Macro Center
The Center for Macro Projects and Diplomacy fosters the interdisciplinary formulation, design, demonstration and debate of large-scale project proposals that can contribute to human progress through the improvement of world habitat.
With invited leaders, faculty and students concentrating on clearly-defined issues of importance to the world community -- land, water, energy, food supplies, transportation, environment, housing, education, health and heritage -- the Center annually follows through on steps needed to design, display, debate, evaluate, test, and in appropriate cases, deploy undertakings of relevance and urgency.
The Center is inspired by the work of Frank Davidson, best known as co-founder of the English Channel Tunnel Study Group in the 1950s, and participant in large scale undertakings from the U.S. Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s and 1940s, to MIT's Macro-Engineering Research Group from the 1970s to the 1990s. Davidson was awarded a 2003 Honorary Degree from Roger Williams University, and is a member of the university鈥檚 Board of Overseers.
鈥淭he perception that development and conservation are separate endeavors is at the heart of current conflict and violence between cultures. A vision balancing creation and conservation is needed, in projects of a broad and inclusive scale, to provide a way forward in world affairs.鈥
Stephen White
Director, Center for Macro Projects and Diplomacy