Belfer Center Newsmakers

Doug Ahlers, adjunct lecturer in public policy and director of the Belfer Center's Broadmoor Initiative, has been appointed to the National Board of the Smithsonian Institution. The board fosters communication between the Smithsonian and member communities to promote strong public-private relationships.

Belfer Center associate Kayhan Barzegar has been named director of international affairs at the Center of Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, a think-thank affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  He is also an assistant professor of international relations at Science and Research Campus, Islamic Azad University.

Former International Security Program fellow Sham Bathija was appointed senior adviser minister for economic affairs to Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai. Bathija's selection was based on his leadership and experience with the United Nation and with international donor communities, academic institutions, and political and business leaders.

Matthew Bunn, associate professor of public policy and co-principal investigator of the Center's Project on Managing the Atom, testified before President Obama's Blue-Ribbon Commission on the Nuclear Future, a group that reviews policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Bunn presented "Managing Spent Fuel and Nuclear Waste Successfully-What Needs to Be Done?"

Steven Miller, director of the Center's International Security Program, also presented to the Blue Ribbon Commission, covering the international context of U.S. nuclear policy. Commission members include Belfer Center alumni Albert Carnesale, chancellor emeritus and professor at University of California, Los Angelesand Allison Macfarlane, associate professor at George Mason University.

Research fellow Maya Eichler was selected for the 2010 Jill Vickers Prize awarded by the Canadian Political Science Association. Eichler, a joint fellow with the Center's International Security Program and Harvard Kennedy School's Women and Public Policy Program, is completing a book titled Gender, Conscription, and War in Post-Soviet Russia.

Melissa Hathaway, senior advisor for the Belfer Center's cyber security initiative and president of Hathaway Global Strategies, presented the keynote address on advances in cyber security at the 2010 Computer and Enterprise Investigations Conference. Hathaway was a top-level government cyber security official in two presidential administrations.

Olli Heinonen, Center senior fellow and former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has received Finland's Scientist of the Year Award.

John P. Holdren, on leave from the Belfer Center's board of directors to serve as assistant to President Obama for science and technology,received an honorary degree from the University of Rome in November. His Lectio Magistralis was titled "Meeting the Energy-Economy-Environment Challenge." Also in Rome, he presented "International Security and the Role of Scientific Academies" at the XVIII Edoardo Amaldi Conference in honor of the late Wolfgang "Pief" Panofsky, renowned nuclear physicist and arms control proponent.

Calestous Juma, director of the Belfer Center's Science, Technology, and Globalization and Agricultural Innovation in Africa projects, was selected to present the prestigious Philip M. Raup Lecture on Land and Environmental Policy at the University of Minnesota.  Juma presented on the importance and impact of agricultural innovation in Africa.

Harvard Distinguished Service Professor Joseph S. Nye, a member of the Center's board of directors, was a key speaker at TEDGlobal 2010 in Oxford, England in July.  Nye joined other speakers in exploring questions based on positive advancements in global affairs such as "Is the world becoming freer? Are peacemakers getting strong? Is ethnic violence deceasing?"

Maya Tudor, former fellow with the Center's International Security Program, won the 2010 American Political Science Association's Almond Award for the best dissertation in comparative politics. Her dissertation was titled "Twin Births, Divergent Democracies: The Social and Institutional Origins of Regime Outcomes in India and Pakistan." She also received honorable mention for APSA's Walter Burnham Award for best dissertation in politics and history.

Stephen Walt, professor of international relations and member of the Center's board of directors, has been named to the Board of Overseers at Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University.  Also, Walt spoke at the Distinguished Speakers Series of Cornell University's Einaudi Institute for International Studies, on "Doomed to Fail: Barack Obama's Foreign Policy."

Former International Security Program fellow Keren Yarhi-Milo won the 2010 Kenneth Waltz Dissertation Prize for her dissertation titled "Knowing Thy Adversary: Assessments of Intentions in International Relations." She is on the faculty of the Department of Politics at Princeton University.