31 Events

A view of ground zero at the French nuclear tests' site in In-Ekker near Ain Maguel, 170 km from the southern Algerian town of Tamanrasset, Feb. 16, 2007.

Public Domain/VOA

Seminar - Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

Nuclear Politics in the Age of Decolonization: France's Sahara Tests and the Advent of the Global Nuclear Order

Thu., Nov. 16, 2023 | 12:15pm - 1:45pm

One Brattle Square - Room 350

Speaker:  Leyla Tiglay, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

Rumors of an impending atomic experiment in Africa circulated in newspapers as early as 1956, four years before France conducted its first atomic test at the Reggane Testing Center in the Sahara in 1960. The late 1950s saw France's technological preparations, strained transatlantic relations due to complex nuclear alignments in Europe, and an unprecedented wave of anti-nuclear mobilization in decolonizing Africa. Using the French tests as a case study, this research aims to refine scholars and policymakers' understanding of how decolonization intrinsically influenced the formation of the current global nuclear landscape during this pivotal era in nuclear politics. 

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

"Repatriation is Fixed" by W R M Haxworth

National Library Board, Singapore

Seminar - Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

Home is Where Heritage is: Banishment and Repatriation in British Malaya, 1920–1960

Thu., Nov. 9, 2023 | 12:15pm - 1:45pm

One Brattle Square - Room 350

Speaker:  Sudarshana Chanda, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This seminar explores how, in post-WWII British Malaya, banishment became conflated with another category of movement, repatriation. It further examines the new ways postwar "repatriation" schemes inflected categorizations of belonging for people with plural ethnic identities. In the aftermath of WWII, hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war, surrendered personnel, and "foreign" civilian occupants were voluntarily repatriated from Malaya to their home countries. At the same time, the forced movement of many people — which derived from multidecadal colonial banishment policies — was also rebranded as "repatriation." Both types of movement out of Malaya involved encounters with the colonial state and an implicit redefinition of citizenship or belonging based on ethnic categories.

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

The Meanderings of a Weapon Oriented Mind When Applied in a Vacuum Such as the Moon, U.S. Army Weapons Command, Directorate of R&D, Future Weapons Office, June 1965

Public Domain/DOD

Seminar - Open to the Public

"Lunartics!"; Or, How We Avoided a Space War

Thu., Apr. 20, 2023 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

Speaker: Stephen Buono, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

After the Soviet Union launched the world's first satellite—Sputnik I—in 1957, U.S. military officials began thinking about the cosmos as a vast new theater of war. Convinced that a techno-saturated space war was just around the bend, far-flung laboratories and offices under the Department of Defense began planning for it.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIldO-vpzwtE9Lu85mJOOJfpNtFVHhSAPiS

French commandos enter Japanese-occupied Indochina, 1945

Public Domain

Seminar - Open to the Public

Free France, Colonial Reform, and the Genesis of Cold War Counterinsurgency, 1941–1954

Mon., Mar. 13, 2023 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

Speaker: Nate Grau, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This seminar traces the evolution of France's Cold War counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine from the Second World War to France's 1954 defeat in Indochina. Grau reveals the underappreciated roles of civilian colonial reformers in this process, tracing a network of "Free French" policymakers circulating from Algeria to the French wars in Madagascar (1947–1948) and Indochina (1945–1954). In each of these revolutionary independence struggles, reformist plans to encourage economic growth and develop local state capacity became tools of counterinsurgent repression that only escalated inter-communal cycles of violence.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAud-qurjkpE9LULcdi7fEzEUmflmTOWvYC

Sign along a road in Argentina, October 6, 2006.

Flickr CC/Tjeerd Wiersma

Seminar - Open to the Public

Inherited Sovereignty: 'Uti Possidetis Juris' and the Falklands/Malvinas Dispute

Thu., Feb. 16, 2023 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

Speaker:  Paula O'Donnell, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This seminar traces the origins of Argentine juridical thought concerning the perennial dispute with Great Britain over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands. Looking at legal scholarship of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, O'Donnell shows that the war of 1982 can be partially attributed to local understandings of "territorial integrity" which hinge upon the legal principle known as "uti possidetis juris of 1810." This international law doctrine provides the basis for the enduring maxim that still resonates with many Argentines today: that Argentina "inherited" the archipelago from Spain.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwsfuivqzIiH93snkXsZZCknA2eD5aVcSIM

Yalta Summit in February 1945 with Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. (seen from left to right), 9 February 1945.

