Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs is a research center for international affairs and the largest international research center within Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.[1] It is headed by Michèle Lamont.

The center was founded as the Center for International Affairs in 1958 and assumed its current name in 1998 following an endowment by Albert and Celia Weatherhead and the Weatherhead Foundation. The aim of the Center is to confront the world's problems as diagnosed by its founders Robert R. Bowie and Henry Kissinger in their specification of The Program of the Center for International Affairs (1958):[1]

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…

In 1970, a bomb was detonated in the Semitic Museum, which the Center was located in at that time, due to the Center's connection to Henry Kissinger and its research activities.

The Center is the located within Harvard University's Center for Government and International Studies.[2] Every year, it hosts approximately fifteen Fellows, at least three of whom are from the three major branches of the United States Armed Forces.[3]