PSSI’s primary mission is to build an ever-growing number of informed and security-minded policy practitioners dedicated to the development and safeguarding of democratic institutions and values in the Czech Republic and its regional neighbors.

The distinguished speakers included former CIA Director, James Woolsey; former US National Security Advisor, Richard Allen; US Ambassador to the Czech Republic, John Shattuck; former US Assistant Secretary of Defense, Richard Perle; prominent Soviet dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky; former Advisor to the Prime Minister of Poland, Piotr Naimsky; Air Marshal and former Chief of British Defence Intelligence, Sir John Walker; Professor of International Security Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Dr. Robert Pfaltzgraff Jr.; German Ambassador Hagen Graf Lambsdorff; Sorbonne Prof. Francoise Thom; Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Bonn, Dr. Holger Mey; William F. Martin, former Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Energy.

In the succeeding two years, the concept of a national security-oriented training program for future policy practitioners evolved and led to the founding of the Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI) in early 2002.

PSSI’s Regional Outreach Programs seeks to contribute to democratic institution-building in post-communist countries and to share know-how, technical expertise and professional experiences gained during the transition to democracy in the Czech Republic.

and issue areas such as terrorism and WMD proliferation, energy security, counterspace defense, festering regional conflicts, the eurozone crisis, Putin’s Russia, China’s rise, financial sanctions etc.

Named in honor of one of PSSI´s principal benefactors, Dr. James Q. Whitaker, this high-level Lecture Series focuses on free-market economics and geopolitical benefits, policy prescriptions important to Central and Eastern Europe as well as on priority security challenges worldwide.

The primary focus of PASS is to organize international conferences, roundtables, and workshops that bring together high-level decision-makers, opinion leaders, and experts in a number of fields from different countries and disciplines that would, in many cases, not be exposed to one another under normal professional circumstances.

International Advisory Board: Elie Wiesel, Dennis C. Blair, R. James Woolsey, Alexandr Vondra, Timothy Garton Ash, Michael Žantovský, Michael Novak, Adam Michnik, Robert Pfaltzgraff, Dorothy Stapleton, Hassan bin Talal, Karel Schwarzenberg, Jiří Schneider, Petr Kolář; (In memoriam, Václav Havel) Executive Committee: R. Daniel McMichael, James Q. Whitaker, Curtin Winsor Jr., Jan Ruml, Brian Kennedy, Alejandro Chafuen, C. Richard D’Amato, Jonna Bianco.