From the Director

What a year.

2020 challenged the world, and the Belfer Center, in profound ways.

And yet this difficult year also illustrated how our community responds to challenges. A Center dedicated to advancing policy-relevant knowledge and to mentoring the next generation of leaders has never felt more relevant. Though we miss seeing each other in person, we successfully pivoted to remote research, learning, and development. In fact, we are reaching more people than ever before with virtual programming on the pandemic, climate change, diversity in the national security enterprise, election security, international relations, and much more.

With our focus on science and international affairs, the Belfer Center was well positioned to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Homeland Security Project Director Juliette Kayyem trained 700 mayors and municipal leaders in emergency management. Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program Co-Director John Holdren mobilized a team that published rapid reports on pandemic response. And Lauren Zabierek and Maria Barsallo Lynch analyzed potential solutions for digital contact tracing efforts.

Even as we responded to this overwhelming public need, we continued our impactful work on dozens of other critical research areas. The Defending Digital Democracy Project trained election officials on how to better safeguard the 2020 elections. The Future of Diplomacy Project envisioned a 21st century foreign service, while the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship outlined a path to strengthen the U.S.-European alliance. TAPP highlighted innovations that serve the public good in a new Spotlight award ceremony. The Arctic Initiative co-hosted a conference on creating an Arctic more resilient to climate change. And our Intelligence Project convened over 600 people for a timely discussion on how the intelligence community can increase diversity.

Key to meeting our mission is recruiting, training, and retaining students, staff, and fellows with diverse experiences and backgrounds. We believe that being a diverse and inclusive organization is not only morally right but is also central to our ability to achieve our mission. In 2020, the senseless killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black Americans reminded us that there can be no international security without real human security at home.

Our goal is to promote historically underrepresented groups within the Belfer Center and within the field of science and international affairs—something that requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. Over the summer, we asked every team here to outline priorities for promoting diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Our Center is working hard to identify blind spots, build capacity for diverse voices, and address roadblocks to genuine equality and justice in our programming. Thanks to data gathered by each of our teams, we know that, while we have a long way to go, we are making substantial progress.

This has been an emotional year. Like you, I suspect, I have felt gratitude for front-line health care workers, grocery store clerks, and other essential workers who put themselves at risk while taking care of us; anger at the elected officials who failed to lead the nation through the pandemic with competence or compassion; and sorrow for those we have lost, too often without getting to say a proper goodbye.

Along with these emotions, though, I find myself feeling hope. Because for all the challenges we face, we also see the promise of a better tomorrow. I am proud to be leading a Center that is dedicated to building a more secure, peaceful world. And I am grateful to be working with colleagues who are committed to building a better future, together.

Responding to the Pandemic

Many of our teams held events and published vital knowledge about the pandemic; I will highlight just four examples here.

First, Juliette Kayyem used all the tools in her media kit—Twitter, a column in The Atlantic, CNN, and the Belfer Center’s video series “Questions from Quarantine”—to share her expertise.

“My focus has always been on what do we do in response to the pandemic,” Kayyem said. “This was a 50-state homeland security disaster, with less-than-optimal national planning.”

Kayyem joined more than 700 mayors and municipal leaders from around the world last spring for two-hour Zoom sessions on emergency management and crisis communications. The sessions, hosted by the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, also gave the mayors the opportunity to share their experiences and to build an important network.

Former President Barack Obama’s Science Advisor, John Holdren, also sprung into action. In March, Holdren called together his former colleagues at the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and they agreed to meet weekly via Zoom to write six new reports, focusing on improving America’s capacity to deal with subsequent waves of COVID-19 and future pandemics.

The reports, which are online at opcast.org, have been shared with pandemic leaders in Washington, the Biden-Harris team, members of Congress, governors, other opinion leaders in the public health domain, and the media.

Next, the Technology and Public Purpose (TAPP) Project’s Amritha Jayanti and Colin O’Leary authored a report analyzing the efficacy, accessibility, and research ethics of COVID-19 testing and treatment technologies. TAPP also curated a list of COVID-19 Digital Resources, elevating projects and initiatives that worked to mitigate some of the devastating social effects of the pandemic.

Finally, the Executive Director of the Cyber Project, Lauren Zabierek, and the Executive Director of the Defending Digital Democracy Project, Maria Barsallo Lynch, convened a Special Working Group on the Government-Tech Partnership to Track COVID-19 to discuss and analyze digital contact tracing solutions, then published an analysis of digital contact tracing tools and methods.

