Paul Arthur Berkman

After wintering in Antarctica on a research expedition with Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1981, Paul Arthur Berkman became a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles the following year. He travelled to all 7 continents before the age of 30, which led to the development of his textbook Science into Policy: Global Lessons from Antarctica.

As a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar, Professor Berkman chaired the Antarctic Treaty Summit at the Smithsonian Institution, resulting in the first book on science diplomacy, as well as a Congressional Resolution adopted with unanimous consent by the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate. The following year, applying skills of science diplomacy, he co-directed the first formal dialogue between NATO and Russia regarding environmental security in the Arctic Ocean.

Professor Berkman joined Tufts University in 2015, until 2020, at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he founded the world’s first science diplomacy centre in an academic institution. In 2021-2022, he also served as Director of the Science Diplomacy Center at MGIMO University in Moscow, creating a unique position to build common interests among allies and adversaries. This objective was explicit throughout his coordinating the Arctic Options / Pan-Arctic Options projects from 2013 to 2022 with support from national science agencies in the United States, Russian Federation, Norway, France, China, and Canada. Professor Berkman now serves as the President of the Science Diplomacy Center™, which he founded in 2022 as a nonprofit in the United States.

Professor Berkman is also a Faculty Associate with the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School and Associate Director of Science Diplomacy in the Harvard-MIT Public Disputes Program, as well as an Associated Fellow with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. Additionally, Professor Berkman is senior editor of the Springer book series Informed Decision Making for Sustainability.

Professor Berkman has been honoured with awards in the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Russian Federation, Norway, New Zealand and Japan, including as the Fulbright Arctic Chair 2021-2022 from the United States Department of State and Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs awarded him the Fulbright Arctic Chair 2021-2022. In 2023, Professor Berkman also was recognized for, the Deepest Dive Through an Ice Hole (in Antarctica, in 1981) by the Guinness World Records, which acknowledged his lifelong journey, “with the interests of science and the progress of all mankind.”

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