About HSP

HSP exists in order to increase the contribution of scholarship to the formation of public policy on issues concerning chemical/biological warfare (CBW) and its underlying technologies. University-based research, publication, other forms of international communication, and training of young people are the means HSP uses to this end. HSP also promotes frameworks of study, both national and international, that bring together scientists and other scholars with officials of governmental and intergovernmental bodies.

Motivating HSP is the urgency of concerns raised by CBW weapons, for these are potential instruments of terror and mass killing whether in the hands of warring nations or of disaffected sub-national groups. If present intergovernmental arms-control and anti-proliferation efforts were to fail, CBW weapons of the kinds developed during the years of East-West cold war could furnish relatively simple means for the attack of people, animals and crops over large areas. Even more menacing, in the longer term, would be a world in which the dual-use nature of new biotechnology was being exploited for the advancement of CBW.

Remedies are needed that are based on an understanding of the weapons and of the political and social contexts that nurture them; remedies that are fashioned in a genuinely international and co-operative manner; remedies that are built on shared interests in domestic and international stability, not on confrontation between North and South. From policy-makers around the world, such remedies demand clear and careful thought, well founded in historical experience and in sensitivity to technological and political change. This is what HSP seeks to stimulate.

Where a particular way forward seems especially promising, HSP is able to concentrate its research, publication and communication resources into a promotional initiative. The current HSP initiative seeks an extension of international criminal law through a new multilateral treaty creating the offence of CBW armament -- an offence over which, as more states join the treaty, an increasingly universal jurisdiction is created. Here is a way of introducing the principle of individual responsibility into the present inter-state regime against CBW and against hostile use of biomedical technologies.

HSP people

There are usually between ten and twenty people on the staff of HSP, some working fulltime, others part-time. They are mostly based at HSP Sussex or HSP Harvard. Some are members of faculty, some are doctoral candidates. Since 1993, an HSP researcher has also been based in the Netherlands, on loan to the Technical Secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is the intergovernmental body headquartered in The Hague to oversee implementation of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. HSP researchers have in addition been based in Brussels and in Geneva, though none are at present. There are two HSP directors, one at Harvard, the other at Sussex. They have been collaborating since 1967 in what later became HSP. The Harvard director teaches and conducts research in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. He is also the Faculty Chair for CBW Studies at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, which is an element of the J F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The Sussex director is a fellow of SPRU -- Science & Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex. HSP is guided by an international Advisory Board.

	Current staff at Harvard Matthew Meselson, Director Barbara Ring, Administrator Sandra Ropper, Researcher
	Current staff at Sussex Julian Perry Robinson, Director Nicholas Dragffy, Researcher Simon Evans, Assistant Archivist Daniel Feakes, Researcher Richard Guthrie, HSP Webmaster and Bulletin producer Caitriona McLeish, Assistant Researcher Tony Randall, Archivist Carolyn Sansbury, Administrator Emmanuelle Tuerlings, Assistant Researcher
	Current staff in The Hague Fiona Tregonning, OPCW/HSP Researcher

HSP Associates

Those listed here as HSP Associates once had and, in most cases, continue to have a close working association with HSP activities. Many are former members of HSP staff.

Brian Balmer (London), former Sussex Researcher
Steven Black (Washington), former Harvard Researcher
Gordon Burck (Washington), former Bulletin Producer
Marie Chevrier (Dallas), former Harvard Researcher
Priyamwada Deshingkar (Delhi), former Sussex Researcher
Treasa Dunworth (Auckland), former Hague Researcher
Amy Gordon (Washington), former Harvard Researcher
Jeanne Guillemin (Cambridge, MA)
Peter Herby (Geneva), former Hague Researcher
Mitslal Kifleyesus, former Brussels Researcher
Lora Lumpe (Oslo/Washington), former Bulletin Producer
Kathryn McLaughlin (Brighton), former Sussex Database Assistant
Pamela Mills, former Hague Researcher
John Parachini (Washington), former HSP Bulletin Publisher
Justin Smith (Washington), former Hague Researcher
Henrietta Wilson (Leeds), former Sussex Researcher

Points of contact

Harvard Sussex Program
SPRU -- Science & Technology Policy Research
Mantell Building
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RF
United Kingdom.

HSP	THE HARVARD SUSSEX PROGRAM ON CBW ARMAMENT AND ARMS LIMITATION

Date of last revision: 6 January 2003 (RG)