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In early May, 70 scholars and practitioners gathered for the Applied History Network Meeting at Harvard Kennedy School, hosted by the Belfer Center’s Applied History Project, Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation.

During their tenth annual meeting in Reykjavík in March, the U.S.-Russian Elbe Group of retired senior military and intelligence officials discussed a range of issues and agreed on specific recommendations to help improve U.S.-Russian bilateral relations.

Harvard Kennedy School’s student-organized Women in Power Conference, co-sponsored by the Belfer Center, attracted students, faculty, and community members who took advantage of the two-day opportunity in April to explore, discuss, and debate important issues relating to the advancement of women in leadership.

In a role-play exercise that was the capstone for a Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) spring course, “Controversies in Climate, Energy, and the Media: Improving Public Communication,” students played the roles of world leaders and activists speaking on a fictitious cable television program titled, “The Big Melt: The Future of the Arctic.”

In May, a number of former intelligence officers, policymakers, cyber experts, and top journalists took part in a Belfer Center Intelligence Project conference titled “The Ethics & Morality of Intelligence.” Speakers at “The Ethics & Morality of Intelligence” conference identified and discussed key moral and ethical questions around the nature of current intelligence practices and future trends.

As threats to U.S. elections multiply, the Belfer Center’s Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P) continues to help election officials fight back. Coordinated by D3P’s Mari Dugas, the Defending Digital Democracy team of staff and students has worked during the year with state and local election officials in their own states across the country to conduct election security tabletop exercises and has also expanded engagement with cybersecurity professionals.

This Q&A focuses on Karen Elliott House, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. She is a broadly experienced business executive with particular expertise and experience in international affairs stemming from a distinguished career as a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and editor. She is author of On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines—and Future, published in September 2012 by Knopf.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen is departing as Director of the Belfer Center’s Intelligence Project. In that capacity, he has run the Recanati-Kaplan Foundation Fellowship, which educates rising thought leaders in national and international intelligence. He previously served for a quarter century in intelligence, both in the CIA, where he became station chief in Moscow, and the U.S. Department of Energy, where he was Director of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. After 9/11, he led Washington’s efforts to determine whether al Qaeda had WMD capabilities and to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack.

Belfer Center Director Ash Carter focuses in this "From the Director" column on the guiding "spirit of public purpose" that new Harvard Kennedy School graduates will need to bring to their careers, as well as reflecting on some of the older and newer faces that he has seen around the school.

Amanda Sardonis, the Associate Director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program, is highlighted in the newsletter's "Staff Spotlight" feature.