1839 Past Events

A Ground-Based Interceptor missile launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., Sept. 12, 2021.

AP/Matt Hartman

Seminar - Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

The Eternal Promise of Missile Defense

Thu., Mar. 21, 2024 | 12:15pm - 1:45pm

One Brattle Square - Room 350

Speaker: Sanne Verschuren, Assistant Professor of International Security, The Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University

Despite nearly seventy years of research and development in the United States, missile defense continues to face high, if not insurmountable, technological challenges, is financially burdensome, and has resulted in negative outcomes for strategic stability. Hence, the speaker asks: What explains the continued and widespread support for missile defense among U.S. policymakers? Contrary to arguments about American cultural features, public appeal, and organizational politics, she examines two conditions that can explain the persistence of missile defense: technological malleability and patterns of ignorance.

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

U.S. President Gerald Ford and Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev sign the joint communiqué at the conclusion of their two days meeting near Vladivostok, Nov. 24, 1974.

AP/CB

Seminar - Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

Escaping MAD: Technology, Politics, and U.S. Nuclear Strategy

Thu., Mar. 14, 2024 | 12:15pm - 1:45pm

One Brattle Square - Room 350

Speaker: David Kearn, Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

The book project seeks to explain the divergence of views of within the strategic community after the signing of the SALT I Accords and the subsequent shift in U.S. strategic nuclear policy away from "assured destruction" to "nuclear warfighting" throughout the 1970s and culminating in the Reagan administrations "prevailing strategy."

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

Beth Noveck

Kathleen Dooher

Seminar - Open to the Public

AI Cyber Lunch: "Beyond Deliberation: Deepening Participation with AI"

Wed., Feb. 28, 2024 | 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Rubenstein Building - David T. Ellwood Democracy Lab, Room 414AB

Over the past decade, various forms of representative, small group conversations—known collectively as sortition—have gained in global popularity. Those willing to participate are selected from among a larger sample of the population to meet offline or on for informed policy conversations. Now AI companies, too, are staging these civic dialogues in the hope of appearing more responsive to public input. 

In this AI Cyber Lunch, Beth Noveck, Professor of Experiential AI and Director of the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, will discuss how AI could help us fashion better deliberation and more powerful forms of democratic engagement. Q&A to follow. Buffet-style lunch will be served.

Registration: No RSVP is required. Room capacity is limited and seating will be on a first come, first served basis. All are welcome to attend virtually via Zoom. Virtual attendees should register using the button below; upon registering, attendees will receive a confirmation email with a Zoom link.

Recording: Please be advised that this seminar will not be recorded. The event organizers prohibit any attendees, including journalists, from audio/visual recording or distributing parts or all of the event program without prior written authorization.

Accessibility: To request accommodations or for questions about access, please contact Liz Hanlon (ehanlon@hks.harvard.edu) in advance of the session.

Seminar - Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

Weapons of Mass Destruction: Countering Risks to the Homeland. A Conversation with Mary Ellen Callahan

Mon., Feb. 26, 2024 | 12:00pm - 1:30pm

Belfer Building - Bell Hall, 5th Floor

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.

 

Kang Yun Sok, center right, vice-chairman of North Korea's Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly and Chinese Ambassador to North Korea Wang Yajun, center left, look around the Friendship Tower as they attended a wreath-laying ceremony on the 73rd anniversary of the entry of the Chinese People's Volunteers into the Korean front at the tower in Pyongyang, North Korea, Oct. 25, 2023.

AP/Jon Chol Jin

Seminar - Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

Strategies of Security Cooperation: External Balancing in Chinese Foreign Policy, 1949–Present

Thu., Feb. 22, 2024 | 12:15pm - 1:45pm

One Brattle Square - Room 350

Speaker: Eleanor Freund, Research Fellow, International Security Program

What factors explain variation in China's security cooperation with other states? Why has China formed alliances or deployed troops to fight alongside partners in some cases, while in others it has limited itself to the transfer of weapons or the signature of neutrality agreements? More generally, how can scholars measure and explain the range of security cooperation behaviors that states exhibit in both peacetime and war?

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

President Jimmy Carter along with George M. Seignious, right, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency briefs community leaders on SALT II at the White House in Washington, Oct. 12, 1979.

