Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

[4][5] In 1983 the center launched a research division known as the Program on Nonviolent Sanctions in Conflict and Defense (aka Program on Nonviolent Sanctions, or PNS[6]), which operated as a research division under the framework and policies of the center.

PNS provided grants or fellowships for scholars in residence, as well as conducting seminars and conferences.

[6] The aim of the center is to confront the world's problems, as diagnosed by its founders in their specification of The Program of the Center for International Affairs (Bowie and Kissinger, 1958):[1] Foreign affairs in our era pose unprecedented tasks…Today no region is isolated; none can be ignored; actions and events even in remote places may have immediate worldwide impact…vast forces are reshaping the world with headlong speed.

New nations have emerged and are struggling to survive…Nowhere do traditional attitudes fit the new realities…Thus notions of sovereignty and independence need revision to apply to a world where a nation's level of life or survival may depend as much on the actions of other countries as on its own…The center is the located within Harvard University's Center for Government and International Studies.

[8] Every year, it hosts approximately fifteen Fellows, at least three of whom are from the three major branches of the United States Armed Forces.