Summary: For this seminar, Ms. Bingen will give a broad tour across the landscape of space security and competition, covering big picture tech trends (particularly commercial trends), the status of Chinese space efforts, warfighting developments, and policy challenges and implications.

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Miho Mazereeuw is an Associate Professor at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, an architect, and a landscape architect. She is the author of Design Before Disaster: Japan's Culture of Preparedness (University of Virginia Press, 2025). She also serves as MIT Climate Mission Director for Empowering Frontline Communities and leads the Urban Risk Lab, which develops strategies for cities to withstand flooding, cyclones, and heat stress. The Lab’s multidisciplinary team conducts fieldwork and community workshops in the U.S. and abroad to develop context-specific resilience solutions.

Eiichi “Eddie” Kato worked in Japan for a diesel engine company and later served as president of a hotel for twenty years. In the immediate aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, he opened the hotel to evacuees; it operated as an emergency shelter, and he personally managed relief efforts there for 70 days. He is a disaster storyteller (kataribe), sharing firsthand experiences of the earthquake to educate and inspire others.

This seminar will be held in E40-496 (Pye Room) and is co-sponsored with MIT-Japan. Lunch will be available. Please RSVP here.

Contact Kate Danahy at kdanahy@mit.edu with any questions.

This event is part of the CIS Global Research & Policy Seminar Series and is co-sponsored by MIT-Japan. Join our mailing list here to learn about upcoming seminars in the series.

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Speaker:

Ambassador John J. Sullivan is the former US deputy secretary of state and former US ambassador to the Russian Federation. His career spans four decades in public service in prominent diplomatic and legal positions under five US presidents. He is a non-resident distinguished senior fellow with the National Security Law Program as well as a partner in Mayer Brown’s Washington DC and New York offices. He co-leads the firm’s National Security practice.

Co-chairs:

Carol Saivetz is a senior fellow in the MIT Security Studies Program at the Center for International Studies (CIS). She is the author and contributing co-editor of books and articles on Soviet and now Russian foreign policy issues.

Elizabeth Wood is Ford International Professor of History at MIT. She is the author most recently of Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine as well as articles on Vladimir Putin, the political cult of WWII, right-wing populism in Russia and Turkey, and US-Russian Partnerships in Science. She is the faculty director of the Center’s MIT-Ukraine Program and co-faculty director of the MIT-Eurasia Program.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for International Studies, the MIT-Eurasia Program, and the MIT Security Studies Program (SSP).

This is a hybrid event.

This event is part of our Focus on Eurasia speaker series. Each semester, the series brings together the MIT community and the general public to investigate ongoing issues in Eurasian domestic and foreign policy. Join our mailing list here to learn about upcoming seminars in the series.

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Despite facing immense challenges—including tsunami risk mitigation, recovery from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, and ongoing population decline—Tohoku has continued to move forward. This event brings together inspiring individuals and organizations who remain deeply committed to the region’s revitalization. Through a panel discussion, speakers will share initiatives ranging from reimagining tourism and strengthening STEM education to advancing environmental monitoring and creating new business opportunities.

Join us for a meaningful conversation that highlights hard-won progress and explores practical lessons for building resilience and achieving long-term recovery from both natural and human-made disasters.

5:00 – 6:30PM: Panel Discussion

Moderator: Christine Pilcavage (MIT, MISTI, MIT-Japan Program)

Eiichi Kato (Representative of Tourism Rias, Kataribe storyteller and former CEO of Hotel BOYO, Kesennuma): Rebuilding tourism industry and engaging after 3.11

Miho Mazereeuw (MIT, Architecture): Building a framework to design/prepare for next disasters

Marwa AlAlawi (MIT, MechE, PhD candidate): Reimagining STEM education in rural regions

Haruko Wainwright (MIT, NSE/CEE): Informing environmental recovery from a nuclear disaster through data science

Sho Hayashi (Fukushima Bu): Creating new opportunities in Fukushima

6:30 – 7:15PM: Light reception and further discussion

Please RSVP HERE

This is event is co-sponsored by Department of Nuclear Science and MIT-Japan Program

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Summary: For this seminar, Alexandra Bell will discuss recent developments in nuclear proliferation, arms control, and strategy. Many in the nuclear policy community now say we are at the start of a third nuclear age. What this age will look like is a matter of debate. What is clear is that academics, experts, and policy makers thinking about the future of nonproliferation, arms control, deterrence, and disarmament policy will face new and unprecedented challenges. They will need to understand how other existential risks—climate change and emerging disruptive technologies that include synthetic biology and artificial intelligence, among others—will affect their work, for good and for bad. Further, given that a common long-term consensus about the future of nuclear weapons will take time and effort to forge, the short-term common goal should be the prevention of nuclear war. The question that then follows is whether the system of controls we have created to prevent nuclear war is fit for purpose or whether our luck will finally run out.

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Søren Elbech is the Chief Risk Officer at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). He previously served as Managing Director and Global Head of Supranational Institutions at J.P. Morgan in New York (2019–2023) and was the first Director General/Treasurer of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in Beijing (2016–2019). Earlier, he was a Senior Vice President at a global wind-energy firm and served as IDB Treasurer and Chief of the Treasury Division in the Finance Department. He holds Executive MBAs from ESCP Business School (Paris) and BI Norwegian School of Management (Oslo).

