Centerpiece: Fall 2020

2020–2021 Kenneth I. Juster Fellows The Weatherhead Center is pleased to announce its 2020–2021 class of Juster Fellows. Now in its tenth year, this grant initiative is made possible by the generosity of the Honorable Kenneth I. Juster, former chair of...

By Kathleen Molony As I sit in my dining room in Concord, Massachusetts, a room that has been my world since mid-March, I have time to think about the past nineteen-plus years at the Weatherhead Center. I still can’t believe that I am about to “retire”...

Alberto Alesina, 1957–2020 By Jeffry A. Frieden Alberto Alesina passed away last May, at the age of sixty-three. It will take me a long time to get over the shock and pain of his death, but I wanted to share some thoughts about this most intelligent of...

Interview by Sarah Figge Hussain “What makes a region?” This seemingly simple question frames the work of the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Regions in a Multipolar World (informally called the regions cluster). Spearheaded by Faculty Associates Timothy...

Typically every spring, a select group of Harvard College students receive travel grants from the Weatherhead Center to support their thesis field research on topics related to international affairs. With the onset of the pandemic and accompanying travel...

Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia By Rosie Bsheer With this book, Rosie Bsheer explores the increasing secularization of the postwar Saudi state and how it manifested in assembling a national archive and reordering urban space in...

Alisha Holland Wins Seligson Prize Faculty Associate Alisha Holland, associate professor of government at Harvard University, is the recipient of the 2020 Seligson Prize for her paper, “Diminished Expectations: Redistributive Preferences in Truncated...

These have been trying months for sure. Between the pandemic and the many challenges presented by the recent US elections, many of us have felt disoriented and slightly out of whack. Nevertheless, rather than scale back Weatherhead Center activities, we...

The fall 2020 issue of Centerpiece highlights the Center's recent activities, which are still going strong—albeit remote—during the pandemic. In her Message from the Director column, Michèle Lamont details how our various programs and intellectual...