The overarching question imparting urgency to this exploration is: Can U.S.-Russian contention in cyberspace cause the two nuclear superpowers to stumble into war? In considering this question we were constantly reminded of recent comments by a prominent U.S. arms control expert: At least as dangerous as the risk of an actual cyberattack, he observed, is cyber operations’ “blurring of the line between peace and war.” Or, as Nye wrote, “in the cyber realm, the difference between a weapon and a non-weapon may come down to a single line of code, or simply the intent of a computer program’s user.”
Fr. Charles R. Gallagher, S.J. is an Associate Professor of History at Boston College and currently the William J. Lowenberg Memorial Fellow on America, the Holocaust & the Jews at the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. He will talk on the activities of German espionage elements in Boston during WWII drawing from his book, “The Nazis of Copley square: Catholic Anti-Semitism & Secret Intelligence in Wartime Boston.”
Fr. Gallagher uses recently declassified British Intelligence records, FBI files, and Nazi SS files to examine the activities of the German consul, SS Oberfürher Herbert Scholz, in Boston from 1939 to 1941. Fr. Gallagher shows for the first time the successful SS efforts to recruit Catholics from South Boston to act as a Nazi propaganda agents in New England. In today’s international environment where informational wars rely on “fake news” and manipulating audiences, this lesson from local history carries useful insights.
Fr. Gallagher came to Boston College from the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations in 2010, where he was a visiting fellow and teacher. From 2004 to 2006, he taught in the History Department at the College of the Holy Cross. In 2008, he published “Vatican Secret Diplomacy: Joseph P. Hurley and Pope Pius XII” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), which won the John Gilmary Shea Prize from the American Catholic historical Association.
This seminar is open to Harvard ID Card holders only on a first come first served basis. The seminar is off the record and nothing said can be published or recorded without the speaker’s consent.