For the Press

The Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School has appointed C. Raja Mohan as a fall 2013 Fisher Family Fellow. Mohan will be in residence for two weeks in October, teach a study group on India’s foreign policy and regional priorities and deliver a public address on October 31 titled “India and the U.S. pivot to Asia: Between Geopolitical Opportunity and Strategic Autonomy.”

The Middle East Initiative (MEI) at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs today announced the selection of the fall 2013 Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar, Professor Djavad Salehi-Isfahani. Salehi-Isfahani will be in residence at Harvard for the fall 2013 semester, where he will participate in MEI events, lead an 8-week seminar series titled, “The Politics and Economics of Transitions in the Middle East,” and work closely with Harvard students and faculty.

The world can only meet its future food needs through innovation, including the use of agricultural biotechnology, Belfer Center development specialist Calestous Juma said in an address to graduates of McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Since their commercial debut in the mid-1990s, genetically designed crops have added about $100 billion to world crop output, avoided massive pesticide use and greenhouse gas emissions, spared vast tracts of land and fed millions of additional people worldwide, Juma said during the graduation ceremony where he received an honorary doctorate. He asked the graduates to embrace innovative sciences that alone will make it possible to feed the billions who will swell world population in decades ahead, especially in developing countries.

The Future of Diplomacy Project has appointed Professor Soli Özel, author and journalist Christopher de Bellaigue, British Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander, and Josette Sheeran, Vice Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF) as spring 2013 Fisher Family Fellows. In addition, two former Fisher Family Fellows -- former Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, and former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana -- will be returning to campus in March and April 2013.

The Middle East Initiative (MEI) at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs today announced the selection of the first Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar, Professor Ellis Goldberg.  Goldberg will be in residence at Harvard for the spring 2013 semester, where he will participate in MEI events, teach a course titled, “Politics of the Arab Spring,” and work closely with Harvard students and faculty.

The Future of Diplomacy Project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University has appointed former US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter, and Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Senior Lecturer Brian Mandell as Senior Fellows. They join author and Washington Post Opinion Writer David Ignatius, who has been a non-resident Senior Fellow with the Project since September 2012. All three fellows will actively contribute to the work of the Project by facilitating seminars and negotiation simulations with HKS degree students over the spring semester 2013.

The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Foreign Policy Magazine have announced the winners and runners-up of the “Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis Contest,” held to mark the 50^th anniversary of the crisis that narrowly averted nuclear war in October 1962.

James Cartwright, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been appointed a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.

Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs today launches a new website to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Designed to help policymakers, students, and interested citizens draw lessons from these critical events half a century ago, www.cubanmissilecrisis.org not only provides background on the crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster in October 1962 but also offers tools to understand how it can inform contemporary policy.

The Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) has given $8.1 million to Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) to support the continuation of the Kuwait Program at HKS Belfer Center's Middle East Initiative. The gift will be used to develop leaders with the capacity to address the many challenging public policy issues facing the region. It will also fund research issues of vital importance in the region, such as education, energy, and water.