For the Press

Join us for an Energy Policy Seminar featuring Catrina Rorke, Senior Vice President for Policy and Research at the Climate Leadership Council and Executive Director of the Center for Climate and Trade. Rorke will give a talk on "Addressing the Carbon Loophole." Q&A to follow. Buffet-style lunch will be served.

Registration: No RSVP is required. Room capacity is limited and seating will be on a first come, first served basis. The seminar will also be streamed via Zoom. Virtual attendees should register using the button below; upon registering, attendees will receive a confirmation email with a Zoom link. 

Recording: The seminar will be recorded and available to watch on this page (typically one week later). Those who register for this event will automatically receive a link to the recording as soon as it becomes available.

Accessibility: To request accommodations or who have questions about access, please contact Liz Hanlon (ehanlon@hks.harvard.edu) in advance of the session.

Sponsors: The Belfer Center's Environment and Natural Resources Program, the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, the Harvard University Center for the Environment, the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability

Please join the Belfer Center’s Defense, Emerging Technology, and Strategy Program (DETS) for a seminar on “U.S. Defense in Europe Before and After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine" on Tuesday, October 3rd at 3:00PM in Wexner G02. Refreshments will be served. Please RSVP here.​

Please join the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program and HKS Library and Research Services for an AI Cyber Lunch Seminar featuring Kyle Courtney, Director of Copyright and Information Policy at Harvard Library. Courtney will give a talk entitled "The Robot Creator: Authors, Artists, AI, & Copyright."

Q&A to follow. Buffet-style lunch will be served.

Registration: In-person attendance is limited to current Harvard ID holders. No RSVP is required. Room capacity is limited and seating will be on a first come, first served basis. All are welcome to attend virtually via Zoom. Virtual attendees should register using the button below; upon registering, attendees will receive a confirmation email with a Zoom link. 

Recording: Please be advised that this seminar will not be recorded. The event organizers prohibit any attendees, including journalists, from audio/visual recording or distributing parts or all of the event program without prior written authorization.

Accessibility: To request accommodations or for questions about access, please contact Liz Hanlon (ehanlon@hks.harvard.edu) in advance of the session.

South Korea has been highly effective at producing soft power. It has applied its soft power to advance a foreign policy that enables it to play a larger role in the international institutions and networks that are essential to global governance. In his keynote remarks, Professor Joseph Nye will revisit his analysis in the late 2000s on this important topic and highlight his current thinking as South Korea continues to expand its soft power. Our panel of experts will further examine how South Korea has been bolstering global governance with its soft power.

Co-Sponsors:
Korea Project (Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School), Korea Institute (Harvard University), Korea Foundation

Acknowledgements:
The Korea Project acknowledges the generous support of the SBS Research Endowment at Harvard's Korea Institute and the Korea Foundation.

The life sciences are fundamental to driving scientific progress, benefiting everything from public health to agriculture and environmental preservation. Yet, it is vital to recognize and mitigate potential risks, especially in the realms of biosafety and biosecurity. Join us for a discussion with moderator, Dr. Syra Madad with a panel of experts as we dive into the nuances of research oversight policies such as the policies for oversight of Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) and the Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight (P3CO) Policy Framework. 

Speaker: Tobias Ide, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia

The number and impact of disasters like droughts, earthquakes, floods, and storms is rising globally, among others due to climate change. As a consequence, disasters are playing a key role in academic, public, and policy debates about environmental security and the climate-conflict nexus. While extensive research has studied how disasters shape the risk of armed conflict onset, scholars and policymakers know little about the impact of disasters on armed conflict dynamics. In other words: How do conflict parties react if a disaster strikes a civil war zone? The speaker will present insights from a comprehensive study on this question, drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from 31 civil wars in 21 countries. Among others, he finds that disasters open opportunities for rebel groups, that disasters can also facilitate conflict de-escalation, and that situational (rather than structural) factors shape the responses of conflict parties.

Open to Harvard ID Holders Only: Admittance will be on a first come–first served basis. Coffee & Tea Provided.

Climate change is a healthcare emergency.

