Cambridge, MA – Richard Verma, former Senior Fellow with Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, was sworn in on April 5 as Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, the third-highest position in the U.S. Department of State. He was nominated by President Biden in December 2022 and confirmed by the Senate on March 30. 

Belfer Center Senior Fellow Richard Verma has officially become the highest-ranked Indian-American diplomat in United States history. On April 5, Verma was sworn in as Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, the third-highest ranked official in the State Department.

On April 6, 2022,  the Belfer Center's Future of Diplomacy Project and Indo-Pacific Security Project as well as the Center for Public Leadership hosted a hybrid seminar with Ambassador Shivshankar Menon, former National Security Advisor of India and former Foreign Secretary in India’s Ministry of External Affairs, and Ambassador Richard Verma, former U.S. Ambassador to India and Belfer Center Senior Fellow, on India’s foreign policy and U.S.-India relations in a changing world order. The discussion explored why India abstained from recent U.N. votes deploring Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, what that means for U.S.-India relations, both bilateral and through the Quad, and how the war in Ukraine will affect geopolitics in Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific. Gopal Nadadur, MPA/ID candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School moderated this conversation.

On November 19, 2019, the Belfer Center’s Economic Diplomacy Initiative hosted a national security crisis simulation in the JFK Jr. Forum to a packed audience from the Harvard and MIT communities. 

Drawing on the experience of Belfer Center members who have served in the highest levels of the U.S. government, the event explored the nexus of U.S. economic power and its national security interests.