Diplomacy, Sustainability Expert to Lead Pardee Center

International diplomacy and development expert Adil Najam, who taught at Boston University from 1997 to 2003, returns to the University this fall as the new director of the Frederick Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. Najam’s appointment, which includes professorships in the College of Arts and Sciences departments of international relations and geography and environment, was approved at the Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, November 13. He joins BU and the Pardee Center effective immediately.

Najam comes back to BU, where he was a CAS assistant professor of international relations and environmental policy, after a stint as an associate professor of international negotiation and diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He was a coauthor of the United Nations climate change report published last March. His other research interests include sustainable development, Muslim and South Asian politics, environmental politics in developing countries, and philanthropy among immigrant communities in the United States.

“Adil’s broad skills are well aligned with the focus of the center: the future of human development,” says Provost David K. Campbell. “He’s very experienced in international negotiation and in sustainable development and in human development and international security. He’s involved in international environmental politics, including both governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and he’s also aware of the importance of religious and faith-based issues of human development. These are all issues that will affect the future.”

Najam holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore, Pakistan, and master’s degrees in civil and environmental engineering and in technology and policy, as well as a doctorate in international environmental policy, from MIT. His books include 2002’s Civic Entrepreneurship; 2005’s Global Environmental Governance; and three books this year: Portrait of a Giving Community: Philanthropy by the Pakistani-American Diaspora, Trade and Environment: A Resource Book, and Southern Visions on Trade and Sustainable Development.

A focus on longer-term global policy problems — especially those related to human well-being and sustainable human development in the developing world — has been the hallmark of Najam’s work. He contributed to Pakistan’s first environmental policy document, as well as to the country’s report to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, has worked closely with governments and civil society in both industrialized and developing countries, and regularly collaborates with the United Nations. For eight years he has been a coordinating lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that recently shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

Najam’s appointment coincides with a period of planned growth and expansion at the Pardee Center, which was established in 2000 by a $5 million gift from Frederick S. Pardee (SMG’54, GSM’54), who in 2003 doubled his endowment with an additional $5 million. Since its founding, the center has sponsored an annual Visiting Professors lecture series, which has brought to campus Nobel Laureates Amartya Sen and Murray Gell-Mann, and more recently, demographer Joel Cohen, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Populations at New York’s Rockefeller University, who spoke on The Human Population: Past, or Passing, or to Come. Next year’s lecture series, at a date to be determined, will be given by Simon Levin, the Moffett Professor of Biology in the department of ecology and evolution at Princeton University and recipient of the 2005 Kyoto Prize in Basic Science.

The center, previously led by David Fromkin, a CAS professor of international relations, also hosts semiannual conferences on a range of topics, such as democracy and human development, advances in genomics and computer science, and global health.

“It’s wonderful to learn Adil is returning to BU to build upon and enhance the combined conference, lecture, and research publications legacy carefully nurtured by David Fromkin during the Pardee Center’s inaugural years,” says Pardee. “I look forward to the high energy and enthusiasm Adil brings to further interdisciplinary undertakings directed toward multinational, regional, and global analysis of the human condition over upcoming generations. Anticipating, facilitating, and enhancing patterns of potential human progress, with particular attention to the next 35 to 200 years are — I believe, hope, and dream — what the center is all about.”   

Under Najam’s leadership, Campbell says, the Pardee Center will work to expand its research agenda in collaboration with BU faculty members and develop additional undergraduate and graduate research opportunities. To further the center’s development, Pardee has pledged $500,000 for center programming for fiscal year 2008; the University will provide an additional $200,000 for resources and expansion. Najam’s challenge, Campbell says, will be to expand the scope of the center’s initiatives while continuing the very successful programs currently in place.

“I am delighted to return to Boston University, and it is particularly heartening to be able to return to lead the Pardee Center,” Najam says. “I look forward to continuing its tradition of encouraging innovative, integrative, interdisciplinary, and long-term thinking. Ultimately, we hope it will help create a new generation of scholars and researchers who are prepared to preempt not only the great challenges of today but also those of tomorrow.”

Jessica Ullian can be reached at jullian@bu.edu.