U.S. policymakers should use the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks as an opportunity to shift from a military-driven “global war on terror” to a policy built more on diplomacy, outreach and persuasion, panelists told an audience of students, faculty and community members at a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on September 6. The Forum, titled “9/11: Ten Years On,” included former government officials and current Kennedy School faculty members Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, and Juliette Kayyem, along with Michael Leiter, until recently the director of the National Counterterroirsm Center.

Belfer, ISKRAN Complete Groundbreaking Joint Assessment of Nuclear Terrorism Threat; G-8 Extends Partnership to Prevent Spread of WMD Beyond 2012; Obama and Medvedev Discuss Nuclear Security and Counterterrorism; “Preventing the Next Fukushima”; more.

Researchers from the United States and Russia today issued a joint assessment of the global threat of nuclear terrorism, warning of a persistent danger that terrorists could obtain or make a nuclear device and use it with catastrophic consequences. The first joint threat assessment by experts from the world’s two major nuclear powers concludes: “If current approaches toward eliminating the threat are not replaced with a sense of urgency and resolve, the question will become not if but when, and on what scale, the first act of nuclear terrorism occurs.”

In 1985, researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School published a book called “Hawks, Doves, and Owls,” and gave it an ambitious subtitle: “An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War.” Those scholars gathered again at the School on Monday (May 16) for a seminar on the current challenges in avoiding nuclear war — and to marvel at just how drastically the nuclear threat has morphed in the two decades since the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed.

Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and recent adviser to President Obama, is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School and a longtime member of the Belfer Center’s International Council. In May, he received the School’s Richard E. Neustadt Award, presented annually to a person “who has created powerful solutions to public problems, drawing on research and intellectual ideas.”

At a special Forum organized by the Belfer Center on April 5, Director Graham Allison welcomed Larry Summers home to Harvard.  On behalf of the community, Allison expressed “gratitude for Larry’s service to the nation and pride in having him back as a colleague.”  A member of the Belfer Center’s Board of Directors, he will be co-director (with John Haigh) of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. Here are excerpts from David Gergen’s recent interview with Summers at the Kennedy School’s JFK Jr. Forum (the webcast can be viewed at the Institute of Politics website).

Brazil’s longest-serving foreign minister, Celso Amorim, says a change in attitude allowed Brazil to join the ranks of the world’s emerging powers.

In the early 1990s, he recalled, an article described Brazil as a country that punched below its weight. “Now I read in the Brazilian media that Brazil punches above its weight,” Amorim told a seminar at Harvard Kennedy School on April 28.

The Spotlight feature in this issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features Henry Lee, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program at the Belfer Center, was promoted in January to senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Lee, the Jassim M. Jaidah Family Director of the environment program, serves also as co-­principal investigator of the Center’s Energy Technology Innovation Policy project and is a member of the board of directors. Before joining the Kennedy School in 1979, he served in Massachusetts state government for nine years as director of the state energy office and special assistant for environmental affairs.

Since the 1950s, scientists and scholars from Harvard University have been building bridges between the United States and Russia to help prevent nuclear catastrophe. The early years focused on slowing the nuclear arms race. The last two decades have targeted the risks of nuclear proliferation and terrorism. Carrying forward this legacy, specialists from Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs have launched three ambitious U.S.-Russian partnerships, designed to intensify action against nuclear terrorism and to safeguard the next wave of global nuclear energy expansion.

In the Second Annual Robert McNamara Lecture on War and Peace at Harvard Kennedy School on February 24, 2011, former Defense Secretary William Perry asked: "Have we reached the nuclear tipping point?" In his presentation, Perry explained how he reached the conclusion that the world must dismantle all nuclear weapons.