Newsletters

Peter Ajak is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center’s International Security Program. A South Sudanese peace activist, a scholar, former political prisoner, and a former child soldier and Lost Boy of Sudan, Ajak’s life has been consumed with the commitment to bring freedom to his people.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol visited Harvard on April 28 and delivered a major policy speech at Harvard Kennedy School’s JFK Jr. Forum. Following his speech, President Yoon joined Harvard Distinguished Service Professor Joseph Nye for a conversation about security and soft power derived from the country's cultural strength. He also took questions from the large audience of students and others attending the event in person and online.

The Belfer Center’s Korea Project worked closely with Harvard University colleagues and Korean Consulate General counterparts to arrange for the visit and the Harvard speech, the first for a sitting South Korean president. The Kennedy School's Institute of Politics and the Korea Project co-sponsored the historic speech. 

Nathaniel L. Moir argues that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 evokes a failure to learn the many lessons Bernard Fall sought to convey in critiquing American operations in Vietnam in the 1960s and as France sought to control Indochina in the 1950s. Among his contributions was Fall's demand that policy-makers recognize the primacy of political legitimacy over military force. 

This spring, the Belfer Center organized a new event series called Africa in Focus to examine the many factors driving political transitions and geostrategic relations in Africa. This workshop series aims to kickstart an initiative that recruits more African policymakers and experts to discuss African politics and affairs with the Harvard Kennedy School community. 

In our feature Q&A, Professors Zoe Marks and Charli Carpenter tell us how the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is impacting Afghan women and how global advocacy groups and others can be most helpful to women in conflict areas. 

The Belfer Center is proud that more than a dozen of our community members, including Bonnie Jenkins, Eric Lander, Samantha Power, Wendy Sherman, Jake Sullivan, and—pending Senate confirmation—Sasha Baker and Nick Burns, have answered the call to serve in the Biden administration. We’re also pleased that a new generation of leaders who are recent Harvard Kennedy School graduates and Belfer alums are serving important—and in some cases, very senior—roles as well. Meredith Berger, Marcus Comiter, Caitlin Conley, Raina Davis, Jeff Fields, Aditi Kumar, and Aoibhean Thinnes are helping run important projects on industrial policy, AI, law enforcement, and national security.

In this issue, we highlight five new books by Belfer Center members.

As a new presidential administration prepares to take office, we asked Belfer Center experts: In your issue area, what one policy step would you advise the Biden administration to prioritize in its first 100 days? A number of Center scholars and  practitioners—many of them former government officials—shared their thoughts. 

What makes a person interested in the relationship between science, society, and the environment? For Masahiko Haraguchi, it was the paradox of sustainable development.

This Q&A focuses on Erica Chenoweth, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her research focuses on political violence and its alternatives. Foreign Policy magazine ranked her among the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013. Her forthcoming book, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know, explores what civil resistance is, how it works, why it sometimes fails, how violence and repression affect it, and the long-term impacts of such resistance.