Photo

From April 25 to April 29, The Future of Diplomacy Project and India and South Asia Project hosted the annual South Asia Week with influential practitioners of diplomacy from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and the U.S. invited to discuss prevailing issues affecting the region.

On March 21, The Future of Diplomacy Project jointly hosted a public seminar with the Belfer Center's Cyber Security Project titled "A 21st Century State: Anything is Possible." As the speaker for the public event, Prime Minister of Estonia, TaaviRõivas, spoke at length on the role that digital technology has played in the global competitiveness of Estonia's economy and the robustness of his country's governance and public sector services. The Prime Minister spoke to a large audience comprising of Harvard Kennedy School students, national security fellows, and local Estonian start-up entrepreneurs.

In March, the Future of Diplomacy Project hosted a series of seminars touching on traditionally underused but highly effective tools and agents of diplomacy in the fields of journalism, development aid, religion, and information technology.

The Spring 2016 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming Center activities, along with research and analysis of critical global issues by members of the Center community. This issue features the huge global impact of cheap oil, with comments by Leonardo Maugeri, Robert Stavins, Henry Lee, Meghan O’Sullivan, Calestous Juma, David Keith, and Khalid Alsweilem on its economic, environmental, and geo-political effects.

The Kennedy School was honored in December with a visit by Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter, former director of the Belfer Center and long-time HKS professor. Secretary Carter discussed a range of topics at a JFK Jr. Forum moderated by Center Director Graham Allison.

The Future of Diplomacy Project held its annual Europe Week during February inviting influential practitioners and experts on European affairs. Their public discussions offered Harvard Kennedy School students and faculty a unique opportunity to grapple with the intractactable geopolitical issues at play in Europe concerning NATO, the EU migration crisis, German leadership, and the rise of European populism.

The Fall/Winter 2015-2016 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming Center activities, along with research and analysis of critical global issues by members of the Center community. This issue highlights visits by Secretary of State John Kerry, who answered questions from an audience of more than 500 Harvard students and faculty in an event hosted by the Belfer Center, and by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who spoke to students and faculty as part of the American Secretaries of State Project, an initiative of Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Business School.

Hosting an array of events on subjects as diverse as strategic health diplomacy, climate change negotiations, and the crisis in Syria, the Future of Diplomacy Project offered students in the fall an opportunity to gain deeper insight into some of the world's most intractable challenges from the perspectives of key policy-makers and world-shapers. In fall 2015, the Project welcomed back former NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and former UK Shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas Alexander, as fall 2015 Fisher Family Fellows to deepen the discussion around transatlantic security ties, Russian aggression, and Britain's relations with the EU.

The Future of Diplomacy Project capped off an impressive 2014-2015 academic year with a dynamic spring semester, hosting speakers and fellows from around the world to discuss topics as diverse as Putin's strategy in the Ukraine, ongoing trans-pacific and trans-atlantic trade negotiations, India-China relations, counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, and innovation in humanitarian relief response. See photo highlights for a review of our 2015 spring semester.

The Future of Diplomacy Project, in partnership with the South Asia Institute at Harvard University, launched its annual South Asia Week, beginning April 24. This year the week-long lineup included an impressive group of influential leading diplomats, journalists, and experts on South Asian affairs.

We kicked off April with a series of phenomenal events led by world-class speakers and practitioners of negotiation and diplomacy in the 21st century. In the space of one week, we hosted the former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright; President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Peter Maurer; Robert Bosch senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Constanze Stelzenmueller; we also began a series of study groups with our spring Fisher Family Fellows: former EU Trade Commissioner, Karel De Gucht; and former Indian National Security Adviser, Shivshankar Menon.