This seminar will be held in E40-496 (Pye Room). Lunch will be available. Please RSVP here.

Contact Kate Danahy at kdanahy@mit.edu with any questions.

This event is part of the CIS Global Research & Policy Seminar Series. Join our mailing list here to learn about upcoming seminars in the series.

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Summary: Polarization is a defining feature of politics in the United States and many other democracies. Yet although there is much research focusing on the effects of polarization on domestic politics, little is known about how polarization influences international cooperation and conflict. Myrick argues that polarization reshapes the nature of constraints on democratic leaders, which in turn erodes the advantages democracies have in foreign affairs. Drawing on a range of evidence, including cross-national analyses, observational and experimental public opinion research, descriptive data on the behavior of politicians, and interviews with policymakers, Myrick traces the pathways by which polarization undermines each of the democratic advantages. Turning to the case of contemporary US foreign policy, Myrick shows that as its political leaders become less responsive to the public and less accountable to political opposition, the United States loses both reliability as an ally and credibility as an adversary.

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Moderator: John Deutch is an American civil servant and physical chemist. He was the United States deputy secretary of defense from 1994 to 1995 and director of Central Intelligence from May 10, 1995, until December 15, 1996. He is an emeritus Institute Professor at MIT.

Free & open to the public.
A recording will be posted on YouTube following the event.

Starr Forums, our flagship public event series, brings to campus leading academics, policymakers, and journalists to discuss pressing issues in the world of international relations. Sign up for Starr Forum emails to get notified about upcoming events.

A full listing of Starr Forums is available here.

MIT is committed to providing an environment that is accessible to individuals with disabilities. If you need a disability related accommodation to attend or have other questions, please contact us at starrforum@mit.edu.

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Daniel Twining, PhD, is President of the International Republican Institute, one of the National Endowment for Democracy’s core institutes advancing freedom and democracy in more than 100 countries worldwide. Previously, Dr. Twining was Counselor to the President and Director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund; a member of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s Policy Planning Staff handling Asia; and foreign policy advisor to U.S. Senator John McCain. Among his many other roles, he taught at Georgetown University, was an Associate of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, served on the Bush Institute’s Advisory Council and Microsoft’s Human Rights Advisory Council, and was a columnist for Foreign Policy and Nikkei. A graduate of the University of Virginia, he earned his MPhil and DPhil at Oxford University.

This seminar will be held in E40-496 (Pye Room). Lunch will be available. Please RSVP here.

Contact Kate Danahy at kdanahy@mit.edu with any questions.

This event is part of the CIS Global Research & Policy Seminar Series. Join our mailing list here to learn about upcoming seminars in the series.

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Summary: States pursue hegemony to achieve security. Does it work? Integrating psychological research on power with classical realist thought on security expectations, Professor Pomeroy will demonstrate in this seminar that rising power increases leaders' expectations of security. These heightened expectations of security make previously tolerable threats feel more existential. Despite material gains in security, the sense of power paradoxically makes leaders feel less secure. Historical evidence from the United States' nineteenth century rise to regional hegemony supports this expectation. Power is useful for many objectives. The sense of security is not one of them.

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Join us for a timely discussion with the MIT Science Policy Review as we explore the security of dual-use technology development, including:

How can we balance rapid technological progress with adequate research and security standards?

What opportunities and risks do biotechnology and AI tools pose in dual-use contexts?

How can we protect research openness and international collaboration while ensuring national security?

This seminar will be held in E40-496 (Pye Room). Lunch will be available. Please RSVP here.

Contact Kate Danahy at kdanahy@mit.edu with any questions.

This event is part of the CIS Global Research & Policy Seminar Series and is co-sponsored by the MIT Science Policy Review. Join our mailing list here to learn about upcoming seminars in the series.

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Summary: The U.S. military's approach to accountability overemphasizes individual actions and decisions rather than institutional factors. As a result, this often leads to institutional failures of accountability through an insufficient acknowledgment of the military's role in poor outcomes, an inadequate investigation and assessment of institutional problems, and consequently, too little reform to address these issues. This paper offers a novel framework of institutional accountability and uses that to examine two contemporary cases: the U.S. military's failures in the war in Afghanistan and its struggle to meaningfully combat sexual assault and sexual harassment within the ranks.

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Christina L. Davis is the Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics in the Department of Government and Director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University. She studies the politics and foreign policy of Japan, East Asia, and international organizations with a focus on trade policy. She is the author of Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International Organizations (Princeton University Press, 2023) and Why Adjudicate? Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO (Princeton University Press, 2012), as well as numerous other publications in leading journals.

This seminar will be held in E40-496 (Pye Room) and is brought to you by CIS and Political Science's International Political Economy Speaker Series. Lunch will be available. Please RSVP here.

Contact Kate Danahy at kdanahy@mit.edu with any questions.

This event is part of the CIS Global Research & Policy Seminar Series. Join our mailing list here to learn about upcoming seminars in the series.

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