19 Items

News - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Former National Security Advisor Tom Donilon to Assess U.S.-Asia Rebalance for Belfer Center

| December 10, 2013

Former National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, recently named senior fellow with the Belfer Center, will lead a study with Harvard faculty and fellows to analyze the policy implications and opportunities arising from the U.S.-Asia rebalance and will write a report for the Center that assesses the rebalance.

The U.S. Special Envoy on North Korea Stephen Bosworth is surrounded by reporters after holding the first meeting with North Korean Vice Minister Kim Kyu Gwan in New York on July 28, 2011.

AP/Yomiuri Shimbun/Taro Konoshi

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

Spotlight: Stephen Bosworth

| Winter 2013-14

As an American diplomat, Stephen Bosworth stared down dictators (Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines) and cajoled repressive regimes (North Korea). Then he had a second career as dean of Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. But he wasn’t able to retreat to the quiet halls of academia. President Obama appointed him the U.S. special envoy on North Korea, a role he filled from 2009 to 2011 even while he was leading the Fletcher School.

James F. Smith, director of communications for the Belfer Center, interviewed newly appointed senior fellow Stephen Bosworth for this profile.

News - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

New Report from U.S., Russian Nuclear Experts: Transcending Mutual Deterrence in the U.S.-Russian Relationship

| September 30, 2013

A group of high-ranking U.S. and Russian former government officials, retired military officers, and academics has proposed a series of joint steps that would be necessary to move the two countries beyond the Cold War doctrine of mutual deterrence with nuclear weapons. A new report authored by these nuclear-arms experts says that improved relations between the United States and Russia since 1990 have not resulted in corresponding easing back from the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation. The report suggests a path for the two countries to put nuclear weapons in a context appropriate to the post-Cold War relationship.

News - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

First HKS HarvardX Course Lets Students Advise on Syria, NSA Leaks, and Iran

| September 4, 2013

Imagine you are an aide to President Obama, making a recommendation about what he should do to confront the toughest foreign policy crises on the agenda: whether to launch military strikes against the Syrian regime; how to minimize the damage from NSA surveillance leaks; how to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

Making such hard choices has long been the core of the oversubscribed Harvard Kennedy School Course, IGA-211: “Central Challenges of American National Security, Strategy and the Press” that Graham Allison and David Sanger are teaching this fall. Harvard graduate students, playing the roles of senior White House advisers, write and then defend strategy memos on how the U.S. should act in these cases.

Now, for the first time, anyone can audit an online version of this course, called HKS211.1x. In addition, 500 successful applicants will be able to enroll and complete weekly assignments, join discussion groups, and earn a certificate of mastery if they pass. Both of these options are available for free through edX, the non-profit online education enterprise founded by Harvard and MIT.

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News - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

New Report Reveals Details of U.S., Russian, Kazakh Collaboration

| August 15, 2013

In October, 2012, at the foot of a rocky hillside in eastern Kazakhstan, a group of American, Russian, and Kazakh nuclear scientists and engineers gathered for a ceremony marking the completion of a secret 17-year, $150 million operation to secure plutonium in the tunnels of Degelen Mountain—an abandoned site of Soviet underground nuclear testing. "Plutonium Mountain: Inside the 17-Year Mission to Secure a Dangerous Legacy of Soviet Nuclear Testing," a report released today by The Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, provides details on one of the largest nuclear security operations of the post-Cold War years.

News - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Stephen W. Bosworth Joins Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center as Senior Fellow

| June 5, 2013

Ambassador Stephen W. Bosworth, who transformed Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy during his 12 years as dean, is joining Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a senior fellow. Belfer Center Director Graham Allison said Bosworth would bring to the Kennedy School a wealth of experience as a career diplomat, with a long focus on Asia and the Korean peninsula, areas of intense interest for the Belfer Center.

News - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

President Obama's WMD "Czar" Appointed Executive Director of Belfer Center

| January 29, 2013

Gary Samore, President Obama’s Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction Counter-Terrorism and Arms Control, has been appointed Executive Director (Research) for Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. A former fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program, Samore has served for the past four years as the principal advisor to the President on all matters relating to arms control and the prevention of weapons of mass destruction proliferation and WMD terrorism. 

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Quarterly Journal: International Security

Paul Doty's Legacy Lives on Through Influential Journal

| Spring 2012

As soon as Paul Doty launched what is now Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in 1974, he began planning a scholarly journal on international security. He shrugged off colleagues’ concerns that there would be little market for such a journal.Thirty-six years after the first issue appeared in the summer of 1976, the Belfer Center’s quarterly International Security consistently ranks No. 1 or No. 2 out of over 70 international affairs journals surveyed by Thomson Reuters each year.

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Press Release - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

New Study Finds Four-Year Nuclear Security Effort Making Major Progress But Won't Complete the Nuclear Security Job

| March 23, 2012

On the eve of the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, a new study finds that an international initiative to secure all vulnerable nuclear stockpiles within four years has reduced the dangers posed by many of the world’s highest-risk nuclear stockpiles.  But the new analysis, by researchers with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, also concludes that much will remain to be done to ensure that all nuclear weapons and material are secure when the current four-year effort comes to an end.