Building a Diverse and Inclusive Center

Diversity, inclusion, and belonging have been longstanding commitments of the Belfer Center. Amid a year of racial reckoning, the Center redoubled our efforts to strengthen this work.

Along with Co-Director Eric Rosenbach and Executive Director Aditi Kumar, we’ve been soliciting input from Belfer faculty, fellows, staff, and students on how to cultivate a more inclusive and diverse culture at the Center.

Key to our efforts is increasing diversity in our programming. As just one example, Paul Kolbe, Director of the Intelligence Project, Caitlin Chase, Intelligence Project Coordinator, and Lauren Zabierek, Executive Director of the Cyber Project, hosted a two-day virtual conference, “Agents of Change: Driving a More Diverse and Capable Intelligence Community,” to discuss diversity as a national security issue and how to foster a diverse intelligence community.

We are working to widen our community to include more scholars from minority groups and are broadening our research to study policy impacts on minority groups. One example is our Arctic Initiative, which is working closely with indigenous groups in the Arctic—including reindeer herders—on climate related impacts.

As faculty members develop their syllabi for class readings and invited lecturers, they are committed to incorporating more scholars from underrepresented groups. Several new HKS courses, such as Linda Bilmes’s class with Cornell Brooks on reparations for Black Americans, are tackling race and policy head on.

Internally, we are re-evaluating our fellowship pipeline to make sure we are reaching diverse audiences of potential pre- and post-doctoral fellows who enrich the Center each year with their range of expertise and experience.

Also, the Center plans to continue the monthly Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging discussion groups launched in 2020 by staff members Erika Manouselis, Karen Ejiofor, and Amritha Jayantito share best practices across our collective efforts such as recruitment, hiring, and mentoring.

Strengthening Programs

Of course, the great ongoing work at the Center did not stop during the pandemic. This report offers details on each of our projects, programs, and initiatives in the pages that follow; allow me to give short updates on three projects.

The Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P) trained federal, state, and local election officials on how to protect their systems and data from malicious actors. D3P also published “The Election Influence Operations Playbook,” a definitive guide to help steel election officials against threats to our democracy. The team also developed an authoritative dataset on state-by-state election information that was widely used by journalists, public leaders, and voters.

The Technology and Public Purpose (TAPP) Project, led by Director Laura Manley, launched two new initiatives in 2020: the Tech Spotlight, a partnership with WIRED that recognizes projects and initiatives that demonstrate a commitment to public purpose; and the Technology and Public Purpose Fellowship, which seeks to train fellows from the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors to carry out tech policy and practitioner analysis with a public purpose lens.

Over the course of Fall 2020, the Arctic Resilience Forum (ARF) organized regular sessions to strengthen cooperation on resilience-related work and discuss best practices and experiences with scientists, circumpolar experts, and indigenous populations. ARF was hosted by the Icelandic Chairmanship of the Arctic Council and co-organized by the Sustainable Development Working Group of the Arctic Council and the Arctic Initiative at the Belfer Center, led by Halla Logadóttir.

Coming Together in a Virtual World

While we missed the opportunity to see one another in person for much of the year, our virtual programs convened an even wider group of policymakers, experts, and advocates than usual.

Among the many guests we invited to Belfer events this year were James Comey, the former FBI Director; Florence Parly, Minister of the Armed Forces of France, Representatives Elissa Slotkin and Joaquin Castro; Sue Gordon, the former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence; Bill McKibben, a climate activist; James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence; Senator Tim Kaine; Stacey Dixon, the Deputy Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; Michèle Flournoy, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; Soumya Swaminathan, the World Health Organization’s Chief Scientist; Fiona Hill, former Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council; Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice President of the European Commission; Jon Huntsman, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to China, Russia, and Singapore; and Jennifer Griffin and Anna Fifield, journalists at FOX News and The Washington Post, respectively.

Harvard was one of the first universities to pivot to distance learning at the onset of the pandemic. The Kennedy School hasn’t just moved its courses online. We have reimagined every element of our teaching to maximize learning and development in a Zoom environment.

Generating Knowledge, Shaping Policy

Even while working virtually, our community of scholars and researchers published a remarkable number of policy-relevant books and reports.

