The Herbert C. Kelman Seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution presents:
Conflict or Common Interests? Negotiation Choices with Science Diplomacy
An interview with:
Paul Arthur Berkman
Founder of the Science Diplomacy Center™
United States Fellow of the International Science Council
Associate Director of Science Diplomacy, Harvard-MIT Public Disputes Program
Fellow with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm, ET (US and Canada)
Free and open to the public.
About the talk:
Join us for Part One of a two-part Kelman Seminar series on common-interest building in negotiation. Professor Paul Arthur Berkman will introduce the origins of the field of Science Diplomacy. Berkman sees Science Diplomacy as a ‘language of hope’ incorporating the transdisciplinary methods of the natural sciences, social sciences and Indigenous knowledge. Berkman will show how these methods, when introduced at the start of any negotiation, can inclusively build common interests to help resolve conflicts. Berkman offers that these knowledge systems have evolved over millennia for purposes of decision-making, and involve the six elements of inclusion taught to every child: who, what, when, where, why and how.
Berkman will also share the history of the field of Science Diplomacy starting with the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. He will highlight the research-into-action approach he employed when he co-directed the first formal dialogue between NATO and Russia regarding security in the Arctic. He will also discuss his coordination of the 2023 Global Indigenous Youth Summit on Climate Change (GIYSCC), involving more than 1300 registrants from 112 nations across 88 distinct languages.
About the speaker:
Paul Arthur Berkman is Founder of the Science Diplomacy Center™ in the United States and is a Fellow of the International Science Council. Berkman also is Associate Director of Science Diplomacy in the Harvard-MIT Public Disputes Program as well as a Fellow with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). He wintered in Antarctica on a SCUBA research expedition with Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1981. He became a Visiting Professor at the University of California Los Angeles the following year at the age of 23. In that same year, he began teaching about science diplomacy, which evolved into his 2002 textbook Science into Policy: Global Lessons from Antarctica. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty “with the interests of science and the progress of all mankind” – Berkman convened the Antarctic Treaty Summit in Washington, DC in 2009. The summit led to a joint resolution adopted with unanimous consent in both houses of the United States Congress as well as the first book on Science Diplomacy published by the Smithsonian Institution in 2011. Berkman’s work integrates research into action with inclusion and common-interest building, as elaborated in the Springer book series Informed Decisionmaking for Sustainability. Berkman has been honored with awards in the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Russian Federation, Norway, New Zealand, Japan and France for his international, transdisciplinary and inclusive contributions.
About the Herbert C. Kelman Seminar Series:
The Herbert C. Kelman Seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution series is sponsored by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. The seminar considers ways to strengthen the capacity to prevent, resolve, and transform ethnonational conflicts.
For more information on the Kelman Seminar Series, contact Donna Hicks at dhicks@wcfia.harvard.edu.
