Gwythian Prins MA, PhD (Cantab) FRHist, is the Emeritus Research Professor at the London School of Economics, Director of the Cambridge Security Initiative Research Unit (CSIRU) and Visiting Professor at the HRI, University of Buckingham. He is a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Statecraft in London, Academic Board Member of Veterans for Britain and on the Editorial Boards of Briefings for Britain, History Reclaimed (from 'woke' misrepresentations) and the Advisory Boards of the Henry Jackson Society and the Global Warming Policy Foundation. He was previously Alliance Research Professor jointly at Columbia University in New York and the London School of Economics but for most of his university career he was a Fellow and the Director of Studies in History at Emmanuel College and University Lecturer in Politics, University of Cambridge. For a decade, he helped George Weidenfeld’s benefaction to conduct courses in moral philosophy for young leaders at the University of Oxford. Since the 1980s he has taught at every level of British military education, for all services. He was the first British Senior Academic Visiting Fellow at the Ecole Spéciale Militaire de St Cyr from June 2016-2019.
Banned from South Africa for thirty years, he re-opened Cambridge's links with South Africa in 1995 and assisted President Mandela's "Seminar of All the Talents", has served in the Secretary General of NATO’s Special Adviser’s office at the end of the Cold War, as Adviser to the Czechoslovakian government, was Senior Visiting Fellow in MoD's DERA where, with full security clearances, he served as internal scrutineer of all types of defense project having input into multi-billion pound investments, and directed an exploratory research group on strategic assessment methods on which he also advised the Swedish government. He was the first Security Consultant to the Hadley Centre for Climate Policy & Research within the Met Office. In New York he advised and assisted Kofi Annan’s (unsuccessful) High Level Panel on UN reform. 2007-17 he advised the Japanese government on energy and environmental issues, a task which he resumed in 2019-20. He was founding coordinator 2010-17 of the Hartwell Group on climate and energy policy.
From 2011 until its closure he served three CDSs on the Strategy Advisory Panel of the British Chief of the Defence Staff. He was a founding member of the Royal Marines Advisory Group. He is an Honorary Member of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines and for services to it in the 1990s, also of the Army Intelligence Corps.
Upon retirement from his chair, he served from 2012-17 as a Board Member of the Charity Commission of England and Wales. The Commissioners regulate charities with annual income in the region of £70bn. Since 'lockdown' (2020-21) he has been co-ordinating an informal high level group around the coronavirus virus and vaccines which was the first to discover from molecular mapping (in February 2020) the lab-manipulated origin of the chimera and by forensic analysis the most likely route to its creation (who, how, when, where) as well as the retro-engineered cover-up.
His many publications range from an award-winning history of western Zambia to books and essays on medical anthropology, on energy and environmental policy, on geo-politics, on principles of strategy, the ethics of war, on military history, on naval issues, on assessment methodology for coping with risk and uncertainty and on EU & contemporary security issues. He has recently been guiding the drafting and publication of key papers on the Covid Virus and Vaccines. The common thread of his career is security in all its cultural, historical, philosophical, geo-political and military dimensions.
I have known Gwyn for decades, and he is my favorite person to fence with. We differ, at times, on very controversial issues from Middle Eastern politics to Brexit, yet he sharpens my edge and challenges me in the very manner that I ask of my students in suspending their preconceptions. He keynoted a great variety of forums over the years, so many that on the 25th anniversary of the Institute we asked him to present his thoughts on the Institute that which he describes as being prescient but apparently much like Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo, able to successfully look over the horizon. I first met Gwyn when realizing that we had begun a high school program inquiry and its theme was Water Diplomacy in the Middle East, and he knew that we called the simulation UNWARY (United Nations Water Resource Year). He volunteered to play the convening role of the UN Secretary General Boutros Boutrous-Ghali. He had just published a fascinating book called Top Guns and Toxic Whales. One of his more formidable presentations was on Global Health and Security for EPIIC’s Global Health and Security Year found here. At times, we have to settle for agreeing to disagree, but it has never shaken our friendship. At the time of this posting, Gwyn had written this essay on the US withdrawal of Afghanistan.