The CSIA Seeks Stability at the K-School

At the 1973 inauguration of Harvard's Center for Science and International Affairs (CSIA). Henry A. Kissinger '50, then Secretary of State, directed the new research group "to rebuild the stock of intellectual capital on issues of international security--which, of course. I have exhausted in the past decade "Kissinger's famed ego notwithstanding, the CSIA has emerged as a leading source of academic theory and public policy in a period of increasing concern over nuclear arms reduction.

The CSIA houses about two dozen scholars and professionals-in-residence during the academic year, offers an undergraduate course on nuclear technology and politics, organizes seminars and publishes a prominent quarterly journal. International Security.

More important to the non-Harvard world, the center has proved a fertile training ground for academic experts who go on to work in government. "One of our key goals is to train people in the arts and science of international security in a way that will be a continual benefit to these people--men and women who will reach positions of leadership," says Director Paul M. Doty, who is also a professor of Biochemistry.

About 35 percent of all CSIA research fellows end up in Washington, some on congressional staffs, others in executive branches such as the Department of Defense. The center's associates director, Michael Nacht, points to the example of Steven Flanigan, a former research associate, who left the CSIA to join the staff of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. That panel debated in 1979 whether the SALT II nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Soviets was sufficiently verifiable, concluding that it was not. The Senate never formally acted on the treaty after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and tensions between Moscow and Washington increased sharply.

The center evolved from a loosely organized Ford Foundation program of grants for individual scholars, such as Kissinger, when the Foundation gave millions of dollars in the early 1970s to establish university-based research groups at places like Harvard, Stanford and MIT.

The CSIA, which formally joined the K-School in 1978 as its first permanent research center, receives endowment support from Harvard as well as continued funding from the Ford Foundation. Robert Tolles, a spokesmen for the Foundation, calls the center "clearly one of, if not the dominant one in its field."

The revolving door between the CSIA and Washington has not been as active under President Reagan as it had been under previous administrations. "Truthfully, there just wasn't that much going on in Washington [under Reagan] on issues of arms control until very recently," says Doty. "Only just now is the debate, and hence the more direct need for us, picking up again."

Regardless of temporary slow periods, Nacht says, "a tangible case can be made that CSIA personnel have had a fairly significant impact on government." Under President Jimmy Carter, associates of the center played a major role in shaping U.S. policy on matters of international security, energy and arms control.

Joseph S. Nye Jr., a K-School professor of Government, for example, co-authored a major study on nuclear power which the Carter Administration quickly integrated into its national policy its 1977.

Carter's relationship with the CSIA began during his campaign for the White House. Several CSIA members helped plan an international conference at the United Nations on "Nuclear Energy and World Order" in 1976, and at that gathering. Carter introduced the issue of nonproliferation as a weapon in his battle against incumbent Republican Gerald R. Ford.

When Carter took office. Nye followed him to Washington as a deputy undersecretary of state for security assistance, science and technology. He also chaired the National Security Council Group on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Professor of Public Policy Albert Carnesale, a former associate director of the center, became a major State Department consultant on international security and was nominated by Carter in 1980 to serve as chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. [See profile. p. 50] Carnesale, who helped negotiate the 1972 SALT I treaty, never served on the Commission after Reagan won in 1980. And in addition to vast previous government experience. Duty served as a member of Carter's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament.

Though numerous other examples of the CSIA's ties to government exist. Nacht and Doty are quick to point out that links between university-based research centers and specific policies are often difficult to identify. They nonetheless remain strong advocates of studying nuclear issues in an academic setting.

"Individuals outside of government can study, write and speak about these subjects with greater objectivity than someone in Washington," says Nacht. "And even if you don't directly influence government policy, you probably raise the level of awareness of many groups." The latter accomplishment alone, he adds, "makes the whole undertaking worthwhile."

But the research centers--including the CSIA--are not without their critics. Some of the more literal experts in the arms control field point to the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown as being an overly enthusiastic proponent of hard-line strategies. Martin Sherwin a visiting professor in Harvard's graduate American history program, divides research centers into two categories: those that criticize government policy constructively without trying to undermine it and those that make "too much of an effort to find creative uses for nuclear weapons."

"The problem is that these centers have intensely personal characters, so you don't know how they will grow and orient themselves," says Sherwin, an expert on the history of the arms race. He explains that in the Cold War climate of the 1950s and 1960s, many scholars strove to show how broadly nuclear weapons could be used by the United States, especially as a deterrent to Soviet aggression in Europe. Sherwin is one of a growing number of experts who questions the effectiveness of deterrence over the long term as U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals bulge and the danger of widespread proliferation increases.

"The most helpful thing [a research center] can do is to be a serious critic," says Sherwin. "You don't always have to say bad things, but you also don't have to share the assumptions of people whose work you are evaluating."

The CSIA would probably fall somewhere in the middle of Sherwin's two categories, perhaps a little closer to the "critical" side. While Doty maintains that the center "definitely has an arms control bias" and is "a bit more to the left of things," scholars at the CSIA generally span the ideological spectrum on nuclear issues.

International Security, the center's official publication, "is very much a forum for people with different points of view," says Managing Editor Steven Miller. In fact, adds Miller, the journal goes out of its way to publish articles on all sides of the issues it raises.

Nacht believes that one of the center's major strengths lies in its political diversity: "We are viewed as quite dovish by the hawks and quite hawkish by the doves. And that, just as much as anything else, is what gives us our credibility."