Shannon Felton Spence has been appointed Director of Global Communications and Strategy for Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Representatives from more than 200 nations are gathering in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt this week and next for the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP-27) of the United States Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Robert Stavins, A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy & Economic Development and director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, will lead a small delegation of Harvard attendees, which includes Daniel Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering, who studies methane and climate-change policy.

Harvard Kennedy students share their thoughts, stories, and tributes to Ash Carter, who passed away suddenly on October 24, 2022. 

Ash Carter, Director of the Belfer Center, Professor at Harvard Kennedy School, and former U.S. Secretary of Defense, died suddenly on October 24, 2022. The Belfer Center community is deeply saddened by his loss. 

On these pages, members of the Center and broader Harvard community, government officials, and many others share their thoughts and stories of Ash Carter's impact on them, the nation, and the world. 

It is with deep and profound sorrow that I write to inform you that our colleague, teacher, and friend Ash Carter passed away yesterday evening after suffering a heart attack.

The U.S. Department of State announced Tuesday, October 18 that Eric Rosenbach, Belfer Center Co-Director and former Pentagon Chief of Staff and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security, has been named to the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board (ISAB).  

New forms of international cooperation and technology competition with China are the main drivers of public investment in energy innovation, though it remains insufficient to help meet climate goals.

The Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs announced today that ColdHubs Limited is the winner of the 2022 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership. The company—born out of a partnership between the Smallholders Foundation, the Institute for Air Handling and Refrigeration (ILK Dresden), and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)—uses solar-powered walk-in cold rooms to reduce post-harvest losses for smallholder farmers across rural Nigeria.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who is known for ending the Cold War, dissolving the Soviet Union, and changing the map of Europe, died Tuesday, August 30. He was 91.

We asked several Center experts for their thoughts on Gorbachev and his impacts – and how his life and actions are relevant to the challenges the world faces today.

The Project on Managing the Atom participated as a NGO delegation in the Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at the United Nations in New York. This review conference comes at a time when nuclear fears amid the conflict in Ukraine loom large.