Twenty Fellows Named to Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

Twenty international-affairs practitioners from 15 countries have been appointed as Fellows at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs for the academic year 1998-99.

Established in 1958, coincident with the founding of the Center, the Fellows Program welcomes diplomats, military officers, politicians, journalists, and others working in the realm of international affairs to pursue independent study and research at the university for one academic year. Positions in the program are awarded to mid- to senior-level professionals with rich experience and strong potential for future leadership. Their affiliation with this academic environment is meant to expand their intellectual horizons so that upon their departure they will have the ability to carry out their responsibilities with greater intellectual perspective. As resources within the University community, they enthusiastically lend their expertise to both faculty and students throughout Harvard. To date, nearly 800 individuals from all over the world have participated in the program.

The members of the Weatherhead Center Fellows class, their backgrounds, and areas of study are:

Michael Alvis, 46, Colonel, United States Army. Recently served as a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., specializing in peacekeeping, civil-military relations, and European affairs. Alvis' research will involve developing a strategic vision for the U.S. military in the 21st century to determine how it can best support national interests.

Michael Bell, 55, Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Served as ambassador to Egypt, Jordan, and Israel. Bell will carry out research on Arab-Israeli relations, the problem of ethnic strife, and a foreign policy vs. domestic policy case study: exploring the process, and defining the impact on the prime minister, of Canada's consideration of moving the Israeli Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Michael Boorstein, 52, U.S. Department of State. Recently served as deputy director of the Moscow Embassy Buildings Control Office. Boorstein will take an in-depth look at information technology (IT) and 1) how it has had an impact on society in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China; and 2) ways in which IT has an impact on the conduct of foreign policy in the United States, and specifically at the State Department.

Rune Castberg, 41, Royal Norwegian Foreign Ministry. Recently served as counselor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs at the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Oslo, after completing a one-year term as special envoy to the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow dealing with fisheries cooperation. An environmental affairs specialist, Castberg will study the changing international and global conditions for natural resource management.

Stéphane Chmelewsky, 50, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Recently served as diplomatic advisor to the head of the French Security Service (DST) for the Ministry of the Interior in Paris. Chmelewsky will study the reconstruction of a national identity in Russia and assess its possible effects on Russia's relations with the outside world.

Charles Crawford, 44, Foreign & Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom. Recently served as ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Crawford will articulate and examine the lessons the Bosnian peace process can offer diplomatic professionals and institutions as related to future peace-making and peace-keeping crises.

Marc Felman, 44, Colonel, United States Air Force. Recently served as commander of the 34th Operations Group at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. Col. Felman will address the central questions of U.S. overseas military presence: How much is appropriate for national security strategy? Where should this presence be located? What kind of presence should it be?

Jorge Gallardo Zavala, 49, Ecuador. Recently ran as a vice presidential candidate in Ecuador and served as president and CEO of the Banco Continental in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Gallardo will analyze the causes of bank failures in less developed and newly industrialized countries and develop a set of policy recommendations designed to strengthen the function and control of financial systems in Latin America and other countries.

Friedrich Gröning, 55, German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Recently served as head of the Division for Southern Europe and Mediterranean Affairs (Political Affairs) at the Ministry in Bonn. Gröning will explore the relationship and interdependence between foreign policy making and the media and examine Turkey's relations with the European Union and with Germany in particular.

Mark Kosnik, 42, Commander, United States Navy. Recently served as commanding officer of the USS Arleigh Burke in Norfolk, Va. Kosnik will consider NATO expansion and its impact on the effectiveness of NATO as a military institution and its ability to ensure international security and stability.

Federico Molina Soto, 49, Colombia. Recently served as vice minister of defense for the Government of Colombia. Molina Soto will develop a global approach to the problem of money laundering by means of legislation, information exchange between countries, international regulations, global organizational structures, and an international computer network.

Jimmy Ocitti, 43, Uganda. Recently served as senior producer for Radio Netherlands International. Ocitti will examine both the relationship between local African conflicts and international action and the tension between the media and politics in a democracy by analyzing the media's role in the democratization process in Africa over the last ten years.

Pham Binh Man, 48, Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Recently served as deputy director of the Press and Information Department for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hanoi. Man will study the opportunities and challenges facing Vietnam in the context of regional and international economic integration.

John Pitt-Brooke, 47, Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom. Recently served as command secretary for the UK Army's Land Command in Salisbury. Pitt-Brooke will concentrate on the limits of military involvement in peacekeeping operations and compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of NATO and UN control using Bosnia as a case study.

Pirkko Pöntinen, 40, Finnish Broadcasting Company. Recently served as a foreign news reporter for the Finnish Broadcasting Company in Helsinki. Pöntinen will focus her research on Southeast Asia, emphasizing relations between China and the United States.

Jayant Prasad, 46, Indian Ministry of External Affairs. Recently served as ambassador to Algeria. Prasad will carry out an inquiry into the new parameter's of India's foreign policy, an attempt to delineate India's strategic and technological environment through the year 2010. Sub-themes of this inquiry include nonmilitary threats to India's security and the implications of nuclear weapons tests for India's disarmament policy.

Peter Martin Smith, 47, European Commission, from the United Kingdom. Recently served as head of unit for Industrial Competitiveness in the Directorate-General for Industry. Smith will examine current trends towards the globalization of economic activity and the new world economic order and their impact on the public policy at supranational, national, and local levels.

Panayotis Tsakonas, 35, Hellenic Ministry of National Defense. Recently served as an adviser on defense and strategic issues. While at Harvard, he will carry out research on conflict-prevention strategies in post-cold war Southeastern Europe. Specifically, Tsakonas will analyze international institutional methods for early warning, agenda setting, and policy formulation with an eye toward the establishment of a collaborative, low-cost, and low-risk preventive regime in the region.

Francisco Tudela van Breugel-Douglas, 42, Peruvian. Recently served as minister of foreign affairs in Lima and director of the Institute for International Studies of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Tudela will reflect upon the interaction between democratic political thought and the process of globalization and, more specifically, will delineate the political and strategic implications for Western democracies of extending representative government to various regions of the world.

Kunio Umeda, 44, Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Recently served as minister-counsellor at the Embassy of Japan in Peru as well as consul general at the Japanese consulate in Lima. Umeda will explore the tensions between economic growth and environmental degradation and develop measures to address global environmental problems. He is also interested in researching the effects of the recent economic turmoil on Southeast Asian countries.