Two thousand and eight marks the fiftieth year that the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (formerly, the Center for International Affairs) has existed to support scholarly research at Harvard. Historically, the Center has been associated with some of the most important research in the areas of national security, the arms race and disarmament among nations, and United States foreign policy. Today we continue that tradition with attention to a growing international agenda, including economic development, international law and institutions, regional conflicts, and unconventional threats to security. Over the past fifty years, the Weatherhead Center has emerged as one of the world’s leading institutions for basic social science research in international affairs, thanks to the innovativeness of our faculty affiliates, the high quality of our various visitors, and the dedication and skills of our unparalleled staff.

To acknowledge past accomplishments, alumni of the Weatherhead Center’s Fellows Program will return to campus on November 16 and 17, 2007, for a reunion and a conference commemorating the Center’s 50th anniversary. More than 150 alumni from around the world are expected to participate in a dialogue to consider the “Search for Solutions to the World’s Intractable Problems.” In keeping with the Center’s original intent, articulated with the establishment of the Fellows Program in 1958 of fostering meaningful and beneficial collaboration between practitioners and academics, a number of plenary sessions and roundtables will be co-led and co-organized by Harvard faculty and Fellows Program alumni on a broad array of issues including: the future of multilateralism; peace and conflict in the Middle East; twenty-first century globalization, integration, and immigration; Islam and the West; global warming; and weapons of mass destruction proliferation. To add reflection to these activities, we commissioned a history of the Center written by historian David C. Atkinson and distributed by Harvard University Press, entitled In Theory and in Practice: Harvard’s Center for International Affairs, 1958–1983. We look forward to welcoming our extended community to this commemoration.

The Center will continue its tradition in 2007-2008 of supporting important and cutting-edge research in international affairs, from development to foreign policy, from security to international economic affairs, from social issues to global and transnational history. This past year, we inaugurated a new entitlement for our junior faculty affiliates by funding book conferences to discuss their manuscripts in progress. We were happy to support three of our scholars in this way: Professors Bear Braumoeller (Department of Government), Systemic Politics and the Origins of Great Power Rivalry, Tamara Kay (Department of Sociology), NAFTA and the Politics of Labor Transnationalism, and Steven Levitsky (Department of Government), Competitive Authoritarianism: International Linkage, Organizational Power, and the Fate of Hybrid Regimes. We will continue supporting every junior faculty affiliate in this way during their pre-tenure years.

In the coming year, the Weatherhead Center will pilot a new funding competition. In recognition of the huge startup costs associated with making credible applications to outside funders, the Executive Committee with the advice of the Steering Committee has decided to offer on a trial basis “incubation funds” specifically for the purpose of encouraging individuals or teams to secure major funding from both foundations and government sources. This award will be contingent on meeting with associates of the Harvard Office for Sponsored Research to develop a strategy for presenting proposals to outside funding agencies. Incubation funds can be applied toward short-term brainstorming sessions among co-investigators, hiring research assistants and grant writing consultants, or summer salary for time devoted exclusively to proposal development. The Center will also arrange space that may be used temporarily on a flexible basis by teams involved in proposal development. In this way, we hope to leverage our own funds by supporting affiliates to garner major outside funding, as well as to spark a constructively competitive spirit among us. Limited at $30,000 for 2007-2008, application for incubation funds may be submitted as with other funding requests in the early months of October, February, and April.

One of the most important kinds of support the Center can offer our heavily committed faculty associates is research time. This coming year, we are happy to support the leave plans of three professors, Mary D. Lewis, James Robinson, and Matthias Schündeln, whose projects are described on the Faculty Research Semester Leaves section.

In the coming year, the Center will also continue to play a crucial role in the internationalization of Harvard College and the wider University. Through the generous support of Harvard alumnus Hartley Rogers, the Center will sponsor undergraduates to conduct research overseas in countries such as India, Jordan, and Egypt. In all, twenty-seven undergraduates will enjoy the benefit of Weatherhead Center research in the summer of 2007. We will also be home to twentyfour Graduate Student Associates enrolled in advanced degree programs in anthropology, history, government, religion, public policy, and law.

The Weatherhead Center is a multilevel community of scholars, and the activities of the Center are increasingly designed to reinforce cooperation among researchers at very different stages in their careers. This year, partnerships between faculty and undergraduates will be supported by the Center’s relatively new Research Assistants Program, which screens, trains, matches, and subsidizes undergraduate students to assist faculty and Harvard Academy Scholars in their research. The vision of multilevel partnerships will also continue to be facilitated by the Center’s research support, which favors proposals that are both intrinsically meritorious and foster intellectually rewarding cooperation between our faculty affiliates and students.

The Fellows Program, which brings to us high-level practitioners with an interest in research and writing, offers a unique opportunity to further this vision of partnerships. I particularly encourage our Faculty Associates to pass on to the Center’s staff any suggestions for the presence of Fellows in the future who will complement and enrich their research program.

The Weatherhead Center has a crucial integrating role to play as the largest internationally-oriented research center on Harvard’s campus. While it is situated formally in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Center focuses increasingly on drawing together intellectual communities across the University. We will make new efforts to improve links with the professional schools whose faculties have an interest in international affairs. In 2007-2008, the new bi-weekly International Law and International Relations Seminar, which is sponsored jointly with significant support from the Harvard Law School, will continue to expand and bring outside scholars to present their research. Among new initiatives, we will be offering the Seminar on Cultural Politics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, chaired by Professor Panagiotis Roilos, director of the Modern Greek Studies Program at Harvard, and the Seminar on Religion and Society, led by Ofrit Liviatan, lecturer at the Department of Government at Harvard. Another example of inter-faculty collaboration is the Science and Society Seminar organized by Professor Sheila Jasanoff and co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Program on Science, Technology, and Society. The seminar has been a model of interaction among scholars in many disciplines including public policy, the environment, genetics, and information technology.

Changes in information technology present the Center with an opportunity to showcase the research associated with the Weatherhead Center in ways that were not practical only a few years ago. We have eliminated the hard copy version of the Working Paper Series, to replace it with an electronic working paper database collection.We invite all affiliates to continue to submit their new papers to our Working Paper Series for broad dissemination online. We have also begun a concurrent process of harvesting faculty papers, with their permission, from their individual Harvard Web sites. In addition, we plan to inaugurate a prize for Best Working Paper written or co-authored by an affiliate appearing in the Center’s Working Paper Series to recognize the importance of supporting exceptional research as it emerges.

In 2007-2008, we will continue to address governance and representation of the Center’s core constituency: its faculty affiliates. As we have diversified the research focus of our Center, we also need to address proper diversity and rotation in the Center’s governance, especially in what is now known as the Executive Committee. As for the Center’s Steering Committee, its existence and responsibilities will be better publicized in the years to come. One of the hallmarks of the Domínguez years was a steady development toward diversification and transparency, which should continue to guide our thinking as we improve the oversight structure of the Center.

The year ahead will be undoubtedly an exciting one here at the Center. Celebrating and reflecting upon our first fifty years, our key goals are to fund and recognize pathbreaking research, draw on our intellectual resources to enhance research, integrate research connections across the University, find new ways to disseminate what we collectively produce, and broaden participation. I welcome suggestions from all members of our community as we think about how the Weatherhead Center can more effectively achieve these goals in the years to come.

Beth A. Simmons
Center Director