Pardee Center

Developing Our Future

By Karine Abalyan

The great problems of our time—like poverty, disease, and climate change—share a common thread, according to international relations and environment expert Adil Najam: they are interdisciplinary, global, and long-term. The challenge, he says, is to view these issues not as isolated studies in economics, medicine, science, or other fields, but to place them in the larger context of human well-being, and, thus, at the crossroads of multiple disciplines, places, and time frames.

“We are in the business of anticipating the trends, of looking at scenarios now that might affect the future.”

Director of Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future since November 2007, Najam hopes to apply this broad, interdisciplinary approach to researching an array of subjects related to human progress and global development. From space exploration to world trade and problems of governance, the Pardee Center gives scholars an opportunity to engage in a novel way of looking at and shaping the world.

• From Sputnik to Space TourismThe last half-century has brought a staggering number of achievements in space research, from the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik I, in 1957 to the introduction of space tourism in 2001.
• How the Giant StridesThree decades ago, mass exports of Chinese cars, washing machines, and computers seemed an unlikely scenario. Known at the time as “a pretty messy agricultural society,” says political economist Kevin Gallagher, China was regarded as a backwater of technological innovation. But the country Napoleon once called a sleeping giant was already beginning to wake up.
• A Center for Future RealityDirector of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future since November 2007, Adil Najam says, “There is a mismatch today between what the biggest problems of our time are and how we are organized to systematically think about these problems.” The Pardee Center’s mission is to tackle that shortcoming by considering the larger themes of society’s global development over a wide range of parameters. And importantly, the goal is to reach policymakers who can make use of scholars’ findings in the everyday world.
• Democracy Builds EconomiesA nation’s long-range development also depends on its type of government, according to Political Science Professor John Gerring, a Faculty Fellow at the Pardee Center, whose research uncovers patterns not readily apparent in previous studies of the subject.