South Asia

Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) doctoral student Daniel Velez Lopez is researching air pollution in Mexico and whether the country is willing to pay the costs to reduce it. HKS student Jennifer Kao is interviewing academics, investors, and government officials working to generate and commercialize clean energy innovations in the United Kingdom.

Farah Pandith, America’s first special representative to Muslim communities, joined the Belfer Center this fall as a Fisher Family Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project and as a senior fellow with the Middle East Initiative. Jairam Ramesh, a member of Parliament from Andhra Pradesh, India, and a leader in international climate negotiations, joined the Belfer Center this fall as a 2014 Fisher Family Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project.

The Winter 2010/11 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights a major Belfer Center conference on technology and governance, the Center's involvement in the nuclear threat documentary Countdown to Zero, and a celebration of Belfer Center founder Paul Doty.

When the Academy Award-winning producer of An Inconvenient Truth,Lawrence Bender, wanted to create a new nuclear proliferation film, he turned to leading experts at the Belfer Center.

Graham Allison notes that the themes developed at President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit and its agenda of action, including countries' specific work plans, reflect the Belfer Center's analytic efforts over more than a decade.

Belfer Center alumni Gary Samore and Laura Holgate played a key role in organizing President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit in April. Additionally, MatthewBunn's Securing the Bomb 2010 was released the day the Summit began, and Graham Allison provided attending leaders with materials that included a nuclear terrorism threat assessment and fact sheet.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen spent more than two dozen years in intelligence, both in the CIA and U.S. Department of Energy. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he led the U.S. government's efforts to determine whether al Qaeda had WMD capabilities and to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States. He is now a senior fellow at the Belfer Center. In January, Mowatt-Larssen published a timeline of al Qaeda's attempts to acquire WMD.

The Project on India and the Subcontinent is a new initiative of the Belfer Center, directed by former Executive Director for Research Xenia Dormandy. Its mission is to build knowledge, leadership, and recommendations on key policy-critical issues related to the rise of India and South Asia. Dormandy answered the following questions about the new project.

In April, the Belfer Center International Council met to address a number of the central issues of international affairs and science affecting the world today.