Who made the foreign policy community in the United States, and why does the answer matter? Scholars have traditionally looked to the men clustered around the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefeller and Carnegie philanthropies, and the Ivy League faculties to find the roots of the foreign policy "elite" or "establishment" in the years after World War I. But this seminar will show that this focus has obscured the absolute centrality of progressive white women in the making of the U.S. foreign policy community, particularly those former suffragists, trained scholars, and expert...
Davis Center for Russian & Eurasian Studies—Online
Join Maggie Paxson and Alexandra Vacroux for a wide-reaching, long-looking, spirit-warming conversation and mini-concert as we prepare for this strangest of holiday...
What stops human rights abuse? Christopher Shay explores this question in the context of conflict terminations, moments when leaders can plausibly turn away from repressive tactics. Many leaders fail to seize this opportunity, however, even in cases of democratization. Drawing on cross-national quantitative findings and qualitative research conducted in Nepal, Shay argues that these leaders' options are often constrained by powerful security institutions—and that civil-military relations are critical to understanding human rights outcomes.
Join the Institute of Politics for a discussion on the unprecedented turnout and impact from young voters 18–29 years old.
Ashley Allison, former National Coalitions Director for Biden for President, and Peter Hamby, host of Snapchat’s Good Luck America and contributing writer for Vanity Fair, will join in a conversation moderated by John Della Volpe, Director of Polling at the Institute of Politics who was on leave in the fall semester from the Harvard Youth Poll to advise the Biden-Harris campaign. They will examine Biden’s communications and organizing strategy from the end...
Simon Miles tracks key events in US-Soviet relations in the first half of the 1980s. He argues that covert engagement gave way to overt conversation as both superpowers determined that open diplomacy was the best means of furthering their own, primarily competitive, goals. Miles narrates the history of these dramatic years, as President Ronald Reagan consistently applied a disciplined carrot-and-stick approach, reaching out to Moscow while at the same time excoriating the...
This lecture, which is part of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry, explores the doctrine of discovery that haunts American poetry. Lisa Jarnot engages in an autobiographical interrogation of what it means to be a woman in a male-centered experimental tradition, and what it means to have white privilege and write poetry. Several questions arise: What do we keep and what do we reject as we acknowledge the systemic racism and American exceptionalism that pervade even the most benign of bohemian writing communities? Is there something transcendent and healing in the poet’s...
Since we are unable to welcome you into the museums at this time, we are bringing our experts to you in a new online series, Art Study Center Seminars at Home.
When Grenville Lindall Winthrop left his extensive collection to the Fogg Art Museum in 1943, it contained three gold plaques dating to China’s Warring States period (475–221 BCE). Never displayed to the public, the plaques remained a mystery until recent excavations and archival records shed new light on their origins. In this seminar, curator Sarah Laursen investigates the decoration and function of the gold...
Creature Features, a new online series from the Harvard Art Museums, offers a chance for families with children ages 6 and up to explore magical creatures across the collections through close looking and curious exploration with museum staff.
Join Egyptologist Jen Thum for an interactive, family-friendly look at animals in ancient Egyptian art and life! Participants are encouraged to download and color along with our free activity book, Coloring Ancient Egypt...
Paul Blustein Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation; Senior Associate (non-resident), Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS)
Moderator: Christina Davis Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations; Professor of Government; and Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University
James S. Snyder, HKS/MEI Senior Fellow, in conversation with award-winning Palestinian-Israeli architect Senan Abdelqader on the influences of Arab culture across time on art, architecture, and design in Israel, Palestine, and the world today. This event is part of the fall 2020 MEI series, James Snyder in Conversation: A series of dialogues on art, culture, politics, and the possibilities for transcending conflict through cultural connection in the modern Middle East.
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Too often, the story of women’s suffrage unfolds in a vacuum, seemingly unconnected from the general contours of American history. This panel discussion looks back from the present, asking experts working in a variety of disciplines and organizations to briefly unfold, TED-talk style, a single “big idea” that captures the significance of the 19th Amendment for voting rights, citizenship, and democracy today.
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
In this lecture, author Ira Dworkin will talk about his book in-progress “’Imperfectly Known’: Nicholas Said and the Routes of African American Narrative,” which examines the ways that the intellectual and political culture of Borno, in northeast Nigeria, shaped Black literary culture in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries. Focusing on the writings of Said, who came to the United States after his manumission in Europe and who soon thereafter fought in the Civil War, Dworkin’s book broadly considers the relationship of African and Islamic intellectual networks to Black...
Students have been digging up and learning about Harvard's past through the Harvard Yard Archaeological Project. Meet the Peabody's Trish Capone and current Harvard student Nam Hyun Kim as they talk about the objects they have found and the larger history of what has been uncovered in this long-standing dig on campus.
To register, send an email to members@hmsc.harvard.edu. If possible, please include your member number. A...
Virtual experiences connect the collections of the four Harvard Museums of Science & Culture. In HMSC Connects! Celebrating Women, go behind the scenes with women in academia while listening to the HMSC Connects! Podcast, discovering women’s work, Story Time videos, and coloring pages.
As museums have acknowledged their legacy as colonial institutions, many have reimagined their mission as agents of decolonization and social justice. The pandemic disruption, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other community issues are driving still more rapid and drastic changes and providing opportunities for reflection and growth.
How can American museums—especially those that have strong relationships with Indigenous communities—respond to current national conditions of social unrest and political turmoil? How have New England museums fared and what is likely to happen...
