Newsletters

The Belfer Center’s Iran Project presented the First Annual Symposium on Islam and Sectarian De-escalation at Harvard Kennedy School on April 14-15. The symposium was organized by Iran Project director Payam Mohseni and co-sponsored by Harvard’s Center for Middle East Studies, the Asia Center, the South Asia Institute, and the Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program. 

It’s this distorted perception of the Muslim identity that Nadia Marzouki is working to dissolve. Her research focuses on the society’s perceptions of Muslims in an effort to deconstruct ignorance about Islam through emphasizing individuals’ autonomy to accept—or reject—societal structures.

A sampling of articles in the Spring 2016 issue of the Belfer Center's journal International Security.

International Security is America’s leading journal of security affairs. 
IS was ranked first in impact factor for 2014 among 85 journals of international relations in the annual “Journal Citation Reports”® released by Thomson Reuters. International Security’s 2014 Impact Factor is the highest of any international relations journals.

Each semester, the Belfer Center proudly hosts warriors and peacemakers, politicians and polymaths, investors and musicians. Rarely do we welcome all these roles in just one person. But Lamont Lecturer Ehud Barak is nothing if not a singular figure. Israel’s former prime minister has enlivened the Center this fall with a JFK Jr. Forum, classroom teaching, and many briefings with faculty, fellows, and students.

When Anita Gohdes began her graduate work, she quickly found she was not satisfied with theoretical research alone, but instead wanted to tackle something more practical. She settled on researching new communication technologies and their relationship with conflict, political violence, and state repression.

For the past three years, I have conducted interviews and surveys of men fighting in the Syrian Civil War. My interviews were with Syrian citizens, mostly young, and all men. Some of them joined Al Nusra (Al Qaeda branch in Syria), while the majority joined one of the other 1000 rebel brigades. My goal was to determine why they decided to fight, why they joined the group they did, and why some changed groups or quit fighting completely.

In this issue, the Belfer Center is pleased to feature the contributions of Hedi Larbi, the 2015–2016 Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar at the Middle East Initiative. During his stay, Larbi led a dynamic study group of students, fellows, and faculty in examining social contracts. In 2014–2015, he served as Minister of Economic Infrastructure and Sustainable Development and as Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister of Tunisia.

Inspired by her Lebanese heritage and childhood visits to family in Lebanon during a tense occupation period in the 1980s and 90s, Amanda Rizkallah has devoted her dissertation research to unravelling the complications of a post-war Lebanon.

A graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a former correspondent for the newspaper Ha’aretz, Daniel Sobelman arrived at the Belfer Center in the summer of 2014 at a time when Israel was embattled in a confrontation with Hamas. Large portions of the country were coming under daily rocket fire from Gaza....

At the Belfer Center, Sobelman is researching the conceptual and military implications of “asymmetric conflicts,” focusing on the evolution of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

Belfer Center Director Graham Allison opened his October 13 conversation with Secretary of State John Kerry by praising him as a “celebrated diplomat” and “decorated warrior” and for “bringing home the Iran nuclear deal.”