The Center contributed over 80 pieces of original research this year. One consistent theme that spanned programs and projects was revitalization. As just two examples, the Future of Diplomacy Project’s Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Marc Grossman, and Marcie Ries published “A U.S. Diplomatic Service for the 21st Century,” a set of recommendations to modernize the Foreign Service. The incoming Biden administration was briefed on the report, which was widely circulated throughout all of the relevant government agencies. And the TAPP Project’s Mike Miesen and Laura Manley published their second report on Congress’s science and technology capacity, “Building a 21st Century Congress: Improving STEM Policy Advice in the Emerging Technology Era,” which argued for new approaches to emerging technology policy advice.

A second theme was climate action. As two examples, Joseph Aldy of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements published “Three Prongs for Prudent Climate Policy,” a discussion paper that analyzed social radiation management. Nicola De Blasio of the Environment and Natural Resources Program published a report on renewable hydrogen, “Geopolitical and Market Implications of Renewable Hydrogen.”

Human rights was also a focus. Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights Professor Erica Chenoweth’s work on the impact of political violence and civil resistance was widely discussed throughout the year as Black Lives Matter and other protest movements spread across the U.S. and the world.

Belfer Center scholars published several books, including Dara Kay Cohen’s Lynching and Local Justice: Legitimacy and Accountability in Weak States, Juliette Kayyem’s Beyond 9/11: Homeland Security for the Twenty-First Century, Frederik Logevall’s JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, Joe Nye’s Do Morals Matter?, and Robert Zoellick’s America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy.

Recognizing Our Community

The outputs and accomplishments of Belfer reflect the outstanding individuals who are conducting and coordinating research at our Center, including fellows, faculty, and staff.

This year, the Belfer Center welcomed its largest-ever class of research fellows—over 240 talented individuals. Thanks to generous gifts from donors, we were able to launch several inaugural fellowship cohorts, including our Technology and Public Purpose Fellows, our Belfer Young Leaders, and our Allison Fellows.

Among the talented individuals to join us as Senior Fellows in 2020 were Anthony Foxx, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation from 2013 to 2017, Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2015 to 2019, and Sue Gordon, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence in ODNI from 2015 to 2019.

The Center welcomed Francesca Giovannini as the Project on Managing the Atom’s new Executive Director, along with a number of other new staff members who have brought fresh energy and expertise to our community. Many have moved smoothly into their new jobs without having physically met their colleagues yet.

We are also delighted to see several Belfer affiliates answer the call to public service. In the upcoming Biden-Harris administration, a number of our Senior Fellows have been nominated to senior positions: Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor; Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall as Homeland Security Adviser and Deputy National Security Adviser; Wendy Sherman as Deputy Secretary of State; Victoria Nuland as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; Samantha Power as Administrator of USAID; Susan Rice as Director of the Domestic Policy Council; Michael Sulmeyer as Senior Director for Cyber, NSC; Amanda Sloat as Senior Director for Europe with the NSC; Sasha Baker as Sr. Director for Strategic Planning, NSC; Kurt Campbell as Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, NSC; and Eric Lander as Director of Office of Science and Technology Policy; Science Adviser. Former Senior Fellow Lisa Monaco has been selected as Deputy Attorney General. Former Fellow Yohannes Abraham led the Biden-Harris transition team’s operations and Bonnie Jenkins was named Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. Carmen Reinhart, a Belfer Board Member, was recently named the Chief Economist and Vice President of the World Bank.

Finally, I want to memorialize five members of the Belfer family we lost this year. Patricia McLaughlin, John Holdren’s beloved former assistant, was a constant bright presence at the Center. Dorothy Zinberg, one of the Belfer Center’s founders, was a pillar of our community and a mentor to generations of scientists, with a particular impact on women. Martin Malin, the former Executive Director of the Project on Managing the Atom, was a mentor to countless nuclear scholars. Bob Frosch joined us to improve R&D systems when the Cold War ended and stayed on to help develop solutions to innumerable other challenges. And Saeb Erekat, a former Fisher Family Fellow, spent his career attempting to find a diplomatic solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Although they are no longer with us, these individuals will always hold a special place in our hearts.

As I write this, we are wrapping up one of the most tumultuous and challenging years in recent history. 2021 will undoubtedly bring its share of crises and challenges. But with the distribution of safe and effective vaccines now beginning, this coming year is poised to be a year of renewal—and perhaps an opportunity to redefine what normal can, should, and must be. As ever, Eric, Aditi, and I are grateful for the Belfer team, and for the opportunity to work with all of you to do our part to create a safer, more just, and more equitable world for us all.