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.
May 16, 2013
David Hamburg on Giving Peace a Chance
News
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
When Dr. David A. Hamburg led the Carnegie Corporation of New York in the 1980s and ‘90s, he drew on his roots as a physician to foster projects and research that advanced a simply stated goal: “the prevention of rotten outcomes.”
Now in his late 80s, Hamburg is still putting his medical instincts to work. He is discovering new ways to use early-prevention methods to avoid deadly conflict and enable healthy human development.
Hamburg spoke at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs on May 3 about his forthcoming book, Give Peace a Chance. His son and co-author, filmmaker Eric Hamburg, joined him at the event, along with two Harvard friends, Law School Dean Martha Minow and Belfer Center Director Graham Allison.
Summer 2013
"Confronting Complex Cybersecurity Challenges"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
For the past four years, faculty and fellows from Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have partnered in a project called “Explorations in Cyber International Relations.” The ECIR project’s brief is “to explore alternative cyber developments, assess challenges and threats, and identify possibilities and opportunities in cyberspace for security and well-being.”
Summer 2013
"Afghanistan’s Future Holds Promise, Danger, Experts Agree"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Even as they acknowledged that potential dangers loom in Afghanistan over the next two years, experts at a Harvard conference pointed to some encouraging signs. One example: the number of schoolchildren has grown from 800,000 in 2001 to nearly nine million today....Speakers from Afghanistan and the West recognized that violence persists and problems such as endemic corruption still plague the country....But they took solace from the work of Afghans themselves in building a credible national military force that has increasingly taken on the brunt of combat duties"
(White House Photo)
Spring 2013
Spotlight on Gary Samore
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
In the complex world of the United States government, it’s rare for a lone White House official to oversee a real change in direction on a major policy issue. Gary Samore not only helped reshape U.S. policy on one issue; he did so with two immense national security challenges during his four years as President Obama’s Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction Counter-Terrorism and Arms Control.
January 29, 2013
President Obama's WMD "Czar" Appointed Executive Director of Belfer Center
News
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Gary Samore, President Obama’s Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction Counter-Terrorism and Arms Control, has been appointed Executive Director (Research) for Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. A former fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program, Samore has served for the past four years as the principal advisor to the President on all matters relating to arms control and the prevention of weapons of mass destruction proliferation and WMD terrorism.
January 25, 2013
"Belfer Center Ranks High in Global Think Tank Survey"
News
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
For the third straight year, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has been ranked among the top university-affiliated think tanks in the world. The 2012 version of the annual survey, conducted by the International Relations Program at the University of Pennsylvania and released Jan. 24, ranks the Belfer Center second in the university-affiliated category, behind the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. A year earlier, the No. 1 and No. 2 rankings were reversed, with Belfer Center ranked first.
Winter 2012-2013
Spotlight: Susan Hockfield and the Magic of the Laboratory
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Susan Hockfield is the Marie Curie Visiting Professor at Harvard Kennedy School. After almost eight years as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she is spending a sabbatical year based at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.
November 2, 2012
"Lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis for Today’s Crises"
News
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
In Harvard Professor Graham Allison’s view, “the significant unknowns” during the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly catapulted John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev into nuclear war. For former diplomat Nicholas Burns, the principal take-away from the crisis was the importance of giving an adversary a way out of a confrontation short of complete surrender. Allison and Burns were panelists on Oct. 14 at a forum at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston to consider the modern lessons flowing from the missile crisis. The event kicked off an intensive series of seminars and workshops for scholars from Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs to mark the 50th anniversary of the missile crisis. Panel moderator Juliette Kayyem, Kennedy School lecturer in public policy, reminded the audience that the missile crisis is often framed through the myth of the tough American president staring down the Russian foe and making him blink. Kayyem said that version fails to capture the nuanced secret diplomacy and the American concessions that made a deal possible.
(AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani, File)
June 2012
New study by Harvard Kennedy School researcher forecasts sharp increase in world oil production capacity, and risk of price collapse
Press Release
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
A new study by Belfer Center fellow Leonardo Maugeri shows that oil production capacity is surging in the United States and several other countries at such a fast pace that global oil output capacity is likely to grow by nearly 20 percent by 2020. This could prompt a plunge or even a collapse in oil prices. The findings by Maugeri, a former oil industry executive who is now a fellow in the Geopolitics of Energy Project in the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, are based on an original field-by-field analysis of the world’s major oil formations and exploration projects.
Summer 2012
Paul Volcker and Mike Murphy Talk Politics and Economy
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s the public’s perceptions about the economy that will decide the 2012 presidential election....That was the bipartisan analysis shared by veteran Republican political consultant Mike Murphy and a Democratic expert on the economy – no less than Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and former adviser to President Obama. Teh two sat down and assessed the campaign during a roundtable discussion at the Kennedy School moderated by Belfer Center Director Graham Allison.
