The fall 2014 issue of Centerpiece focuses on the Center's recent activities, including a profile on Fellow and cartoonist Shreyas Navare, tributes to three former Fellows who have recently passed away, and a student program update. The feature, “The 2014 Tunisian Election: More than a Secular-Islamist Divide” by Ashley Anderson, examines the recent Tunisian elections. And finally, our annual “Dispatches” highlights the summer research of four Undergraduate Associates who traveled to Beijing, Cape Town, Ghana, Texas, and Peru.
Message from the Executive Director
By Steven B. Bloomfield
From its earliest days, the Center for International Affairs (CFIA) included Fellows, practitioners of international affairs, near the core of its community. Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean McGeorge Bundy stated in a 1962 report on the Center that founding Director Robert Bowie “began this program in the strong conviction that the study of great issues of international affairs requires thoughtful exchange between the academy and the marketplace.”...
The 2014 Tunisian Election: More than a Secular-Islamist Divide
By Ashley Anderson
The completion of Tunisia’s second democratic election on October 26, 2014, marked a watershed moment in the history of Middle Eastern politics. Amidst a litany of Arab Spring “failures”—resulting in state collapse in Libya, civil war in Syria, renewed military rule in Egypt, and autocratic persistence in countries from Bahrain to Morocco—the execution of free and fair elections, and particularly the victory of the secular left over Islamist incumbents has lead many to laud Tunisia’s progress in consolidating the region’s first true democracy.…
Dispatches: Undergraduate Researchers in the Field
Sixteen Harvard College students received summer 2014 travel grants from the Weatherhead Center to support their thesis research on topics related to international affairs. Since their return in August, the Weatherhead Center has encouraged these Undergraduate Associates to take advantage of the Center’s research environment.…
At the Center
 | Centerpiece: Fall 2014, Volume 29 Number 1 | 1017 KB |