Since 2005, Ronald J. Bee has served as the Director of Charles Hostler Institute on World Affairs at San Diego State University (SDSU). He has also taught upper division courses on national security, homeland security, global systems and the conduct of American foreign relations since 2003. In 2006-2007, he was appointed as the managing director for the Hansen Summer Institute on Leadership and International Cooperation, a privately funded program based at SDSU that in July 2008 will bring students from 16 countries together to learn and apply hands-on conflict resolution skills to their respective regions of conflict.

 

From 2003-2006, Bee co-chaired the military-to-military series, Arms Control and Regional Security Improvement in the Middle East at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC).  IGCC, a statewide research center, with support from the U.S. Congress, conducts research and quiet meetings between diplomats, military officers, and experts on regional security cooperation.  Bee has also taught courses in national security policy and WMD proliferation at the USDA Graduate School in Washington, D.C., and at the University of San Diego.  He comments for most San Diego television and radio stations. Bee's field of interests include:  U.S.-Middle East Relations, American national security policy, U.S. foreign policy, WMD proliferation, U.S.-European Relations, and U.S.-German relations.

 

Prior to moving to San Diego in 1994, Bee worked for 15 years in Washington, D.C., with occasional stints overseas.  He served as a consultant to the U.S. Freedom Support Act Exchange Program (Moscow) and the Foreign Policy Association (FPA).  A frequent contributor to the FPA Great Decisions Program, his latest publication appeared in January 2007:  “Climate Change and Global Warming.”  In spring 2006, FPA published Bee’s latest book, Seven Minutes to Midnight: Nuclear Weapons after 9/11.  Bee is currently working with Loretta Napoleoni, a London-based expert, on writing a book entitled, Terrorism by the Numbers: Separating Fact from Fiction, due to be published in 2008.

 

He served as a foreign policy analyst at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA, Vienna, Austria, 1981), as a foreign affairs analyst at the Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division (1982), a special assistant for national security affairs at Palomar Corporation (1982-87), as a Robert Bosch Fellow in the German Bundestag (Committee on Foreign Affairs) and with the Governing Mayor of Berlin (1987-88), and as director of research and publications at ACCESS: A Security Information Service (1990-92).  At ACCESS he co-authored One Nation Becomes Many: The ACCESS Guide to the Former Soviet Union, and A Guide to the 1991 Gulf War.

 

Bee testified before the Presidential Commission on Chemical Warfare Review (1985), and conducted analyses of post World War II nuclear crises, examining high-level documents.  He is the author of Nuclear Proliferation: The Post-Cold War Challenge (FPA Headline Series No. 303, 1995).  Bee has co-authored the book, Looking the Tiger in the Eye: Confronting the Nuclear Threat (Harper & Row, 1988), recipient of the 1998 Christopher Award, Washington Post bestseller, and NY Times Notable Book of the Year.  He also published in a December 2004 Robert Bosch Foundation volume, Building a New Transatlantic Generation, “Toward a Post 9/11 Transatlantic Vision for the Middle East: Restoring Hope and Collective Security.”

 

Bee has a degree in history from UC San Diego, and has studied international relations and security studies at the Johns Hopkins Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Oxford University, and the University of Grenoble.  He is a member of the American Council on Germany, the Arms Control Association, and the Academy of Political Science.