Governance

Each semester, the Belfer Center proudly hosts warriors and peacemakers, politicians and polymaths, investors and musicians. Rarely do we welcome all these roles in just one person. But Lamont Lecturer Ehud Barak is nothing if not a singular figure. Israel’s former prime minister has enlivened the Center this fall with a JFK Jr. Forum, classroom teaching, and many briefings with faculty, fellows, and students.

In this issue, the Belfer Center is pleased to feature the contributions of Hedi Larbi, the 2015–2016 Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar at the Middle East Initiative. During his stay, Larbi led a dynamic study group of students, fellows, and faculty in examining social contracts. In 2014–2015, he served as Minister of Economic Infrastructure and Sustainable Development and as Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister of Tunisia.

More than 40 Harvard students traveled to the Middle East over the winter break to assess–firsthand–the rehabilitation needs of Syrian refugees in Jordan and alternative energy and environmental challenges and opportunities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative supported the field visits.

Just last year, the work environment of one of the Belfer Center's newest fellows was a far cry from Cambridge's quiet campus full of fall foliage and quaint coffee shops.

Gaëlle Rivard Piché, now a Fulbright research fellow in the International Security Program, was working in El Salvador and Haiti studying public order and violence in communities often dominated by gangs.  

In an address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, President Barack Obama called on the world to join in the effort to degrade and destroy the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and to “dismantle this network of death.” Samantha Power, U.S. permanent representative to the UN and Belfer Center alumna, said at the UN on August 15, 2014, "The growth of...ISIL, al-Nusrah Front, and other associates of al-Qaeda respresents a grave threat to the people of Syria and the people of Iraq, as well as to the region ad the larger international community."

We asked Belfer Center international security experts to weigh in on this strategic challenge: As ISIL continues to expand its reach and brutality, what must be done in the next year--by neighboring states, the U.S., or others--to degrade and destroy this group?

The Summer 2014 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This edition highlights the Belfer Center’s longtime efforts to improve nuclear security and the Center's critical role in the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit to prevent nuclear terrorism. This issue also features a timeline and analysis of significant events in Ukraine during the past 20 years. We also note a bright spot in U.S.-Russian relations – a statement by the Elbe Group of retired Russian and U.S. generals cautioning the two governments not to let Ukraine and Crimea interrupt the joint efforts of the two countries to protect “our shared strategic interests.”

And much more...

The Spring 2013 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This edition highlights the Belfer Center’s deepening engagement with China.

"The rise of political Islam in failed states is one of the most pressing security concerns in the world today. Given the increasingly tense interaction between the United States and Islamic countries, such as Pakistan and Iran, the potential for new Islamic regimes emerging out of failed states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East could add a notable degree of uncertainty to future international relations," writes Aisha Ahmad, a research fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program/Program on Religion in International Affairs.

As a child, Aisha Ahmad remembers vividly the arms bazaars in Peshawar and the throngs of bearded mujahedeen commanders as they passed through her grandfather’s smoke laden offices in the Pakistani frontier province.Though she was born in the UK and grew up in Canada, her family retained strong ties with their native community and during her youth Ahmad regularly traveled to the unruly Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

The Winter 2011-2012 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features news, analysis and insight by Belfer Center scholars on issues that include increasingly important info-tech policy challenges and the first U.S.-Russian joint threat assessment on nuclear terrorism. The Center’s deepening impact on defense policy is highlighted with an article about the recent appointments of Ashton B. Carter and Eric Rosenbach to senior Pentagon posts and a Q&A with Carter, the new deputy secretary of defense. Additional articles focus on issues ranging from the Palestinian bid for statehood to Calestous Juma’s role in Lagos’ launch of the first innovation advisory council in Africa.