South Asia

The Project on Managing the Atom offers fellowships for pre-doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career researchers for one year, with a possibility for renewal, in the stimulating environment of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. The online application for 2016-2017 fellowships opened December 15, 2015, and the application deadline is January 15, 2016. Recommendation letters are due by February 1, 2016.

"Because of the last four years, we face a world in which our enemies do not fear us, our friends do not believe they can trust us, and those who maneuver between the two camps feel that they will not get in trouble by crossing us. It is time, and more than time, to choose a different course."

Given the seriousness of the ongoing standoff on the Korean peninsula, South Korea's emergence as an active contributor to international security addressing challenges far from the Korean peninsula is a striking new development, marking South Korea's emergence as a producer rather than a consumer of global security resources. This volume outlines South Korea's progress and accomplishments toward enhancing its role and reputation as a contributor to international security.

As a child, Aisha Ahmad remembers vividly the arms bazaars in Peshawar and the throngs of bearded mujahedeen commanders as they passed through her grandfather’s smoke laden offices in the Pakistani frontier province.Though she was born in the UK and grew up in Canada, her family retained strong ties with their native community and during her youth Ahmad regularly traveled to the unruly Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

"[W]hether al-Qaeda's ideology resonates with segments of the world's Muslim populations will have a critical bearing on the organization's ultimate fate. Recent political developments in Egypt, Tunisia and across the Middle East have exposed the bankruptcy of al-Qaeda's ideas as a means of challenging dictatorships in Muslim countries....Much will depend in the coming months and years on the extent to which the changes heralded by the "Arab Spring" improve the lot of common Arabs in terms of governance and economic prospects."

More than 250 people joined experts from around the world in April for “Revolution & Reform: The Historic Transition in the Middle East,” a conference sponsored by the Belfer Center’s Dubai Initiative (DI). Leading scholars assessed the political, economic, and legal aspects of the turmoil engulfing the region this spring.

The Belfer Center's Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, Ashraf Hegazy, Joseph S. Nye, and Stephen Walt consider the U.S.'s shifting foreign policy in the Middle East.