Mailing address
Littauer 339B
79 John F. Kennedy Street
Cambridge, MA, 02138
James F. Smith
Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Contact:
Telephone: 617-495-7831
Fax: 617-495-8963
Email: james_smith@hks.harvard.edu
Experience
Jim Smith joined the Belfer Center as director of communications in July 2010 after more than two decades in journalism. At the Boston Globe from 2002 to 2010, he was foreign editor, national political editor and international affairs reporter, writing and blogging about Boston's global connections. He was Mexico City bureau chief and economic correspondent for the Los Angeles Times from 1997 to 2002, and the paper's bureau chief for southern South America from 1987 to 1990. During 12 years in South Africa, he worked as correspondent and news editor for the Associated Press, and also was founding editor of Business Report, the national business section for the Independent Newspapers chain. On leave from that group, he served for 18 months as communications consultant to the South African Secretary for Safety and Security to help revamp the national police service for a post-apartheid society. He also worked as communications and industrial relations director for a progressive South African manufacturing group. He is a graduate of Yale University, magna cum laude with distinction in history, and earned an MBA from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. A native of Boston, he is married to Maxine Hart and has two sons, Matthew and Daniel, and a stepdaughter, Leila.
Time Magazine, May 7, 2012 edition
April 26, 2012
Graham Allison on Obama's Hardest Decision
News
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Harvard Professor Graham Allison’s dramatic cover story this week in Time Magazine offers readers a behind-the-scenes account of how President Obama made the most fateful decision of his presidency – to launch the Special Forces raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on May 1, 2011.
Allison puts readers in the president’s Oval Office chair as Obama weighed the risks of the several options he faced when evidence emerged that bin Laden was living in a compound in Abbottabad, 30 miles from the capital of Pakistan.. It was never certain right up to the day of the raid that the suspect at the site was bin Laden. And key members of Obama’s own inner circle, including Vice President Joseph Biden and Defense Secretary Bob Gates, voted against launching a helicopter-borne assault.
With echoes of his prize-winning 1971 book, Essence of Decision, about President John F. Kennedy’s decision-making during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Allison traced Obama’s handling of the hunt for bin Laden from the first days of his presidency up to the decision to go for a boots-on-the-ground assault rather than an airstrike or joint operation with Pakistan.
Allison spent more than 100 hours interviewing officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency to gather material for the Time article. The piece was paired with another article by Peter Bergen, a respected terrorism analyst, that tells the story of the raid itself.
Tom Fitzsimmons
April 6, 2012
Solana and Miliband Debate the Transatlantic Alliance
News
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Two veteran European political leaders agreed this week that Europe’s relationship with the United States needs to adapt to be able to address fast-changing economic and security problems. They also agreed that Germany must play a more assertive role if Europe is to resolve these challenges.
Javier Solana, the former secretary general of NATO and the former de-facto European foreign minister, joined former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband at a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard Kennedy School to debate the transatlantic alliance and its handling of issues including Afghanistan and Iran.
Solana and Miliband also took part in a series of events and master classes during Europe Week, organized by the Future of Diplomacy Project in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. They visited the Kennedy School as Fisher Family Fellows.
Spring 2012
Paul Doty's Legacy Lives on Through Influential Journal
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
As soon as Paul Doty launched what is now Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in 1974, he began planning a scholarly journal on international security. He shrugged off colleagues’ concerns that there would be little market for such a journal.Thirty-six years after the first issue appeared in the summer of 1976, the Belfer Center’s quarterly International Security consistently ranks No. 1 or No. 2 out of over 70 international affairs journals surveyed by Thomson Reuters each year.
March 23, 2012
New Study Finds Four-Year Nuclear Security Effort Making Major Progress But Won't Complete the Nuclear Security Job
Press Release
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
On the eve of the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, a new study finds that an international initiative to secure all vulnerable nuclear stockpiles within four years has reduced the dangers posed by many of the world’s highest-risk nuclear stockpiles. But the new analysis, by researchers with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, also concludes that much will remain to be done to ensure that all nuclear weapons and material are secure when the current four-year effort comes to an end.
Winter 2011-2012
"Scholars Weigh Info-Tech Policy Challenges"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
In September, experts from Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other Boston-area universities participated in a three day conference convened by the Belfer Center to examine policy choices facing the fast-changing field of information and communications technology.
Winter 2011-2012
"Task Force Prescribes Steps to Strengthen U.S. Policy on Russia"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
How will Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin impact American national interests? Should the U.S. allow Georgia to block Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization? How can the U.S. engage Russia to reach further cuts in nuclear arsenals and reduce the global threat of nuclear terrorism? These thorny policy questions and others are tackled in a new report by the Task Force on Russia and U.S. National Interests, a group of business leaders and former military officers, senior government officials, and diplomats.
November 22, 2011
Researchers Draft Blueprint to Boost Energy Innovation
Press Release
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
The U.S. government could save the economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year by 2050 by spending a few billion dollars more a year to spur innovations in energy technology, according to a new report by researchers at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The three-year project by the Belfer Center's Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group calls for doubling investment and adopting policy changes in energy technology.
Martha Stewart Photo
November 15, 2011
"Information and Communications Technology and Public Policy: The Next Wave"
Event Summary
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Industry and academic experts from Harvard, MIT, and other Boston-area universities met for a three-day conference in September 2011 to examine policy choices facing the fast-changing field of information and communications technology at the intersection of public policy. The conference was convened by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affair’s Information and Communications Technology and Public Policy Project (ICTPP) at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Oct. 13, 2011
Chinese Envoy Urges Deeper Strategic Partnership with U.S.
News
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
The United States and China need to move beyond a Cold War mindset and reframe their relationship as “a community of interests” in which they work together as partners, the Chinese ambassador to the United States said in a policy address at Harvard Kennedy School. Ambassador Zhang Yesui spoke to an overflow audience in the Wiener Auditorium on Wednesday, Oct. 12, in an event hosted by the Future of Diplomacy Project in the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Zhang also took questions from the audience after his speech in an off-the-record discussion moderated by R. Nicholas Burns, professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics and director of the Future of Diplomacy Project.
October 6, 2011
Rosenbach Tapped for Pentagon Cyber Policy Role
News
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
CAMBRIDGE, MA. - Eric Rosenbach, a veteran Army intelligence officer who served as executive director for research in the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs from 2007 to 2010, has been appointed deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the appointment on Tuesday, Oct. 4, in Washington. Rosenbach left the Kennedy School in 2010 to become managing director of the Markle Foundation, handling national security issues, and moved earlier this year to a senior role at Good Harbor Consulting, a leading consulting firm on cyber-security and related issues. He remained a faculty affiliate at the Belfer Center and an adjunct lecturer at the school, teaching a course on counterterrorism policy and national security law.
