Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world

Past Event
Seminar

The Middle East and Applied History: A Conversation with Tamir Pardo and Thomas Kaplan

RSVP Required Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

For a Middle East in state of constant change and evolving conflict, roadmaps for the future are hard to come by. Please join our discussion of how history may help us understand a region in which Iran nears critical fissile material thresholds, Lebanon’s economy melts down, a shattered Syria starts to rebuild, while war in Yemen persists. What are the prospects for Israel’s unwieldy coalition government? How will the Abraham Accords change regional dynamics? Are perceptions of US disengagement from the Middle East accurate, and what does this mean? With moderation by Graham Allison, we look forward to a stimulating discussion on historical parallels, false analogies, and clues from the past which can help anticipate and prepare for the future.

Harvard students, staff, faculty, and fellows are invited to attend. The audience size will be limited to 50.

Date: Time: - Location: Taubman Building - Allison Dining Room, 5th Floor

Speaker Bios

Tamir Pardo

Tamir Pardo served as Director of Israel’s Mossad from 2011-2016. Born and raised in Tel Aviv, Pardo served in the IDF in the special forces unit (Sayeret Matkal) and participated in the famous Operation Entebbe of 1976. He joined the Mossad in 1980 and rose through the ranks as technical and operations officer. Pardo then commanded its special operations division before serving two stints as Deputy Director (2002 and 2007—2009). Pardo led Mossad during a period of dramatic changes in the Middle East, taking command two weeks before the ousting of Tunisia’s president and the start of Arab Spring. During his term as Director contended with the resulting regional upheavals, Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. He also maintained unprecedented intelligence cooperation with the United States despite turbulence in political relations between the two countries, and for increasing Mossad’s capabilities in the cyber domain.

Thomas Kaplan

An entrepreneur by vocation, Thomas Kaplan took his undergraduate and D. Phil degrees in history from Oxford. While completing his doctorate on the Malayan Emergency, Kaplan became perhaps the first observer to predict that Saddam Hussein would attempt to annex Kuwait. From this assessment to more recent forecasts regarding Iran and the Arab Spring, Kaplan has an unusual capacity to predict qualitative strategic shifts that can be used to inform public policy as well as to gain a relative advantage in the private sector. He credits his education, and an ability to get in front of events by applying historical analysis to forecast market cycles and trends, as the major source for his becoming one of the most well-known American investors in natural resources.

Kaplan and his family support a number of philanthropic causes in the United States and the developing world. He is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the 92nd Street Y, a world-renowned Jewish community and cultural center. Kaplan is also the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Panthera Corporation, a charity devoted to preserving big cats and their ecosystems around the globe. Further to their commitment to ensuring the survival of the big cats, Kaplan and his wife, Daphne Recanati Kaplan, endowed the Recanati-Kaplan Center at Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit and founded the Recanati-Kaplan Foundation Fellowship, a prestigious opportunity for mid-career intelligence officials to study at the Belfer Center.