The Hurford Science Diplomacy Initiative

Sponsored by the Hurford Foundation, the Hurford Science Diplomacy Initiative aims to help early career scientists understand the global context for their work and thus enable them to work more effectively at international levels.

 

Course Title

Science and Diplomacy

Theme for 2025

Science in a Time of Olympian Competition

Instructors

Jesse AusubelMande Holford

Jesse Ausubel, Director of Program for the Human Environment, and Mandë Holford, Professor of Chemistry, Hunter College, and American Museum of Natural History

Introduction and Synopsis

The shorthand term Science Diplomacy (SD) spans wide-ranging activities connecting science and technology with international affairs. Biomedical and other scientific knowledge can play roles in

  • informing foreign policy objectives with scientific advice (science in diplomacy);
  • facilitating international science cooperation (diplomacy for science);
  • using science cooperation to improve international relations between countries (science for diplomacy).

Traditionally our course has taken a long-range view on science and international affairs and emphasized long-standing traditions in science and long-lived institutions and abiding structural aspects of science diplomacy. Recent announcements and actions by the new Trump Administration have been so provocative in regard to all aspects of Science Diplomacy that this year we will blend efforts to understand abiding aspects with features under special scrutiny or pressure and why a relatively stable landscape is now enveloped in a storm.

The underlying goals of the course remain to help early career life scientists: (a) think more systematically about the global potential of their work, including ethical, political, and economic implications; and (b) become acquainted with people, networks, and resources available for scientific cooperation, including for those nations and communities with whom cooperation may be especially difficult. This year’s series of seven seminars will sample the current landscape of SD issues, programs, and organizations with special attention to populist-nationalist attitudes now in political ascendancy.

We will explore how Science Diplomacy can matter for a range of issues, from observing and conserving biodiversity to tracking hostile opponents, from elections to the Olympics, and from the halls of Washington DC to Venezuela, Turkey, and China. We aim to show both cooperative and competitive faces of international science. We will examine challenges for SD, including excessive reliance on models of rational behavior and critiques, in particular that it reinforces particular structures of power. We will consider the functioning of international science itself, including its efforts to operate in a more open mode in a world in a time of ferocious economic and military competition.

This course is a sequel to the ones previously offered, and participants from prior years are welcome to attend again. Several sessions will use polling to learn and analyze views of the course participants. In-person participation is strongly preferred but remote access will be available for most sessions. Several guests will come in-person. Traditionally, we follow some sessions with guest speakers with further conversation at the Faculty and Student Club or dinner at a nearby restaurant. The field trip to Washington DC is limited to ten of the most active course participants with primary Rockefeller University affiliation.

Time: 3-5pm Thursdays, NR 110

Past Curricula

2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014

Course Outline

Week 1
Thursday
Feb. 6, 2025
Breda Zimkus

Topics: Introduction to Science Diplomacy, Collecting Around the World for Science

Guest: Breda Zimkus, Director, Collections Operations, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (Publications)

We introduce basic concepts and roles of science diplomacy and the present turbulent USA policy scene
and then explore international practices relating to collection and retention of scientific materials and the organizations and agreements that bear on collections, including the 2023 High Seas Treaty and Nagoya Protocol.

Session Leader: Mandë Holford, Professor of Chemistry, Hunter College, City University of New York; Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History

Readings:

Websites:

Week 2
Thursday
Feb. 13, 2025
Jesse Ausubel
Mande Holford

Topic: Science - The Voice of the Dolphins or an Instrument of War?

Session Leaders: Jesse Ausubel and Mandë Holford

We contrast a classic text, The Voice of the Dolphins, about a fictional international biology lab in Central Europe that promotes cooperation with a recent Australian report emphasizing science as a form of power in international competition. We consider implications of some recent Executive Orders for international science and technology cooperation.

Readings:

Week 3
Thursday
Feb. 20, 2025
Xin Li
Qiu

Topic: The Ascendency of China in Science and Implications for Science Diplomacy

Guests (by Zoom from Beijing): Mr. Xin Li, Deputy Director-General, Ministry of Science and Technology; Science and Technology Counselor (2015-2019) to the U.S; Prof. Weigang Qiu (TBC)

We will explore Chinese perspectives on Science Diplomacy and explore tensions between the cosmopolitan culture of science and the range of national motivations for the support of science, and how geopolitical conflict affects the practice and culture of science at the level of the individual researcher.

Session Leaders: Jesse Ausubel and Mandë Holford

Readings:

Websites:

Week 4
Thursday
Feb. 27, 2025
Michael Joyner

Topic: Science and Global Sports Competition: The Biology of Winning Gold Medals

Session Leader: Jesse Ausubel
Guest: Michael J. Joyner, Professor of Anesthesiology, Mayo Clinic (publications)

We explore the science of human performance enhancement, how science and technology have affected Olympic and other sports, what remains taboo, what might become customary in the future, and spillover into everyday life and medicine.

Readings:

Websites:

Week 5
Thursday
Mar. 6, 2025
Aaron Mertz

Topic: Field trip to Aspen Institute, 419 Park Avenue South

Session Leader: Mandë Holford & Jesse Ausubel
Host and Lead Speaker: Dr. Aaron F. Mertz, Founder and Executive Director, Science and Society Program (publications) 

Former Rockefeller U. post-doctoral fellow will lead a discussion of issues and roles for leading US and international non-governmental organizations with regard to science and society.

Readings:

Websites:

Week 6
Thursday
Mar. 13, 2025
Chris Inglis

Topic: Listening to Enemies

Session Leader: Jesse Ausubel
Guest: Chris Inglis, first US National Cyber Director, former Deputy Director, National Security Agency

We explore roles of computer and information sciences and mathematics in international security and roles and functions of national intelligence organizations including the National Security Agency and international organizations as Interpol.

Readings:

Websites:

Week 7
Thursday
Mar. 20, 2025
Gatti
Turkuler Isiksel

Topic: Science and Challenges of Citizenship in an Uncertain World

Session Leader: Jesse Ausubel and Mandë Holford
Guest Speaker: Gabriel Golczer Gatti, President, Universidad Simon Bolivar Alumni Association of America, and CAMP4 Therapeutics (publications); Turkuler Isiksel, Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and deputy chair of the Political Science Department (publications)

We explore the meaning of elections; practices, organizations, and programs for monitoring of elections internationally; and issues relating to free movement of students and scholars.

Readings:

Websites:

Learning Outcomes Sought

Improved understanding of how biomedical and other scientific knowledge can play roles in

  • informing foreign policy objectives with scientific advice (science in diplomacy);
  • facilitating international science cooperation (diplomacy for science);
  • using science cooperation to improve international relations between countries (science for diplomacy).

Course Schedule

Dates: Thursdays, Feb. 6-Mar. 20, 2025
Time: 3-5pm

Additional Reading List

The items listed are background reading. Additional articles and links may be distributed each week pertaining to the weekly topics.

  1. A tale of two states, Holford, M, Nichols, R, Science, 2015. 349:6247
  2. The Science of Science Policy: A Handbook (Innovation and Technology in the World Economy), by Julia I. Lane (ed.), 2011
  3. Global Research Infrastructures: A Decade of Science Diplomacy, Amy K. Flatten, AAAS Science and Diplomacy, 27 September 2018
  4. Science and Technology in US International Affairs, Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, 1992.
  5. Diplomacy for the 21st Century: Embedding a Culture of Science and Technology Throughout the Department of State, Committee on Science and Technology Capabilities at the Department of State, National Research Council, 2015

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