Public Domain/Army Signal Corps

Seminar - Open to the Public

The Washington War: The U.S. Army and the Politics of American Grand Strategy During World War II

Thu., Oct. 13, 2022 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

Speaker: Grant Golub, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This presentation traces how the War Department shifted from the fringes to the center of U.S. government power during World War II and examines how it sought to influence U.S. politics and grand strategy through its attempts to gain leverage over its bureaucratic rivals and compete to achieve its preferred policy outcomes.  

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0pd--pqjoiGdLIB9nJtv_yO1BPePsSoZJN

Book cover for Number One Realist

Oxford University Press

Seminar - Open to the Public

Nathaniel L. Moir — Number One Realist: Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare

Mon., June 6, 2022 | 2:00pm - 3:15pm

Online

As the United States reflects on its infamous history of “forever wars” and searches for lessons to avoid similar entanglements in the future, join the Belfer Center’s Applied History Project for an open session of our Applied History Working Group. Its members—distinguished historians and public servants—study the past to illuminate the most pressing challenges we face today.

Conference - Open to the Public

Imagining a New National Security Act for the 21st Century

Wed., May 11, 2022 | 10:00am - 3:00pm

Belfer Building - Starr Auditorium, Floor 2.5

Imagine if you woke up tomorrow to news of:

  • A massive cyber-attack that irreparably damaged financial markets and shut down critical infrastructure, or
  • A significant conventional defeat due to strategic surprise like happened at Pearl Harbor, or
  • The release of a manufactured pathogen that marks the beginning of a new global pandemic.

Please join the Intelligence and Applied History Projects at the Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School, for a day of thoughtful discussion about the top challenges facing the existing intelligence and national security mechanisms in the United States, and possible mitigation strategies to ensure that the U.S. has the people, structure, systems, integration, legal authority, and partnerships needed to protect national interests in the years ahead. Panelists include intelligence historians Dr. Sara Castro, Dr. Michael Warner, and Dr. James Wirtz, and former intelligence practitioners Sue Gordon and Ellen McCarthy. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper will provide a keynote address. At the conference, we will showcase the winners of our essay competition: A New National Security Act for the 21st Century.

This event will take place in hybrid format under Chatham House Rules. Registration is required. Harvard community members are welcome to attend in person. Please register for the event here: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_U_wuab28R0y1NnLQtIqylg.

Book cover for Victory at Sea

Ian Marshall

Seminar - Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

Victory at Sea: Paul Kennedy on How Naval Power Reshaped the World

Tue., May 3, 2022 | 1:00pm - 2:30pm

Belfer Building - Starr Auditorium, Floor 2.5

Join the Applied History Project for a lecture and panel discussion featuring Paul Kennedy, the J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History at Yale University and celebrated author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Focusing on his new book Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II, Kennedy will explore how the great navies of WWII turned the globe upside down between 1936 and 1946—and what lessons this decade offers for today’s world.

Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph Cannon, members of the Republican Nomination Committee, and guests in front of Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, N.Y., 4 August 1904.

Public Domain/Underwood & Underwood

Seminar - Open to the Public

Roosevelt and Russia: The 1904 Presidential Campaign

Thu., Apr. 21, 2022 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

Speaker: Andrew Porwancher, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

As Theodore Roosevelt launched his re-election bid for the White House, Russian-American relations took center stage. Russia was then denying visas to U.S. passport–holders of Jewish faith, and the "Passport Question" became a critical issue for Jewish voters. This seminar will explore Roosevelt's strategic, and often secretive, campaign to leverage diplomacy at the ballot box.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0qfu6trToiHtFzUuzqYHFQjRDWxl98jzMg