This seminar will highlight the efforts of physicians from Massachusetts General Hospital’s Division of Space, Ecological, Arctic, and Resource Limited Medicine to create a program of health monitoring with colleagues in the Northwest Arctic Borough of Alaska to quantify and qualify the impacts of climate change on human health through the lens of emergency medical care. The project, led by Arctic Initiative Faculty Affiliate Dr. N. Stuart Harris and nominated for the prestigious 2023 Frederik Paulsen Arctic Academic Action Award, seeks to inform scientific and policy priorities for protecting the health of Arctic populations in a warming world and to create a scalable model for assessing the health impacts of climate change that could be deployed to healthcare settings nationally and internationally.

Registration: No RSVP is required. Room capacity is limited and seating will be on a first come, first served basis. The seminar will also be streamed via Zoom. Virtual attendees should register using the button below; upon registering, attendees will receive a confirmation email with a Zoom link. 

Recording: The seminar will be recorded and available to watch on this page (typically one week later). Those who register for this event will automatically receive a link to the recording as soon as it becomes available.

Accessibility: To request accommodations or for questions about access, please contact Liz Hanlon (ehanlon@hks.harvard.edu) in advance of the session.

Please join the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program and HKS Library and Research Services for an AI Cyber Lunch Seminar featuring Trey Herr, Director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative and Assistant Professor of Cybersecurity and Policy at American University's School of International Service. Herr will give a talk entitled, "Broken Clouds: Too Much Cybersecurity Makes the Firm Say No." 

Q&A to follow. Buffet-style lunch will be served.

Registration: In-person attendance is limited to current Harvard ID holders. No RSVP is required. Room capacity is limited and seating will be on a first come, first served basis. All are welcome to attend virtually via Zoom. Virtual attendees should register using the button below; upon registering, attendees will receive a confirmation email with a Zoom link. 

Recording: Please be advised that this seminar will not be recorded. The event organizers prohibit any attendees, including journalists, from audio/visual recording or distributing parts or all of the event program without prior written authorization.

Accessibility: To request accommodations or for questions about access, please contact Liz Hanlon (ehanlon@hks.harvard.edu) in advance of the session.

Harvard Kennedy School Study Group

led by Dr. Karen Donfried, Belfer Center Senior Fellow

Dr. Karen Donfried served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs from 2021-2023, a tenure marked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  She also served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council in 2013 and 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea, and as National Intelligence Officer for Europe on the National Intelligence Council in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from 2011-2013.  Between these assignments in the Obama and Biden Administrations, she was president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, headquartered in DC with seven offices across Europe.

Dates:  Every Wednesday from October 11-November 15

Time:  4:15 – 5:45 p.m.

Locations: 

• October 11: NYE C (Taubman building, 5th Floor)
• October 18, October 25, November 1, November 8: BELL HALL (Belfer building, 5th Floor)
• November 15: R-G-21 NEUSTADT, (Rubenstein building, ground floor)

Eligibility requirements: Harvard graduate and post-graduate students, who can attend all sessions.  We will seek to accommodate several undergraduates.  Applicants with a strong interest in foreign affairs are encouraged to apply.  No specific experience or first-hand knowledge of the issues is required.

• Apply online through this link by 12pm on October 2, 2023. Late applications will not be considered.

Over the course of six sessions, a study group, led by Dr. Karen Donfried, will examine key foreign policy debates flowing from Russia’s war against Ukraine.  The objective is to provide a deeper understanding of the geopolitics of the war in Ukraine and the implications for U.S. interests. 

Assuming a study group of 30 students, two teams of three students per team will debate each of the five topics. Students will be asked to develop their key arguments and then the two teams for each topic will participate in a live debate, with the rest of the study group serving as the audience.  Each debate will be followed by an in-depth discussion of the relevant issues.  Students will be asked to represent and actively argue views that they may not espouse.  All participants need to share an understanding that the objective is not only to explore all elements of a particular issue around which there is legitimate debate, but also to model how to have a respectful exchange of informed, diverse views and how to disagree about policy matters in a civil and professional manner.

Some minimal reading – about 20 pages – will be required before each session for all participants.  Students responsible for a debate are expected to do their own research and preparation in addition to the assigned reading.  No debate experience is necessary. 

Professor Meghan O'Sullivan, Dr. Edward Luttwak, and Dr. Helima Croft will discuss the effects of the 1973 Oil Embargo and the current geopolitics of energy with MEI Senior Fellow Mohammed Alyahya.