News & Announcements

Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare, which was published as part of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs in May 2021, has been named the American Political Science Association (APSA) Foreign Policy Section's Best Book for 2021–2022.  The award will be presented in September 2022 at the APSA Annual Meeting in Montreal, Quebec.

NPR's Leila Fadel talks Mariana Budjeryn, a Ukrainian and a nuclear expert at Harvard's Belfer Center, about the dangers of Russia seizing control of Ukraine's nuclear power plants.

Mariana Budjeryn, Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom, discusses the risks of Russian attacks near nuclear facilities in Ukraine on CNN Newsroom Live, March 6, 2022.

Mariana Budjeryn, Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom, shares details of Russia's shelling of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine on CNN Newsroom.

Mariana Budjeryn, Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom, shares details of Russia's shelling of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine on CNN International's Connect the World with Becky Anderson.

Russian forces have seized the largest nuclear plant in Europe, Ukrainian authorities say. It comes hours after a fire broke out at the Zaporizhzhia plant following a Russian attack. The fire has since been extinguished, and officials say the site is safe but Western powers have condemned Russia for what they called a "horrific" and "reckless" act, and Ukrainian President Zelensky says the attack could have caused "six Chernobyls". Mariana Budjeryn is a Research Associate with the Project on Managing the Atom  at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center. She says that as far as we know, the shelling hit a number of facilities but that the flow of electricity must be kept constant to allow the fuel to keep cooling. She goes on to say that reactors are protected to withstand a certain level of impact, but none have been designed to withstand sustained artillery fire. She says there is concern that at this level of hostilities, there is a risk of a serious nuclear accident, or one that is planned to stop the war quickly and on Russia conditions. "You can't just hit a switch on a nuclear reactor - there are still a number of procedures that have to be followed quite closely to keep that reactor safe."

Former White House advisor Jason Bordoff, professor and founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), says the incoming Biden-Harris Administration will have the opportunity to both lift the nation out of recession and combat global climate change by crafting a thoughtful economic stimulus plan containing a significant green energy investment component.

The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School has named Lauren Zabierek, Maria Barsallo Lynch, and Julia Voo to head three of the Center’s growing cyber-related projects. They will run the Center’s Cyber Project, Defending Digital Democracy Project, and China Cyber Policy Initiative, respectively.