THE LAWYERS ALLIANCE FOR WORLD SECURITY is a nonpartisan organization of judges, lawyers, and legal professionals committed to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, reducing the threat of war, and ways and means to abolish weapons of mass destruction. LAWS is active in the UN Committee on Disarmament, the American Bar Association, and other arms control groups. It promotes the rule of law throughout the world and has for more than a decade worked on democracy-building in the states formerly part of the Soviet Union.

SOLOMON ASCH CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF ETHNOPOLITICAL CONFLICT, based at the University of Pennsylvania, aims to "enhance the efforts of social scientists to identify the origins, trajectory and impact of violent intergroup struggles."  Through original research and findings, its scholars devise public policy strategies addressing the world's most intractable conflicts.

THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA POLITICAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT has faculty who focus on international security and U.S. foreign policy. One says he has written on "the effects of technological change on the future conduct of war."

THE FOREIGN POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE is a Philadelphia-based think tank with a stable of scholars including a former aide to three U.S. secretaries of state, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, and two former staff members of the National Security Council. They research pressing geopolitical issues such as nuclear proliferation.