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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 Diplomacy: Combining Science and Foreign Policy to Address Global Challenges

Theme for 2024

Practicing Science Amidst Both International Competition and Cooperation

Instructors

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

Synopsis

The shorthand term Science Diplomacy (SD) spans wide-ranging activities connecting science and technology with international affairs. This series of seven seminars will sample the current landscape of SD issues, programs, and organizations. The goals of the course are 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 the people, networks, and resources available for scientific cooperation, including for those nations and communities with whom cooperation may be especially difficult.

The complexity of the real world, including the plural rationalities that exist and persist in human societies, is central to issues ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and biodiversity loss, to wars and threats to preservation of cultural heritage. These issues also exemplify the centrality of science and technology in international negotiations and policies that benefit the global well-being and relations among nations. The hard explosive and soft cyber powers on display in the Ukraine War graphically demonstrate how science and technology continue to determine the shapes of conflict. The intergovernmental negotiations over climate change and biodiversity are a real-world case study of the potential and problems of groups of scientific experts "speaking truth to power."

In the course, we will offer some frameworks for thinking about Science Diplomacy and share some of its history, including how it relates to The Rockefeller University. We will explore how SD can matter for a range of issues, from the aftermath of war to international trade and resilient cities and coasts, and range from Angola to China. 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.

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

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

Course Outline

Week 1
Thursday
Feb. 8, 2024

Topic: The Basics of Science Diplomacy and Challenges of Science in a Time of Widespread International Conflict

Session Leaders: Mandë Holford, Professor of Chemistry, Hunter College, City University of New York, Research Associate-American Museum of Natural History, and Jesse Ausubel, Director of the Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University

Readings:

• Science Diplomacy -15 Years On
• New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy: Navigating the Changing Balance of Power
• Science Diplomacy and Future Worlds
• A Decade of Science Diplomacy webinar
• A Tale of Two States. Mandë Holford & Rodney W. Nichols
• Scientists Must Use Their "Outside" Voices: A Conversation with Ambassador Emanuel, U.S. Ambassador to Japan
• Scientists, War, Diplomacy, Europe. JH Ausubel

Websites:

• http://www.sciencediplomacy.org
• https://www.aaas.org/program/center-science-diplomacy

Week 2
Thursday
Feb. 15, 2024

Topic: From Open Access and Open Science to Restricted Access and Secrecy

Session Leader: Jesse Ausubel
Guests: Nadja Oertelt, Strategic Partnerships Manager, Center for Open Science, and Nici Pfeiffer, Chief Product Officer, Center for Open Science

Readings:

• Open science challenges, benefits and tips in early career and beyond
• Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE)
• Practical Considerations for Navigating Registered Reports
• Open science by design: Realizing a vision for 21st century research
• Fundamental Research Security
• Fake scientific papers push research credibility to crisis point

Websites:

• Center for Open Science
• DataCite
• Library Futures
• Internet Archive
• Oasis Consortium
• Beyond the Screen
• Center for AI and Digital  Policy

Week 3
Thursday
Feb. 22, 2024

Topic: S&T In the Aftermath of War: De-Mining Angola

Session Leader: Jesse Ausubel
Guest Speaker: David Meen, HALO Trust
Readings:

• Angola Field Trip – April 2022
• Clearing landmine and explosives
• HALO Angola 
• Women in Demining
• Managing Weapons and Ammunitions
• Quantitative Dynamics of Human Empires, C  Marchetti & JH Ausubel

Websites:

• The HALO Trust
• Halo Trust in Ukraine

Week 4
Thursday
Feb. 29, 2024

Topic: China and International Science

Session Leader: Mandë Holford
Guest: Kyle Myers, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Technology and Operations Management Unit, Harvard Business School
Readings:

• Who Stands On The Shoulders Of Chinese (Scientific) Giants? Evidence From Chemistry
• 2021 Speech by Xi to Chinese Academy of Sciences on S&T innovation
• 2022 Speech by Russian Economist Sergei Glazyev, The West Has No Image of the Future

Websites:

• Marginal Revolution University on the “Arguments Against International Trade” (13:56)
• “The Gift of Global Talent” (49:48)

Week 5
Thursday
Mar. 7, 2024

Topic: UN decision Making in times of cooperation and competition

Session Leader: Mandë Holford
Guest: Minh-Thu Pham, Co-founder & CEO @ Project Starling, Nonresident Scholar, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Lecturer, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Former Executive Director for Global Policy, United Nations Foundation
Readings:

• Science Diplomacy within Sustainable Development: A SIDS Perspective
• The Sustainable Development Goals, science diplomacy and TWAS
• Science Diplomacy and Sustainable Development: Perspectives From Latin America
• The U.N. plan to improve the world by 2030 is failing. Does that make it a failure?
• Learning from Success: Lessons in Science and Diplomacy from the Montreal Protocol
• Good Politics, Bad Politics: The Experience of AIDS

Websites:

• https://carnegieendowment.org/experts/2435
• The 17 Goals
• The Sustainable Development Agenda
• #SDGLive at the 2018 World Bank Spring meetings

Week 6
Thursday
Mar. 14, 2024

Topic: Global Health Security

Session Leaders: Mandë Holford and Jesse Ausubel
Guest Speakers: Captain John Barrientos, Military Fellow, U.S. Navy, Council on Foreign Relations, and Vera Ranola, Managing Director of Membership, Council on Foreign Relations
Field Trip to the Council on Foreign Relations, 58 E. 68th St
Readings:

• Negotiating Global Health Security | Council on Foreign Relations (cfr.org)
• Two Geopolitical Rivals, One Health
• Totalism and State-Society Relations in China
• China: Year in Review 2023

Websites:

• Council on Foreign Relations
• Foreign Affairs magazine

Week 7
Thursday
Mar. 21, 2024

Topic: Practicing Science amidst Both International Competition and Cooperation: What have we learned? What can be done?

Session Leader: Mandë Holford and Jesse Ausubel
Guest Speaker: Anthony Rock (tbc), Former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, Environment, Science, Technology, and Health

Readings:

• The four Ds of international science 
• The Challenge of Building Science Diplomacy Capabilities for Early Career Academic Investigator 
• Accelerating and scaling mentoring strategies to build infrastructure that supports underrepresented groups in STEM
• 4 Ways Science Should Transform after COVID-19
• Integrating the Life Sciences to Jumpstart the Next Decade of Discovery
• Accelerating pathways to leadership for underrepresented groups in STEM
• The Search for Leonardo’s Genome, JH Ausubel

Websites:

• 2030STEM
• Global Library of Underwater Sounds
• World Oceans Passive Acoustic Monitoring (WOPAM Day)
• Towards quieter oceans (12” video)
• Science in the US Department of State
• Third World Academy of Sciences
• International Science Council
• InterAcademy Partnership

Field Trip to Washington, DC
Thursday-Friday,
Apr. 4-5, 2024

 

Visits with:

• Embassy of Argentina: Victoria Molteni, Head of Cultural Affairs, Education & Science and Public Diplomacy Section, and Leandro Ragone and Augustin Cardenes, Political Affairs Department.
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: Vaughan Turekian, Director of Policy and Global Affairs, and Alex Temple of New Voices and 2024 International Conference of Young Scientists hosted by the Global Young Academy.
• Cosmos Club: dinner with science attaches of several nations and other practitioners of science diplomacy
• Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History: Christopher Meyer, Global Genome Initiative and Dr. Allen Collins, Director of NOAA National Systematics Lab
• Department of State: Mahlet Mesfin, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Ocean, Fisheries and Polar Affairs; Sarah Ackerman, Program Manager in the Office of Missile, Biological, and Chemical Nonproliferation; Dr. Colin Brinkman, Office of Marine Affairs; and Dr. Kelly Seagraves, Senior Advisor, Office of the Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology

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. 8-Mar. 21, 2024
Time: 3-5pm

Additional Reading List

The items listed are essential background reading. Two or three additional articles will 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 E), by Julia Lane, Kaye Fealing, John Marburger III and Stephanie Shipp (Mar 18, 2011)
3. Global Research Infrastructures: A Decade of Science Diplomacy, By Amy K. Flatten, AAAS Science and Diplomacy, September 27, 2018
4. New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy: Navigating the Changing Balance of Power.A Royal Society Policy Document 2010, ISBN: 978-0-85403-811-4
5. Promoting Scientific Cooperation in Times of Diplomatic Challenges Sustained Partnership between the Cuban Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. By Jorge Pastrana S, Gual Soler M, Wang TC. MEDICC Lessons in International Cooperation, April 2018.
6. Science and Technology in US International Affairs, Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, reprinted 1993.
7. Diplomacy for the 21st Century: Embedding a Culture of Science and Technology Throughout the Department of State, by U.S. National Research Council 2015