Kate Epstein, an associate professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University–Camden

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Photography: 
Jeff Fusco

In the name of national security, the American government has accrued countless state secrets throughout its history. Thanks to a 2018 Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars, Kate Epstein, an associate professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University–Camden, intends to shed light on the subject as she explores the relationship between national security and government secrecy since WWI. “We need to understand,” she says, “how the acquisition of advanced weapons technologies required to compete in modern wars and to maintain national security has challenged the United States’ commitment to liberal values, including government transparency and the protection of private property rights.”