PAST EVENT
"CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: THE EFFECTIVE USE OF PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS"
Seminar
Series: Belfer Center Brown Bag Lunch
Harvard students, staff, faculty - Belfer Center Library, Littauer-369
March 30, 2009
12:15-1:45 p.m. - Presentation and Discussion
Description:
As the new Administration charts its international blueprint for action, global issues loom large on the U.S. foreign policy agenda. These trans-border issues transcend bilateral and even regional concerns. Most of them -- health, environment and science matters, democracy promotion, trafficking in persons, corporate social responsibility -- reflect what Professor Joseph Nye has aptly called "soft power." Their impacts on the global environment are very real.
Over the last decade, the National Intelligence Council has written a series of significant assessments highlighting global trends and warning that, unless properly addressed and managed by U.S. policymakers, they have the potential to foster instability and regional conflict and thus, harm U.S. national security interests. The most recent report, "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World," concludes that in 2025, the international system will be almost unrecognizable due to the rise of various non-state actors, growing energy, food and water constraints and global health problems.
The Global Issues Seminar Series on Monday, March 30th, will examine opportunities and challenges for the United States and “Corporate Social Responsibility: The Effective Use of Public Private Partnerships.”
As the Obama Administration seeks to reconfigure the hard and soft, or smart, power options available to support American foreign policy, sustainable economic development becomes increasingly important. Robert Mosbacher, Jr. served for over three years as the head of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), an independent agency of the U.S. Government that facilitates investment in developing countries. He argues that private capital investment should be deployed more aggressively as a smart power tool to help create jobs and economic hope. In a talk entitled "Entrepreneurial Capitalism as a Smart Power Tool," Mosbacher will discuss how investment can be used more effectively and what types of public-private partnerships are possible.
Contact:
Belfer Center
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
79 John F. Kennedy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Harvard University
Kennedy School of Government
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Email: bcsia_ksg@harvard.edu
Phone: 617-495-1400
Fax: 617-495-8963
Url: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/bcsia
