Events

Steve Johnson is an HSP fellow and a leader in Internet technology and governance. However, he has another passion that touches on homeland security issues of police protection, equity, and misconduct. His gay brother, Scott Johnson, was killed in Sydney, Australia in 1988. The police declared it a suicide. After a 30-year struggle to prompt a police investigation, a third inquest declared Scott’s death a gay hate homicide. Then ensued the successful apprehension and conviction of Scott’s killer and a Parliamentary Commission looking into the police handling of 100 deaths of gay men, confirming an epidemic of gay hate crime the New South Wales police did too little about. In December 2023, The Commission of Inquiry published its recommendations, a strong indictment of the police’s resistance to investigate hate crimes, and an outline for reform. This will be a unique discussion about how Steve turned his personal tragedy into policy change in safety and security. 

This event is open to all Harvard students, fellows, faculty, and staff. Refreshments will be served. 

Please join the Belfer Homeland Security Project for a breakfast seminar on Wednesday, April 10th from 9-10:15 am with John Tien, former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Tien will share leadership lessons gained from his tenure at DHS as well as his experience as a veteran of four White House Administrations and three U.S. Army combat tours in Iraq.  The discussion will be moderated by Professor Juliette Kayyem, with time reserved for Q&A.

This event is open to all Harvard students, fellows, faculty, and staff. A hot breakfast will be served. 

Please join the Homeland Security Project for a lunch seminar on February 26 from 12-1:30pm with Mary Ellen Callahan, Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) Office. Assistant Secretary Callahan will discuss the work of the CWMD office in defending the United States against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats, as well as challenges and opportunities for DHS in the years ahead. The discussion will be moderated by Professor Juliette Kayyem, with time reserved for Q&A. 

This event is open to all Harvard students, fellows, faculty, and staff. Please RSVP below.

Speaker:  Leyla Tiglay, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

Rumors of an impending atomic experiment in Africa circulated in newspapers as early as 1956, four years before France conducted its first atomic test at the Reggane Testing Center in the Sahara in 1960. The late 1950s saw France's technological preparations, strained transatlantic relations due to complex nuclear alignments in Europe, and an unprecedented wave of anti-nuclear mobilization in decolonizing Africa. Using the French tests as a case study, this research aims to refine scholars and policymakers' understanding of how decolonization intrinsically influenced the formation of the current global nuclear landscape during this pivotal era in nuclear politics. 

Open to Harvard ID Holders Only: Admittance will be on a first come–first served basis. Coffee &Tea Provided.

Speaker:  Sudarshana Chanda, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This seminar explores how, in post-WWII British Malaya, banishment became conflated with another category of movement, repatriation. It further examines the new ways postwar "repatriation" schemes inflected categorizations of belonging for people with plural ethnic identities. In the aftermath of WWII, hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war, surrendered personnel, and "foreign" civilian occupants were voluntarily repatriated from Malaya to their home countries. At the same time, the forced movement of many people — which derived from multidecadal colonial banishment policies — was also rebranded as "repatriation." Both types of movement out of Malaya involved encounters with the colonial state and an implicit redefinition of citizenship or belonging based on ethnic categories.

Open to Harvard ID Holders Only: Admittance will be on a first come–first served basis. Coffee &Tea Provided.

Please join the Belfer Center for a Homeland Security Seminar with former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security John Tien, a Belfer Center Senior Fellow and former National Security Fellow, and Faculty Chair of the Homeland Security Project Juliette Kayyem.

They will discuss the challenges facing America’s safety and security in a time of increased global threats and domestic unrest. Twenty years into the Department of Homeland Security's start, as it manages issues as far flung as immigration surges, domestic radicalization, and climate change, was the post-9/11 experiment in creating a new federal agency successful?

This event will be off-the-record and in person.

Speaker: Anatol Klass, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

Throughout the period when the People's Republic of China (PRC) was formally excluded from the United Nations (1949-1971), the India was a constant advocate for unrecognized Chinese government at the international organization, even as relations between the two countries deteriorated in the run-up to and aftermath of the 1962 border war. Based on sources from the PRC's Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives, this presentation explores the nature of PRC-India cooperation over United Nations affairs during the Cold War including the tensions caused by the two nations' competing conceptions of how the decolonizing world should fit into the international system and who should be at the helm. Despite these disagreements, the Cold War UN provided a setting where geopolitical tensions and divergent post-colonial visions could be sublimated into meaningful international cooperation.

Open to Harvard ID Holders Only: Admittance will be on a first come–first served basis. Coffee & Tea Provided.

America’s gun massacres are not inevitable. These recurring disasters can potentially be stopped before they happen—and some have been, by trained community teams responding to warning signs. In this seminar, journalist and author Mark Follman will share insights from “Trigger Points,” his acclaimed book chronicling the emerging field of behavioral threat assessment, which seeks to intervene with troubled people who are planning violence. Threat assessment is a growing policy, now required in K-12 schools and universities in many states. Follman will discuss how these multidisciplinary teams work, the role of mental health, and more, with time included for audience questions. 

Speaker: Michael Falcone, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This presentation will examine how today's model of superpowers as science-powers stemmed from highly contingent historical processes — a whole paradigm of global competition that emerged from a specific set of transatlantic personal networks and rivalries in the 1940s. It will also explore how the United States built its high-tech identity by siphoning other countries' intellectual property and state-science models, much as it charges China with doing today. Finally, it will deconstruct what scholars and policymakers alike really refer to when use the fuzzy concepts of nations being "ahead" or "behind" their technological rivals.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMpdOisqT4iGNB1X9jxHKY-xh-B5Vc-QmgP

Speaker: Stephen Buono, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

After the Soviet Union launched the world's first satellite—Sputnik I—in 1957, U.S. military officials began thinking about the cosmos as a vast new theater of war. Convinced that a techno-saturated space war was just around the bend, far-flung laboratories and offices under the Department of Defense began planning for it.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIldO-vpzwtE9Lu85mJOOJfpNtFVHhSAPiS