Social Science Research Council

AN INTERVIEW WITH LUKAS HAYNES OF THE MACARTHUR FOUNDATION
By Elana Zilberg and Ron West

Introduction

The following transcript is drawn from an interview with Lukas Haynes, Program Officer in the International Peace and Security Area of the Program on Global Security and Sustainability of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The SSRC's Global Security and Cooperation Program's fellows program is, as were the meetings in Moscow, made possible by the generous support of the MacArthur Foundation.

The MacArthur Foundation's grantmaking in this area includes generating the scientific and technical knowledge and policy engagement needed to reduce the global danger posed by weapons of mass destruction. To achieve this goal, the Foundation seeks to strengthen the community of scientists and security experts, outside of government, who can offer independent analysis of the technical aspects and consequences of new developments in international security. It also supports policy research and dissemination efforts to move new ideas into the policymaking discussion (See the MacArthur Foundation website).

The interview with Lukas Haynes (H) was conducted in Moscow by two GSC professional fellows, Ronald West (W) and Elana Zilberg (Z). Given the GSC's focus and their own research interests, the fellows were interested to learn more about the MacArthur Foundation's investment in human security and cooperation issues.

Interview

W: I understand that MacArthur has an office in Russia.

H: It is headquartered in Chicago and has an office in Moscow, and elsewhere abroad including Nigeria, India, and Mexico. MacArthur really defines itself, if not as a global institution, then a globalizing institution, trying to invest deeper and develop long term knowledge and connections in these places. The selection of those offices and deep engagement in those countries, has a lot to do with their regional power and potential for economic development and democratization and spreading values around the rule of law, human and reproductive rights, and conservation that will emanate out in those regions and hopefully help shape the future of those regions.

Z: Can you tell us a bit more about what you understand the notion of collaboration between researchers and practitioners to entail?

H: That's a tough question. Collaboration is easy to say and hard to do, easy to talk about and hard to define. In the various grants-the individual grant and research programs we support-we try to support and encourage collaboration. But we don't bring a particular model to bear. We're open to all forms, and especially collaborations where you're involving researchers in developing North-South partnerships. We hope that there's a degree of spontaneity and obviously an equal partnership. I think in the past there has been a tendency for primarily scholars in developed country institutions to seek collaboration. We're also interested in understanding the origins of collaboration, the sources of collaboration and the experience of collaboration, because I think there are probably as many experiences, for better or worse, as there are forms.

W: How does MacArthur evaluate work products of this community of scholars?

H: Another hard question. It is my view that foundations generally don't engage in deep analytical study of the products, the scholarly products that emerge from their investments. So a better indicator of the outcome of the medium to long term programs like this is simply the number of individuals who end up in a particular academic or NGO setting, the links that they have with their counterparts in other settings, and the exposure that their work gets. We rely to a great extent on grantees like the SSRC to keep us informed about the works of the scholars and fellows that are supported and the collaborations that are formed and what they amount to. But that's one of the hardest parts of philanthropy--actually measuring your outcomes qualitatively. We get all sorts of quantitative measurements, but how does a university measure the outcome of its investment in students? That will always be a difficult task intellectually.

Z: What are the other components of MacArthur's Global Security and Sustainability program?

H: It has several core areas: Conservation and sustainable development, population and reproductive health, and an area we call Global Challenges, which invests in human rights work and is concerned with the economic or developmental impact of globalization. There are a lot of theories about globalization but we feel that there's an inadequate supply of data. I work with Kennette Benedict in the International Peace and Security area. She's the director and was involved in the origins of this program. Then there's also a program, an Initiative in the Russian Federation and Post-Soviet States. Beyond that we also have an individual research and writing competition, which supports individual and two person research projects, book writing projects primarily. That's an annual competition. The deadlines are in February and we make the decisions in September and October. So it's quite a diverse, quite a varied, comprehensive program. And then there are various other initiatives. For example, the Foundation has established an Africa Task Group, a cross-program initiative bringing together human rights, population, and conservation concerns. It has an initiative on higher education in Nigeria to support intellectual infrastructure. In Russia, we support universities, scholarly infrastructure, and human rights NGOs. We also have a research and writing competition in Russia, which is, I think, one of the few sources of support for individual researchers there.

W: Can you describe what sort of influence or input the regional offices have in terms of the global strategy of MacArthur or its funding priorities?

H: The regional offices? I think the regions have enormous impact and enormous responsibility. That's because many are working in areas where there isn't an established philanthropic sector, or where there's a limited philanthropic sector. I think there's a substantial burden on American foundations to support civil society, education, research, training, analysis, and so there's tremendous expectation when MacArthur puts up its sign. But they're involved in program strategy development from the very beginning and obviously the face-to-face work on the ground. Generally, the regional offices take the lead on the reception of proposals and making recommendations back to Chicago and explaining or contextualizing grant recommendations for the board of directors, which meets four times a year. I want to emphasize, based on having just visited our Moscow office that it's an amazing job they do, given the needs of a country like this, and the civil society's ambitions and aspirations. I think there's just no end to the inquiries that they get and obviously there are great limits on what they can fund.

Z: It would seem that MacArthur has its own broader notion of security, since you link security to sustainability. Could you elaborate on that linkage?

