The Challenge and Opportunity of Climate Change for Political Science

Dustin Tingley, Harvard University
Kathryn Sikkink, Harvard Kennedy School

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs is considering supporting a conference to stimulate work on climate change politics by graduate students and young postdoctoral researchers/early assistant professors. This proposal to the Radcliffe Institute is for a follow-on meeting at which specific projects, developed as a result of the Weatherhead meeting, will be presented. Projects may be for joint courses on climate politics, with syllabi; research grant applications; or research designed to lead to publication. This convening will be integrated with the earlier Weatherhead Center conference and will provide incentives for participants at the earlier meeting to move toward well-designed scholarly projects. Crucially, the Radcliffe meeting will include discussions on how these young scholars, as well as more senior researchers, can contribute to engaged scholarship around the politics of climate change. The Radcliffe meeting will also set up a follow-on meeting focused on the intersection of climate politics and relevant learnings from the natural sciences/engineering.