LATIN AMERICA
(Dara Kay Cohen Photo)
Spring 2013
Q&A with Dara Kay Cohen
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By Dara Kay Cohen, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Dara Kay Cohen is an assistant professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a core faculty member of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center. Her current research examines variations in the use of sexual violence during recent conflicts and draws from fieldwork in Sierra Leone, East Timor, and El Salvador, where she interviewed more than 200 ex-combatants and noncombatants. Here, she answers questions related to her research on the causes of wartime rape . She recently co-authored a policy report for the United States Institute of Peace titled “Wartime Sexual Violence: Misconceptions, Implications, and Ways Forward.”
Spring 2013
"Visiting Fellows Ponder What Works and What Fails"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
In this article, new Belfer Center visting fellows tackle some of the most pressing current issues in international relations including U.S.-Brazilian relations, the European financial crisis, the legality of drone strikes and what a post-Assad Syria will look like.
March 7, 2013
"Chavez Death Creates Risk, Opportunity"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"By eliminating the automatic refugee status granted to Cubans if they somehow reach US soil, we would stop tempting them to take to the seas in rickety boats and inner tubes on which many lose their lives. We would also put the whole world on equal footing, determining which refugees are allowed to stay not by whether we like (or don't like) their country's leadership, but whether they have valid reasons to stay, including a fear of political reprisals. It is time we end a Cuba policy that has sowed ill will among our southern neighbors and non-Cuban immigrant populations in the United States."
Wikipedia Commons
February 14, 2013
"'Energy Independence' Alone Won't Boost U.S. Power"
Op-Ed, Bloomberg View
By Meghan L. O'Sullivan, Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
“We are finally poised to control our own energy future,” said President Barack Obama in his State of the Union message, noting the drastic increase in American energy production from unconventional oil and gas resources.
Controlling our energy future means more than just producing a greater amount of our own energy. It also means harnessing this energy renaissance to meet our global geopolitical needs. We’ve begun to reap the many economic benefits this boom brings—such as easing the trade deficit and lowering carbon emissions. But we have only started to appreciate how this energy renaissance affects our larger strategic environment. And, not surprisingly, many readers of the tea leaves have confused reality with desire, by hoping more energy at home will mean keeping out of the volatile politics and economics of the Middle East.
December 24, 2012
"The Year in Numbers"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"The never-ending negotiations about the pending fiscal cliff sometimes amount to nothing more than a dizzying array of numbers. Who can count that high? The negotiations also make us think that the only stastistics that mattered in 2012, or will matter in 2013, involve dollar signs. A year in pictures may be compelling and beautiful, but the year in numbers gives a strong hint of what to anticipate in the year ahead."
October 30, 2012
Inside the Situation Room: A National Security Crisis Simulation
News
By Sharon Wilke, Associate Director of Communications
Harvard Kennedy School students convened at the Kennedy School on October 27 to simulate a meeting of the National Security Council to resolve a modern-day crisis. The simulation, developed entirely by a team of HKS students, coordinated by HKS student Leon Ratz, was co-sponsored by the Belfer Center and the Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership. The event was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
*Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Juliana Cheney Edwards Collection, Tompkins Collection—Arthur Gordon Tompkins Fund, and Fanny P. Mason Fund in memory of Alice Thevin. *© 1963 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
October 24, 2012
"Picasso, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Malcolm Wiener"
News
By Sharon Wilke, Associate Director of Communications
As visitors step through the doors of the Kennedy Memorial Library for events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, they will find on display Picasso's 1963 Rape of the Sabine Women - on loan from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. The connection between Picasso's painting and what is widely accepted as the most dangerous moment in human history was brought to light for many by Malcolm Wiener, a member of the Belfer Center’s International Council and the person for whom Harvard Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy was named.
AP Photo
September 24, 2012
"Panama's Magic Number"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"The United States is the only modern society that does not have a federal agency responsible for port strategy. Maritime planning is left to the states. The White House can merely promise expedited engineering review, as it did last month, of the port changes in New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, all trying to get to that depth of 50 feet, fast."
September 20, 2012
"Panama Canal's Future Depends on Accommodating Wider Loads"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"To remain competitive in a global transportation industry where the vast majority of all goods are moved on waterways, the canal had to change. Ships that are too large for the canal take their goods elsewhere: to Suez, or the Straits of Malacca (between Malaysia and Indonesia), or the ports of Los Angeles where cargo is routed on the 'land bridge' of railways and highways from West to East Coast. Or the large ships are unloaded at the base of the Panama Canal onto smaller vessels, a process that occurs here every Friday–Sunday."
AP Photo
September 2012
"Measuring the Impacts of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: Placing the Global 'Success' of TRCs in Local Perspective"
Journal Article, Cooperation and Conflict, issue 3, volume 47
By Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch, Research Fellow, International Security Program, Megan Mackenzie, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program/Women in Public Policy Program, 2008–2009 and Mohamed Sesay
"Truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) have emerged as an international norm and are assumed to be an essential element of national reconciliation, democratization, and post-conflict development. Despite the increase in the number of TRCs being initiated around the globe and the international consensus regarding their positive effects, there is little understanding of the longterm effects and consequences of TRCs. Specifically, currently there are no established methods or mechanisms for measuring the impacts of TRCs; furthermore, the few examples of efforts to measure these impacts have serious limitations. This article explores both the rise in TRCs as an international norm and the contradictions and inadequacies in existing efforts to measure the impacts and successes of commissions."
