[05 June 2021] In a specially themed issue that came out in April of this year, the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism explores the topic of “cooperation between academia and national security practitioners”. Entitled “Navigating the Divide”, this issue of the journal (volume 16, issue 1) hosts a collection of informative articles that examine the relations between academics and practitioners of intelligence. The European Intelligence Academy welcomes this noteworthy effort to explore an important topic, and commends the journal’s editors and authors for adding their voices to, and sharing their views on, a theme of critical importance.
Among the articles published in this issue of the journal, we note with interest the contribution of Canadian researcher Stéphane Lefebvre. In his article entitled “Academic-Intelligence Relationships: Opportunities, Strengths, Weaknesses and Threats”, Lefebvre acknowledges that intelligence practitioners and academics do differ on several areas of their work, including access, scope, and even pace. The author notes, for example, that intelligence analysts tend to “work under considerable time constraints on topics required by decision makers”. Academics, on the other hand, have the luxury to select their own subject matters for research, and to “sets their research, analysis and production schedule at their own discretion”.
Nevertheless, writes Lefebvre, academics are “well positioned to make a marked difference” in the practice of intelligence. This is because, even though intelligence agencies do have access to “exclusive sources of information” and even a wide range of specialists, they cannot possibly incorporate every current and/or future threat and contingency into their gamut of work. In fact, they often lack crucial knowledge in several critical areas, including medicine, geology, demography and environmental science, not to mention epidemiology. These areas are all becoming increasingly central in assessing and forecasting national and global trends.
Ultimately, according to Lefebvre, it makes no sense for intelligence organizations to isolate themselves from academia in those areas of knowledge where scholars and researchers “have a comparative advantage over intelligence professionals”. In such areas, academics “are well positioned to offer valuable contributions” with rewards that are sizeable for all concerned: “the nation is safer and knowledge creation is significantly facilitated”, the author concludes. We cannot agree more emphatically with this statement. [EIA]