017. She is now a research associate at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris where she conducts research on police intelligence practices in Europe and the implications of security-politics relationships on security practices. In parallel, she leads a collaborative project to build a critical and transdisciplinary research agenda for the study of intelligence in contemporary times, as an alternative to traditional Intelligence Studies. Her latest publications include ‘Anglo-European Intelligence Cooperation: Britain in Europe, Europe in Britain’ (Routledge, 2019).

Andrew Mycock is a Reader in Politics at the University of Huddersfield. His key research and teaching interests focus on post-imperial identity politics in the UK. He co-organised (with Ben Wellings) a British Academy special conference on the Anglosphere in 2017 and co-edited a volume of conference proceedings – The Anglosphere: Continuity, Dissonance, and Location (2020, OUP). He has published widely on the ‘Politics of Britishness’, UK devolution politics, English national and regional identity, the British ‘history wars’ and legacies of empire, and the history of historiography. His other research interests include the politics of First World War commemoration in the UK, and democratic youth engagement. He is a trustee of the UK Political Studies Association.

Jack Holland is Associate Professor in International Security at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Selling the War on Terror: Foreign Policy Discourses after 9/11 (Routledge 2012), Fictional Television and American Politics: From 9/11 to Donald Trump (Manchester University Press 2019), Selling War and Peace: Syria and the Anglosphere (Cambridge University Press 2020), and co-author of Security: A Critical Introduction (Palgrave 2014). He is also co-editor of Obama’s Foreign Policy: Ending the War on Terror (Routledge 2013) and The Obama Doctrine: A Legacy of Continuity in Foreign Policy? (Routledge 2016). Alongside these books, he has published in journals such as European Journal of International Relations, International Political Sociology and Review of International Studies. At the University of Leeds, he is Director of the Centre for Global Security Challenges.

Wesley Wark is a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He recently retired from the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, where he had taught since 1988. He served for two terms on the Prime Minister of Canada’s Advisory Council on National Security (2005-2009) and on the Advisory Committee to the President of the Canada Border Services Agency from 2006 to 2010. His most recent book is an edited volume: Secret Intelligence: A Reader (2009). He authored a classified history of the Canadian intelligence community in the Cold War and has published extensively in the field of intelligence and security studies over the past 30 years. He is currently completing a book on Spy Power—a history of intelligence and international relations from 1900 to the present. His essay on “Cyber-Aggression and its Discontents,” appeared in the journal Global Brief in its Fall 2012 edition (online at www.globalbrief.ca). Professor Wark writes and comments extensively for the Canadian and international media on issues relating to intelligence, national security and terrorism.

Greg Fyffe is a Senior Fellow at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He had a long and prominent career as a public servant with particular experience in security and intelligence issues as well as immigration. From 2000 to 2008, he was Executive Director of the International Assessment Staff at the Privy Council Office after serving for three years as Assistant Deputy Minister for Policy at Citizenship and Immigration Canada. He previously served in a variety of senior positions at the Canada School of Public Service, the Immigration and Refugee Board and the Solicitor General`s Department. Greg began his career in government as a political aide, including ministerial chief of staff. In addition to his position as Senior Fellow, Greg teaches at the University of Ottawa`s Centre on Public Management and Policy and is President of Canadian Association of Security and Intelligence Studies. He holds a BA in politics and history from Queen’s University and an MA in Politics from University of British Columbia.

Bill Robinson writes the blog Lux Ex Umbra, which focuses on Canadian signals intelligence activities past and present. Since 2017, he has been a Research Fellow at the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. He contributed the chapter on the Communications Security Establishment in the forthcoming Top Secret Canada: Understanding the Canadian Intelligence and National Security Community (University of Toronto Press). From 1986 to 2001 he was on the staff of the Canadian peace organization Project Ploughshares.

Helen Baxendale recently completed a PhD in Public Policy at the University of Oxford.  Her research primarily focuses on cross-national analyses of education policy.  With Ben Wellings, she has published several pieces on “the Anglosphere” and British Euroscepticism in peer-reviewed and popular organs. Originally from Australia, Helen now resides in Arizona, where she presently works as the Director of Academic Policy for the governing board of Arizona’s public university system.