Governance

Professors hear a great deal these days about how hard it is to get our students to listen to, much less to engage with, opinions they dislike. The problem, we are told, is that students are either “snowflakes” with fragile psyches or “authoritarians” who care more about their pet causes than about democratic values such as tolerance, compromise and respect for opposing points of view. Students at Harvard, where I teach, returned from winter break in January to an institution that appeared determined to tackle this problem head-on. An email from the undergraduate dean reminded them that “The purpose of a Harvard education is not to shield you from ideas you dislike or to silence people you disagree with; it is to enable you to confront challenging ideas, interrogate your own beliefs, make up your mind and learn to think for yourself."

Although China's motives for developing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have been well studied, scholars have yet to comprehensively examine why states seek to join the initiative. The authors fill this gap by examining how and why states join the BRI. Countries join by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with China on cooperation under the BRI framework.

In the Henty Mance interview, Joseph Nye, who coined term 'soft power,' says that the turmoil facing the United States and Harvard was worse in the 1960s.

Professors Alison Frank Johnson and Stephen M. Walt write:  We cannot cede the responsibility for upholding our own standards of conduct to outside forces — not to politicians, not to donors, not to anyone.

Most post-primary education in Greenland is conducted in Danish. Offering more instruction in Greenlandic would not only improve educational outcomes for Greenlanders, but would further Greenland's capacity to self-govern, says Linda Lyberth Kristiansen.

Americans have long seen their country as morally exceptional, but their exceptionalism actually comprises three distinct views. Whichever prevails in next year's presidential election will have significant implications for ongoing conflicts in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Joseph Nye writes that Washington's strategy towards Beijing should be to avoid either a hot or cold war, co-operate when possible and marshal its assets to shape China's external behaviour. This can be done through deterrence and a strengthening of both alliances and international institutions.

Over the last several decades, the U.S.’s domestic semiconductor manufacturing capacity has declined. The CHIPS Act aims to reverse this trend by investing over $50 billion in direct funding and loan subsidies to expand semiconductor research and development and manufacturing in the U.S. This primer focuses on the workforce challenges that will be spurred by this microelectronics industry expansion and proposes how community colleges can play a critical role in addressing these challenges. 

Joseph Nye explores what a second Donald Trump presidency may mean for U.S. foreign policy and the world? While the man himself is unpredictable, his first term and his behavior since losing re-election in 2020 offer plenty of clues, none of which would be comforting to America's allies.

Joseph S. Nye argues that history shows that globalization is largely driven by technological changes that reduce the importance of distance, and that will not change.