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
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.
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.
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.
Winter 2010-11
"Spotlight on Calestous Juma"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Calestous Juma, professor of the practice of international development at the Harvard Kennedy School, wears many hats in his work at the Belfer Center. He is director of the Science, Technology and Globalization Project, and principal investigator for the Agricultural Innovation in Africa project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He also is a member of the Belfer Center board of directors. His latest book, on agricultural innovation in Africa, will be published by Oxford University Press in December.
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."
(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.
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.
