And here is some background on Harlan Cleveland. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 16 Nov 1997 20:52:07 -0800 From: Brooks Jordan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [isg] Contribution from Harlan Cleveland #1 Dear Participants, We would like to begin our inquiry this week by sharing with you some thoughts about information from Harlan Cleveland, President of the World Academy of Art and Science. With Harlan's guidance, we have chosen two sections from his booklet "Leadership and the Information Revolution" (1997). In the first, he discusses the special properties of information. In the second, he poses some major questions of our time that these information properties might help us find new answers to. We have sent the sections as a separate message. Harlan wrote "Leadership and the Information Revolution" based on a series of talks he gave at the United Nations University's commencement of its new International Leadership Academy, hosted by the Government of Jordan in Amman. A special thank you to Harlan for helping us broaden and deepen our conversation on the Information Society and Governance. Please take a few moments to read about Harlan Cleveland and The World Academy of Art and Science. About Harlan Cleveland Harlan Cleveland, political scientist and public executive, is President of the World Academy of Art and Science. A Princeton University graduate in 1938, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in the late 1930's; an economic warfare specialist (in Washington, DC) and United Nations relief and rehabilitation administrator (in Italy and China) in the 1940's. In 1948 he joined the Economic Cooperation Administration, where he served as Director of the China Aid Program, then developed and managed U.S. aid to eight East Asian countries, and later became (as Assistant Director for Europe of the Mutual Security Agency) the Washington based supervisor of the Marshall Plan for European recovery in its fourth year, 1952. In early 1953 he left Washington to become executive editor, and later also publisher, of "The Reporter" magazine. In 1956 he was appointed dean of the Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He was a delegate from the State of New York to the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. During the 1960's Harlan Cleveland served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in the administration of President John F. Kennedy, and in 1965 was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson as U.S. Ambassador to NATO, serving in that post also under President Richard Nixon until May 1969. From 1969 to 1974 he was President of the University of Hawaii, of which he is now President Emeritus. From 1974 to 1980 he developed and directed the Program in International Affairs of the Aspen Institute, with headquarters both in Princeton, New Jersey, and in Aspen, Colorado. During 1977-78 he was also chairman of the U.S. Weather Modification Advisory Board. In 1979 he served for one semester as the Distinguished Visiting Tom Slick Professor of World Peace at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. During the 1980's, he served as the founding dean of the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, a graduate school, research institute, and one of the nation's early centers for leadership education. He concurrently served two three-year terms as Trustee-at-Large of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. He retired in 1988 as Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, where he still has an office in the Humphrey Center. Professor Cleveland has been a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science since 1977, and in 1991 became its president, a position he still holds. In 1994 he hosted in Minneapolis, preceded by four international workshops, a major gathering of the World Academy Fellows on "The Governance of Diversity." Also in 1994, he was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors of VITA (Volunteers in Technical Assistance), while it was planning the first operational low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite designed to serve the two-thirds of the world's population still "beyond the last telephone pole." He is now Honorary Chairman of VITA. Harlan Cleveland has authored hundreds of magazine and journal articles, and eleven books, mostly on executive leadership and world affairs. The latest is "Birth of a New World: An Open Moment for International Leadership (1993). Other recent books include "The Knowledge Executive: Leadership in an Information Society" (1985, republished in paperback 1989), and "The Global Commons: Policy for the Planet (1990). From 1987 to 1993 he wrote a fortnightly column on world affairs for the "Star Tribune," Newspaper of the Twin Cities. About The World Academy of Art and Science The World Academy of Art and Science was established in 1960 as a non-official network of not more than 500 individual Fellows from diverse cultures, nationalities, and intellectual disciplines, "chosen for eminence in art, the natural and social sciences, and the humanities." Its activities focus on "the social consequences and policy implications of knowledge." The spirit of the Academy can be expressed in the words of Albert Einstein: "The creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind." Scientific discovery and technological innovation keep developing instruments of unparalleled power for fulfillment or destruction. We humans, more and more, are taking into our own hands the future evolution of our bodies, our minds, the civilizations we create, and the very planet we inhabit. So it is imperative that we guide what we do by what we know, and what we know by what we value. To this end the Academy serves as a forum for reflective scientists, artists, scholars, and practitioners of public affairs to discuss the vital opportunities of humankind, independent of political boundaries or limits, whether spiritual or physical -- a forum where these opportunities can be discussed objectively, constructively, scientifically, in global perspective, and free from vested interests or regional attachments. --------------------------------------------------------------------- IPTS/JRC Mailing list service - European Commission Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] for assistance if needed