AP/Charles Tasnadi

Seminar - Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

A Strange Arms Debate: Legitimation, Essential Equivalence, and Carter's Nuclear Strategy

Thu., Feb. 1, 2024 | 12:15pm - 1:45pm

One Brattle Square - Room 350

Speaker: Colleen Larkin, Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

President Jimmy Carter entered office committed to reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. foreign policy. He espoused the logic of mutually assured destruction and hoped for major arms control progress. Yet by the end of his presidency, he had embraced a competitive nuclear posture and accelerated the arms race. What explains this shift in Carter’s strategy? 

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

Seminar - Open to the Public

AI Cyber Lunch: "Reimagining Democracy for the Age of AI"

Wed., Jan. 31, 2024 | 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Rubenstein Building - David T. Ellwood Democracy Lab, Room 414AB

Everyone is talking about AI-accelerated misinformation, but few are thinking deeply about how AI will change democracy. In this talk, HKS Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy Bruce Schneier will go far beyond deepfakes to explore the full spectrum of how AI will impact democratic governance, from AI legislators to AI judges, from AI written laws to AI law enforcement. Some of the possibilities are further away than others, but glimmers of many of them are already emerging in the United States and around the world and all are grounded in current-day science and technology. Whatever our future brings, it's going to be a wild ride.

Q&A to follow. Buffet-style lunch will be served.

Registration: No RSVP is required. Room capacity is limited and seating will be on a first come, first served basis. All are welcome to attend virtually via Zoom. Virtual attendees should register using the button below; upon registering, attendees will receive a confirmation email with a Zoom link.

Recording: Please be advised that this seminar will not be recorded. The event organizers prohibit any attendees, including journalists, from audio/visual recording or distributing parts or all of the event program without prior written authorization.

Accessibility: To request accommodations or for questions about access, please contact Liz Hanlon (ehanlon@hks.harvard.edu) in advance of the session.

A phone screenshot with notifications from a Ukrainian air raid app.

Mariana Budjeryn

Seminar - Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Impressions from a Journey to Ukraine

Thu., Jan. 25, 2024 | 12:15pm - 1:45pm

One Brattle Square - Room 350

Speaker: Mariana Budjeryn, Senior Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom

What is it like living in a country at war? How does the war imprint itself on everyday life, on holidays and celebrations, on work and art, even far away from the active front line, in the deep rear? Mariana Budjeryn traveled to visit her family in Lviv, western Ukraine, over the holiday break. She shares her impressions and reflections on life amid Christmas carols and air raid sirens and on how ordinary people contribute to the war effort and cope with the losses and grief it inflicts, amid uncertain prospects for its conclusion.

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

event

Seminar - Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

The Australian Signals Directorate from WW2 to AI: Leadership, Threats and the Future of Intelligence

Mon., Jan. 22, 2024 | 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Littauer Building - Belfer Center Library, Room 369

Please join the Belfer Center's Defense, Emerging Technology, and Strategy (DETS) Program for "The Australian Signals Directorate from WW2 to AI: Leadership, Threats and the Future of Intelligence" with Rachel Noble, Director General of the Australian Signals Directorate. 

The session will be held on Monday, January 22nd at 12:00PM in the Belfer Library for Harvard ID holders. This event is off-the-record and lunch will be served. Please reach out to Olivia Leiwant (oleiwant@hks.harvard.edu) with any questions.

French troops evacuate the Coblenz Zone of the demilitarized Rhineland in 1929.

Wikimedia CC/Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-08810

Seminar - Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

The Strategic Logic of Pacification Agreements

Thu., Dec. 7, 2023 | 12:15pm - 1:45pm

One Brattle Square - Room 350

Speaker: Anatoly Levshin, Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program

Why do states conclude treaties restricting the use of military power in particular geographical domains or against particular states? Across the past two centuries, states have concluded over seventy such pacification agreements. Examples include the neutralization of Belgium (1839–1919), demilitarization of the Rhineland (1919–1936), and renunciation of the right of war under the League of Nations (1920–1946) and United Nations (1945–). In this seminar, Anatoly Levshin will argue that pacification agreements should be understood as strategic solutions to the risk of inefficient escalation of interstate wars and that variation in their institutional design should be understood as deliberate adaptation to shifts in the perceived distribution of that risk. This argument will be validated using case studies composed with original archival research.

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