After four years as an associate professor of international negotiation and diplomacy at the Fletcher School, Adil Najam is returning to Boston University to accept an endowed-chair professorship and a leadership position.
"Professor Najam's new post at Boston University represents a tremendous career opportunity and we wish him well in his professional pursuits," Fletcher Dean Stephen Bosworth said in an e-mail. "He is a well-respected member of the Fletcher community and has made a lasting impact here."
Najam, a leader in international environmental studies and a member of Al Gore's Noble Peace Prize-winning team, will assume BU's Fredrick S. Pardee Endowed Chair for Global Public Policy and serve as the director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Term Future. He will also hold a tenured full-professor position in BU's Department of International Relations and Department of Geography and Environment.
"The opportunity at BU seemed like the obvious next thing for me to do. [Being director of the Pardee Center] seemed like a good fit to them and to me," said Najam, who taught at BU from 1997 to 2003, in an email. "It's an opportunity that excited me and will allow me to do even more of the interdisciplinary, policy-relevant research that I focus on."
Established in 2000 by a $5-million gift from Frederick S. Pardee, the Pardee Center is a forum for the study of the forces that will shape the world in the next 35 to 200 years. In 2003, Pardee donated an additional $5 million to the center.
Najam officially assumed his position as director of the Pardee Center on Nov. 13. As director, he will manage and help to expand an institution at a time when its resources are expected to increase. He also plans to design an innovative inter-disciplinary program of research at a university-wide level.
BU's greater research opportunities swayed him to leave Tufts.
"The real difference [between my position at Fletcher and at BU] is that I will have significant resources and responsibility to build a collaborative, inter-disciplinary, policy-focused program of research," Najam said.
Erik Goldstein, the chair of BU's Department of International Relations and a 1978 Tufts alum, expressed excitement over Najam's return.
"We're very excited that Professor Najam will be coming to Boston University," Goldstein said. "He has a great reputation as a teacher and as a leading figure in international environmental policy. We expect him to provide dynamically for the Pardee Center."
While at Fletcher, Najam amassed an impressive record of accomplishments awards. In his first year of teaching, he was bestowed with the Paddock Award, which Fletcher's Student Council gives each year to an outstanding faculty member. This accolade was "a surprise, an honor and a privilege that I will always cherish," Najam said. This year, Najam was part the Nobel Peace Prize-winning team from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
He has also given several keynote addresses, including one to environmental ministers from around the world prior to the 2005 climate change negotiations in Montreal, and has written three books this year alone.
Najam noted that he was able to pursue many of these opportunities because of Fletcher.
"Fletcher is ... a place that values political involvement," he said. "My own work has been and will remain at the interface of policy and scholarship. Fletcher has allowed me to do this - not just allowed, but also encouraged me to take this path. For that I will remain thankful."
Environmental Policy Professor William Moomaw served as Najam's mentor upon the latter's arrival at Fletcher in 2003. Both men worked on the IPCC, where they helped write separate chapters for the panel's report, which was published in March. "Adil is quite a phenomenon," Moomaw said. "His work is both academic and has a real effect in international relations.
"Because Fletcher is very small, there aren't the same amounts of opportunities here as there are at Boston University," Moomaw added. "Anil has the opportunity to be immediately tenured at a higher rank at BU."
As an associate professor, Najam did not have tenure at Fletcher.
As for the future of Fletcher's program, Bosworth said that international negotiation and conflict resolution is "an important area of study ... and will remain as a core competency in the school's curriculum."
Although Najam already assumed his new position as director of the Pardee Center, he has agreed to teach a course at Fletcher this spring as he eases into his work at BU, and while Fletcher's administration searches for a replacement.
"He's done everything he can to minimize the effects of his departure," Moomaw said.
"Tufts and Fletcher have been immensely nourishing and supportive places for me," Najam said. "[They are] communities that I will continue to consider myself a part of and I hope they will too. I am leaving Fletcher but I hope to remain connected to the Tufts community."
