International child abductions are often traumatic and legally-complex events. According to the State Department, the nation experienced 702 cases of children removed from the United States and retained in a foreign country. While these abductions are not often discussed in the mainstream media, a new Boston-based non-profit is looking to raise awareness of international parental […]

The White House Fellowship is among the most prestigious positions of public service in the country. The Fellowship is based on an outstanding record of achievement, leadership potential, and commitment to service. These Fellows meaningfully contribute to executive levels of government service in the federal government during their year-long term. The Fellows are placed in […]

HKS Professor Finds Significant Effect on Post-Secondary School Education Joshua Goodman, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, has released a Faculty Working Paper on the impact of college counseling on the college enrollment decisions of low income students. He and coauthor Ben Castleman, of UVA, study a program called Bottom Line, which provides intensive college counseling […]

  One student prepares to run for elected office. Another has just finished an internship in a federal courthouse. A third is taking a college course on Kierkegaard. These students are eighth graders. Education can be transformative. And it can be transformed. RETHINKING EDUCATION REFORM Education reform has been an ongoing effort for the past […]

BY ELIZABETH BENNETT Rwanda is the only country in the world where more women than men serve as elected officials. For a small, land-locked nation in the middle of sub-Saharan Africa, that’s an impressive distinction. But when you consider how far the country has come over two decades, it becomes downright astonishing. For Rwandans, the […]

BY ADAM BANASIAK We usually find gas in new places with old ideas. Sometimes, also, we find gas in an old place with a new idea, but we seldom find much gas in an old place with an old idea. Several times in the past we have thought that we were running out of gas, […]

BY JULIA FETHERSTON ADAM SMITH WOULD HAVE BEEN mystified by the bankers, government officials, analysts, and activists assembled in the City of London for the inaugural G8 Meeting on Social Impact Investment, a meeting convened at the behest of U.K. Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron. Smith, the pioneer of free market political economy, wrote […]

BY MARYROSE MAZZOLA “Two police officers, a court advocate, and a social worker walk into a room,” might sound like the beginning of a bad joke, but in Edinburgh, Scotland, it’s a new policy norm. This is what’s known as a MARAC (Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Committee) meeting. Here, up to a dozen domestic abuse service […]

BY ISAAC LARA During the 1970s and 1980s, Times Square was not the tourist mecca that it is today. The now-glitzy area in Midtown’s theatre district had fallen into disrepair from decades of government negligence, with drug addicts and prostitutes prowling the streets. The few legal businesses that existed were mostly low-rent strip clubs and […]

Steve Lydenberg began his career in responsible investment in 1975, as he says, before “careers in responsible investment even existed.” He joined the now-dormant Council on Economic Priorities, one of the first organizations to investigate and publicize corporate misbehavior, to support his passion for writing off-Broadway plays. But in the 1980s, divestment from the apartheid […]

The Winter Games don’t deserve to be Olympic Games. BY JORDAN WARD, PANGYRUS This article is being published in collaboration with Pangyrus.   The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has a problem. With Stockholm, Krakow, and now Lviv pulling out of the running to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, they’ve been left with slim pickings. […]

BY HAYLING PRICE Last fall, I had the opportunity to invite a hero to Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership (CPL). While CPL often features celebrities, dignitaries, and heads of state, resident students rarely hear from community-based practitioners grappling with the poverty we tend to engage with in the abstract. Steve Gates has spent years leading […]