In the 21st century, leaders across the world and in multiple sectors face an expanding array of existential and catastrophic risks. Some are long-standing and well known, such as nuclear proliferation; others are novel and rapidly developing, such as AI-enabled biological threats. Policy makers must be able to identify, prevent, and manage these challenges despite uncertainty about their full potential, the absence of complete or reliable information, and the pressures of domestic politics, commercial incentives, international dynamics, and the media landscape.
This course is designed to equip students with the mindset and toolkit to anticipate, assess, and respond to existing and emerging threats to homeland and global security. Such developments have the potential to cause massive disruptions to populations and societies, including severe human harm, substantial economic damage, governmental instability, and violent conflict. Given the current pace of change, the course will highlight how advances in science and technology shape both the ability and the responsibility to predict, evaluate, and respond to new threats. Students will consider how to develop policy approaches to governing emerging technologies given the paradox that the very innovation that drives revolutionary discoveries may also create new risks—and the same tools that make those threats so dangerous may be essential to countering them.
In addition to offering insights into the core substantive dilemmas of these risks, the course will focus on meeting the associated leadership challenges. It will build the knowledge and skills necessary to anticipate problems of consequence, generate domestic and international strategies to prevent or mitigate them, and respond effectively when full prevention is not possible. The frameworks and practice will be largely based on the American system but will be relevant to other countries and contexts.
The classroom experience will include faculty-led lectures and discussion, guest speakers, and active experiential learning. Students will participate in simulations of high-level policy development, decision making, and communications. Assessments in the form of individual and group policy analysis assignments will be required throughout the semester.
Harvard Kennedy School students will receive priority enrollment. Cross-registration is encouraged based on available space in the classroom. Students from across the University are encouraged to apply, including Harvard College, Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Students interested in cross-registering should submit an application (link available on Canvas site), including a resume and brief paragraph about their interest in taking the class. They should simultaneously petition to cross-register following the established cross-registration process. Once the HKS add/drop period opens, approval of cross-registration requests will begin promptly.