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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.

Just last year, the work environment of one of the Belfer Center's newest fellows was a far cry from Cambridge's quiet campus full of fall foliage and quaint coffee shops.

Gaëlle Rivard Piché, now a Fulbright research fellow in the International Security Program, was working in El Salvador and Haiti studying public order and violence in communities often dominated by gangs.  

In an address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, President Barack Obama called on the world to join in the effort to degrade and destroy the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and to “dismantle this network of death.” Samantha Power, U.S. permanent representative to the UN and Belfer Center alumna, said at the UN on August 15, 2014, "The growth of...ISIL, al-Nusrah Front, and other associates of al-Qaeda respresents a grave threat to the people of Syria and the people of Iraq, as well as to the region ad the larger international community."

We asked Belfer Center international security experts to weigh in on this strategic challenge: As ISIL continues to expand its reach and brutality, what must be done in the next year--by neighboring states, the U.S., or others--to degrade and destroy this group?

International Security Program fellow Evelyn Krache Morris, who has an MBA from Columbia University, an MA in history and international affairs from the University of Chicago, and Ph.D. in history of U.S. foreign relations from Georgetown University, has spent her time at the Kennedy School conducting a study on how the global illicit drug trade has influenced U.S. relations with Mexico.

"The rise of political Islam in failed states is one of the most pressing security concerns in the world today. Given the increasingly tense interaction between the United States and Islamic countries, such as Pakistan and Iran, the potential for new Islamic regimes emerging out of failed states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East could add a notable degree of uncertainty to future international relations," writes Aisha Ahmad, a research fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program/Program on Religion in International Affairs.

As a child, Aisha Ahmad remembers vividly the arms bazaars in Peshawar and the throngs of bearded mujahedeen commanders as they passed through her grandfather’s smoke laden offices in the Pakistani frontier province.Though she was born in the UK and grew up in Canada, her family retained strong ties with their native community and during her youth Ahmad regularly traveled to the unruly Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

Hot Off the Presses features some of the most recent and forthcoming books written or edited by members of the Belfer Center community.

The Belfer Center's Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution (ICP) traveled to meet with leaders and officials in Rwanda and Malawi in January to discuss the 2008 Index of African Governance.