South Asia

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.

In his dramatic cover story in TIME Magazine on May 7, Belfer Center Director Graham Allison offers readers a behind-the-scenes account of how President Barack Obama made the most fateful decision of his presidency – whether to launch the Special Forces assault on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan in April 2011. Allison puts readers in the president's Oval Office chair as Obama weighed the risks of the several options he faced as evidence emerged that bin Laden was in the compound in Abbottabad.

Rory Stewart is the Ryan Family Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and  director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and a member of the Belfer Center Board of Directors. A former  officer in the British Army and deputy governate coordinator with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, Stewart spent two years walking 6,000 miles across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal - a journey he describes in his critically acclaimed book  The Places in Between.