US Secretary of State John Kerry strongly condemned the breakdown of the recent ceasefire in Syria before a meeting of the “Quintet” foreign ministers at Tufts University on Saturday. “One thing I think all of us join in saying, and I’m going to make this clear: What is happening in Aleppo today is unacceptable. And […]

By Ivan Rahman, MPP 2018 On September 13th, over 100 students packed the JFK Jr. Forum. Okendo Lewis-Gayle, HKS Election Chair, stood tall, in a beige suit behind the podium. He commenced the Kennedy School Student Government (KSSG) election session of 2016. With a radiant smile, he began the night by introducing the candidates competing […]

BY GRANT TUDOR September 25 marks the first anniversary of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): a list of global ambitions for improving the state of things. The first is to “end poverty.” The goal’s various targets, which intend to elaborate on what exactly is meant by ending poverty, tell us that by 2030 all […]

BY SARAH TESAR AND PITICHOKE CHULAPAMORNSRI The people of San Francisco, hoping to transform their city into a bustling economic metropolis, built the Golden Gate Bridge to connect two previously divided urban areas. During the peak of the Great Depression, the city issued forty-year municipal bonds that paid 5% interest in order to finance the […]

By Sasha Ramani, MPP 2018 Hong Kong’s Legislative election on September 4th saw newindependence-leaning candidates winning seats in the territory’s Legislative Council (LegCo). Traditionally, Hong Kong’s politics have been divided among the pro-Beijing “Establishment” camp and the pan-Democratic camp. This election saw the new “localist” camp take 6 out of 70 LegCo seats;/. Localists are […]

BY ANSHUL PACHOURI The year 2016 marks an important milestone in India’s innovation story. First, India’s rank in the global innovation index improved quite significantly from 81st position in 2015 to 66th position in 2016. Second, the country also launched its flagship program Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) to advance its national innovation ecosystem under the […]

BY NIKOLAS OTT AND HUGO ZYLBERBERG Practical yet effective digital data regulations are an enormous policy challenge. Both in the United States and in Europe, businesses, privacy-advocacy groups, and government all have competing interests, and they are struggling to find a workable solution. Meanwhile, machines are tracking their users in an ever-increasing number of ways. […]

By David Duesing, MPP 2018 On Monday, September 12, the JFK Jr. Forum received the Academy Award-winning director, screenwriter and producer Oliver Stone in a conversation moderated by a man similarly distinguished within his field, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Ron Suskind. Stone, the screenplay writer of works such as Scarface and director of myriad […]

In this personal essay, Janiece Mackey discusses how she navigated the complexities of race within the educational context. Now, having progressed from student to teacher, she promotes civic engagement and intersectional empowerment among underserved youth. Janiece’s story  serves as a precursory example of the Black student and educator experience, discussed in depth in our 2016 feature of “The Politics of […]

BY JOE LEE For decades, Times Square was severely congested, prone to pedestrian accidents, and lacking spaces to rest. In 2008, New York City sought to tackle these problems by mapping the diversity and number of human activities that occurred there. It traced walking patterns to identify “pedestrians’ desire lines” in relation to sidewalks and […]

Five years ago, Tunisians – after weeks of anti-government protests following the self-immolation of fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi – succeeded in ousting dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. In the months that followed, similar unrest would spread across much of the Arab world, in what came to be known as the “Arab Spring.” Since then, Tunisia […]

By Wei Luo, MPP 2017 On Saturday September 10, students and staff joined with community partners for HKS Serves, the Kennedy School’s signature day of service. The Citizen followed a group of volunteers to the nearby Cambridge Community Center, a non-profit providing after school and summer youth programming. Valentino Robinson, the Center’s Community Affairs Director, […]