The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA), formerly Center for International Affairs (CFIA) is a

research center Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentric ...

for

international affairs International relations (IR, and also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs) is an academic discipline. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns al ...

and the largest international research center within

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. It is sometimes referred to as the Harvard Center for International Affairs.

History

The Center for International Affairs was founded in 1958 by Robert R. Bowie and

Henry Kissinger Henry Alfred Kissinger (May 27, 1923 – November 29, 2023) was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 56th United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and the 7th National Security Advisor (United States), natio ...

, assuming its current name in 1998 following an endowment by Albert and Celia Weatherhead and the Weatherhead Foundation. In 1970, a bomb was detonated in the

Semitic Museum The Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (HMANE, previously the Harvard Semitic Museum) is a museum founded in 1889. It moved into its present location at 6 Divinity Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1903. History Architectural firm A. ...

, which the center was located in at that time, due to the center's connection to Henry Kissinger and its research activities.

Program on Nonviolent Sanctions

In 1983 the center launched a research division known as the Program on Nonviolent Sanctions in Conflict and Defense (aka Program on Nonviolent Sanctions, or PNS), which operated as a research division under the framework and policies of the center. Its focus was the use of nonviolent sanctions as a substitute for violent interventions. It was founded by

Gene Sharp Gene Sharp (January 21, 1928 – January 28, 2018) was an American political scientist. He was the founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the study of nonviolent action, and professor of po ...

, who also founded the independent non-profit

Albert Einstein Institution The Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) is a non-profit organization specializing in the study of the methods of nonviolent resistance in conflict. It was founded by scholar Gene Sharp in 1983, and named after Albert Einstein. Until 2000, the i ...

(AEI) a few months later. PNS provided grants or fellowships for scholars in residence, as well as conducting seminars and conferences. For the first few years, the Program lobbied for its own funding, as well as obtaining some funding from the AEI; after 1987 policy changes were made to reduce confusion and the AEI became solely responsible for raising the funds to support the CFIA Program as well as its own activities. Some years after Sharp's tenure as director, in 1995 PNS merged with

Cultural Survival Cultural Survival (founded 1972) is a nonprofit group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, which is dedicated to defending the human rights of indigenous peoples. History Cultural Survival was founded by anthropologist David Mayb ...

, a human rights

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

at Harvard, creating the Program on Nonviolent Sanctions and Cultural Survival (PONSACS). PONSACS operated for ten years before closing in 2005.

Aims

The aim of the center is to confront the world's problems, as diagnosed by its founders in their specification of The Program of the Center for International Affairs (Bowie and Kissinger, 1958):

Foreign affairs in our era pose unprecedented tasks…Today no region is isolated; none can be ignored; actions and events even in remote places may have immediate worldwide impact…vast forces are reshaping the world with headlong speed. Under the impact of wars, nationalism, technology, and communism, the old order has been shattered. Empires have crumbled; nations once dominant are forced to adapt to shrunken influence. New nations have emerged and are struggling to survive…Nowhere do traditional attitudes fit the new realities…Thus notions of sovereignty and independence need revision to apply to a world where a nation's level of life or survival may depend as much on the actions of other countries as on its own…

Description

The center is the located within Harvard University's Center for Government and International Studies. Every year, it hosts approximately fifteen Fellows, at least three of whom are from the three major branches of the

United States Armed Forces The United States Armed Forces are the Military, military forces of the United States. U.S. United States Code, federal law names six armed forces: the United States Army, Army, United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps, United States Navy, Na ...

. Since 2021, the center has been directed by Melani Cammett. Past directors include Robert R. Bowie (1957–1972),

Raymond Vernon Raymond Vernon (September 1, 1913 – August 26, 1999) was an American economist. He was a member of the group that developed the Marshall Plan after World War II and later played a role in the development of the International Monetary Fund and th ...

(1973–1978),

Samuel P. Huntington Samuel Phillips Huntington (April 18, 1927December 24, 2008) was an American political scientist, adviser, and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affair ...

(1978–1989),

Joseph Nye Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. (January 19, 1937 – May 6, 2025) was an American political scientist. He and Robert Keohane co-founded the international relations theory of neoliberalism, which they developed in their 1977 book ''Power and Interdepe ...

(1989–1992),

Robert D. Putnam Robert David Putnam (born January 9, 1941) is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. ...

(1993–1996),

Jorge I. Domínguez Jorge I. Domínguez (born 1945), a scholar of Latin American studies in the United States, taught at Harvard University from 1972 to 2018, when he retired as the Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico. He began his teaching career at ...

(1996–2006),

Beth A. Simmons Beth A. Simmons (born 1958) is an American academic and notable international relations scholar. She is the Andrea Mitchell University Professor in Law, Political Science and Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She is a ...

(2006–2013), and

Michèle Lamont Michèle Lamont is a Canadian sociologist who is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and a professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is a contributor to the study of culture, inequality, racis ...

(2015–2021). Simmons served as the center's first female director.

Current and former scholars

Graham T. Allison Graham Tillett Allison Jr. (born March 23, 1940) is an American political scientist and the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is known for his contributions in the late 19 ...

* Robert R. Bowie *

Zbigniew Brzezinski Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński (, ; March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), known as Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was Jimmy Carter's National Securi ...

Richard N. Cooper Richard Newell Cooper (June 14, 1934 – December 23, 2020) was an American economist, policy adviser, and academic. Life and career Born in Seattle, Cooper graduated from Oberlin College in 1956 and received a master's degree in economics f ...

Robin Fontes Robin Louise Fontes (born January 18, 1964) is a retired United States Army Major general (United States), major general who last served as deputy commanding general (operations) of the United States Army Cyber Command. In July 2017 she took comm ...

David Galula David Galula (10 January 191911 May 1967) was a French military officer and scholar who was influential in developing the theory and practice of counterinsurgency warfare. Early life Born in Sfax, then part of the French protectorate of Tunisia ...

(1919–1967) who specialized in the theory and practice of

counterinsurgency Counterinsurgency (COIN, or NATO spelling counter-insurgency) is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the ac ...

warfare *

Abraham Katz Abraham Katz (December 4, 1926 – February 5, 2013) was an American diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to the OECD from 1981 to 1984. He was also the President of the United States Council for International Business and the Inte ...

(1926–2013), diplomat, United States Ambassador to the

OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; , OCDE) is an international organization, intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and international trade, wor ...

Dani Rodrik Dani Rodrik (born August 14, 1957) is a Turkish economist and Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was formerly the Albert O. Hirschman Professor of ...

Kenneth Rogoff Kenneth Saul Rogoff (born March 22, 1953) is an American economist and chess Grandmaster. He is the Maurits C. Boas Chair of International Economics at Harvard University. During the Great Recession, Rogoff was an influential proponent of auste ...

Thomas Schelling Thomas Crombie Schelling (April 14, 1921 – December 13, 2016) was an American economist and professor of foreign policy, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Coll ...

Amartya Sen Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher. Sen has taught and worked in England and the United States since 1972. In 1998, Sen received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions ...

Pasi Patokallio Pasi Patokallio (born 29 September 1949) is a Finnish diplomat. He has served as the List of ambassadors of Finland, Ambassador of Finland to Israel, Canada and Australia, and led Finland's campaign for a seat on the 2012 United Nations Security ...

https://web.archive.org/web/20061010023730/http://www.finland.ca/doc/en/embassy/PP1cv.html

References

External links

* {{Authority control Harvard University research institutes 1958 establishments in Massachusetts