Rami G. Khouri, a veteran Middle East journalist and scholar, captured the intense drama of the nearly three-year-old Arab Spring with one statistic: while many recall the self-immolation by Tunisian activist Mohamed Bouazizi on Dec. 17, 2010, as the spark for the uprisings, Khouri noted that no fewer than 65 Arabs set themselves ablaze in the months following Bouazizi’s act to draw attention to grievances across the region.

Khouri, a senior fellow of the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, told a seminar on Oct. 8 that those personal acts of protest underscore the unprecedented pace and intensity of the Arab uprisings against authoritarian regimes.

When Dr. David A. Hamburg led the Carnegie Corporation of New York in the 1980s and ‘90s, he drew on his roots as a physician to foster projects and research that advanced a simply stated goal: “the prevention of rotten outcomes.”

Now in his late 80s, Hamburg is still putting his medical instincts to work. He is discovering new ways to use early-prevention methods to avoid deadly conflict and enable healthy human development.

Hamburg spoke at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs on May 3 about his new book, Give Peace a Chance. His son and co-author, filmmaker Eric Hamburg, joined him at the event, along with two Harvard friends, Law School Dean Martha Minow and Belfer Center Director Graham Allison.

"Even as they acknowledged that potential dangers loom in Afghanistan over the next two years, experts at a Harvard conference pointed to some encouraging signs. One example: the number of schoolchildren has grown from 800,000 in 2001 to nearly nine million today....Speakers from Afghanistan and the West recognized that violence persists and problems such as endemic corruption still plague the country....But they took solace from the work of Afghans themselves in building a credible national military force that has increasingly taken on the brunt of combat duties"

Many of this year’s Arab uprisings are evolving from angry popular revolts into drawn-out political struggles to build democratic systems that will protect basic civic rights and social justice, analysts told a John F. Kennedy Jr. forum audience at Harvard Kennedy School on Monday, Sept. 19.