H: Well, I think, depending on who you ask, the MacArthur program on Global Security and Sustainability would be considered a rather progressive program in addressing a variety of global problems that it believes all have direct bearing on the security of peoples and nations. I think one thing the Foundation tried to do over a period of time was to support an expansion of the concepts that pertained to security, expanding the definition and the intellectual scope of security studies. I wasn't with the Foundation when that objective was being pursued, so I can say without taking credit that I think the Foundation can feel good about playing some role in expanding that definition and helping to spread the notion of human security and to open up this agenda. But those are still disputed concepts and notions and battles are still raging in various academic settings. So I think there's still quite a burden on individual researchers to demonstrate the linkages to security and the potential applications of their work to promoting global security. A more eloquent statement of our mission can be found at the MacArthur Foundation website, but I think there's a constant effort within the program to understand how supporting various programs and grantees relate across the program, for supporting linkages and collaborations within the universe of projects and institutions that we support. And that's an ongoing learning process and a process of reflection, and depends on various peers, personnel and intellectual influences that are at work within a foundation at any one time. The burden or the balance probably changes in subtle ways. We're actually in the process right now of evaluating our strategy and our priorities in the International Peace and Security Area, which has traditionally been the area perceived as most directly related to the promotion of international security.

W: If you have any, what are your own research interests?

H: Well, I've actually come through a number of incarnations. I've always had a great interest in diplomatic history and did some serious research on the origin of the post-war system, especially as it related to efforts in the 1990's to reinvigorate multilateralism at the United Nations. Then in the mid-'90s, I got involved in direct work in the Balkans and West Africa where NGOs, UN agencies and national governments were trying to end war, and through multilateral intervention, turn the Balkans and Sierra Leona and Liberia in the direction of post war reconstruction. And then I went back to teaching, briefly--international relations theory and international organizations. That gave me a chance to step back and look at trends in the 1990s. Then I had an opportunity to work in government, where you're very much concerned with the day-to-day implementation of policy and the modification and transformation of policy in particular places. From there I went to an interdisciplinary research center at the Kennedy School of Government and did some writing, bringing together a lot of different experiences from academic and field research and government. Then after 9/11, I had my own sort of epiphany that there are some very, very scary problems related to the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons and the ambitions of terrorists with global ambitions. The potential prospect of catastrophic terrorism really gripped me and that's something that our area at the MacArthur Foundation is quite concerned with limiting: The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and supporting efforts at non-proliferation and arms reduction. So this is a set of issues that I had not been working on but it's incredibly complex. There's a role for states and non-state actors. Given the changes brought about by global transformations and a new international security landscape in the wake of 9/11, there's no limit to the intellectual stimulation, but the reason I went to work for the Foundation is, I hope, that we can cotribute in some measurable, meaningful, and substantial way to reducing the nuclear danger.

Z: Do you think 9/11 has shifted the landscape and the priorities in the philanthropic and foundation community along those lines?

H: No, I think it's too early to tell. I think the foundation community in the U.S. was very responsive in supporting quite an array of responses to 9/11 as far as research into causes and sources, promoting the protection of civil liberties, contributing to public education and reporting abroad on the international response to 9/11 and US policy in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and now Iraq. So I think, the reorientation, if there will be one that's substantial, that's fundamental, has yet to take place and that a lot of foundations are in the process of consulting, reflecting, asking grantees what they think directions are going to be, and asking tough questions. There's always a tension between wanting to respond to the short-term policy trend, and recognizing the limits of philanthropic support and investment. There are many who feel that what foundations do best is invest in long term cultivation of research agendas and scholarly communities and in the development of the civil society sector and of a critical mass of organizations working in a given area. So there's a lot of thinking that still needs to be done and it's still changing. The U.S. response to 9/11 is very much a moving target. That's an unfortunate choice of words.

Lukas Haynes joined MacArthur after serving as director of the Fellows Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. Prior to that, he served on the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State as speechwriter to then Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. From 1996 to 1997, Haynes was OXFAM's regional strategy adviser in Bosnia-Herzegovina and then Sierra Leone and Liberia. Haynes earned his undergraduate degree from the College of William & Mary and a master's in international relations from the University of Oxford.

Ron West is an independent consultant, who has designed, managed and implemented programs that promote the development of national justice system institutions at the local level in East Timor and the Philippines. He served as a United Nations Civilian Police Officer in Haiti, where he was Assistant Commander of Force for the Central Department. Prior to joining the mission in Haiti, Mr. West was a United States Park Police Officer in San Francisco, California working in the patrol and narcotics branches of that department in addition to field training new officers. He received his M.A. in International Relations from New York University and a B.A. in Political Science and History from Rutgers University.

Elana Zilberg was born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe. She received her BA in the Plan II Honors Program from the University of Texas at Austin in 1985. In 1988, she moved to Los Angeles to take up a fellowship in public policy and affairs with the CORO Foundation of Southern California. From 1989-1992, she worked with the Central American immigrant and human rights organization, El Rescate. She has worked as a consultant and researcher on a number of immigration studies with such entities as the Salvadoran National Foundation for Development, Salvadoran Association of Los Angeles, the Transnational Communities Project (Princeton and UC Davis), the Center for Social Work Research (UT Austin), Central America 2020 (a consortium of the Center for Latin American Studies, Florida International University, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the Institute for Iberamerican Studies). She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2002. She is currently on leave of absence from the University of California San Diego, where is she is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication, and affiliated with the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies as well as the California Cultures Project.