William Woods University To Offer Homeland Security Program

A small university in Fulton is going to start offering degrees in homeland security, one of the few universities in the nation to offer such a program. William Woods University hopes to produce graduates who will become homeland security advisors and managers of homeland security agencies and be on the ground floor of a growing private homeland security industry. Legal Studies Program Director Cynthia Kramer says students will major in criminal justice with an emphasis on homeland security. It’s a three-pronged program: threat assesssment and surveillance, terrorism response, and the legal balance between providing for security and protecting the civil liberties of American citizens. Kramer doesn’t think there is a clear line between those two issues, but she says courses will teach students how the Supreme Court has tried to define that line. She says the prgoram won’t teach people to be spies, but she does want students to have a critiocal understand of how modern surveillance works and how evidence is assembled to evaluate potential threats. The new program begins in the fall.