Official Positions ©

About Official Positions ©

Official Positions is a podcast that tries to shake the hornet's nest of the security and defense world and see what comes out. It asks questions about security studies, working in defense, and unpacks the assumptions that we have about the world that claims to keep us all safe.

Publisher

Davis Ellison

Category

government · history

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

16 Apr 2025

Latest episode

28 Oct 2025

Latest episodes

7 of 7 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   28 Oct 2025TRANSCRIPT

   Talking IR academia and the state of the world with Van Jackson

   Van Jackson discusses national security, IR academia, and the social dynamics within the defense community with the host in this interview.

2. 

   28 Jul 2025TRANSCRIPT

   Episode 6: Understanding the attacks on higher education with Professor Hussein Banai

   Professor Hussein Banai examines the multifaceted attacks on higher education in the United States and globally in an interview with the host.

3. 

   15 Jun 2025TRANSCRIPT

   Be an Ellsberg not a Kissinger

   This episode explores the contrasting legacies of Daniel Ellsberg and Henry Kissinger, examining the impact of choosing conscience over serving powerful interests.

4. 

   21 May 2025TRANSCRIPT

   Decolonising our reading lists

   This episode of Official Positions© examines the problematic and beneficial aspects of security studies reading lists, focusing on decolonization through diverse texts and historical analyses.

5. 

   30 Apr 2025TRANSCRIPT

   How I went from 'hawk' to 'dove'

   How does a Midwestern American raised to be a Republican, who worked as a military strategist at NATO, become a progressive arms control and decolonization advocate?

6. 

   22 Apr 2025TRANSCRIPT

   Studying security between the US and Europe

   What's it like to study defense and security between two different continents? Maybe its more similar than you think...

7. 

   16 Apr 2025TRANSCRIPT

   What is (wrong) with security studies?

   Welcome to the first episode of Official Positions! Like the title says, what's wrong with security studies? From the insider's perspective, let's unpack the issues endemic to the security studies academic field, the defense research world it feeds, and its relationship to politics.

Inside a recent episode

Talking IR academia and the state of the world with Van Jackson

Published 28 Oct 2025 · Transcript excerpt

[…] I was like, the think tank thing is one type of life. This adjuncting thing is another type of life and it's way more appealing. And then the real split was or the thing that made me say like I need to try to become an academic was the think tank world, especially in DC was just like profoundly corrupt, the sources of funding were all the baddies of civilization basically, you know, like it was foreign governments and military contractors and this is like this is no way to live. And so the teaching was I enjoyed it on its own terms, but it was also a way to pay the bills, uncorrupted. Like to be able to like teaching bought me intellectual freedom in a way that I could not have achieved in any other circumstance like I am basically the closest thing to freedom that a person could have without having a billion dollars. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 1 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

2

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0