WASHINGTON, D.C. –  February 2014 marks the second decade of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief or PEPFAR, the most ambitious program in human history to combat HIV/AIDS.   Last December, President Obama reaffirmed U.S. funding and support of this important program, albeit at lower levels than in the past due to acute budget constraints.  […]

It would be sad if the Arab Spring cemented more turmoil than it sought to end. But the current state of politics in post-Arab Spring, specifically Tunisia and Egypt, suggests things could worsen before they improve. Ongoing security concerns in Libya and the not-so-forgotten hostage situation in Algeria has further caused chaos in the North […]

Just as Egyptians were preparing themselves for the third anniversary of the 2011 “Lotus” Revolution, a sold-out theater on the other side of the globe eagerly waited for the Oscar nominated documentary, “The Square,” to begin. Ironically, the documentary that beautifully captures the struggles of those who demanded freedom, transparency and social justice, has been […]

POLICY AREA: HEALTH CARE BY EMILY HARTMANN It is clear that President Obama wants to move the conversation forward on health care. In the State of the Union address he acknowledged the early struggles launching health care exchanges, but he quickly turned to the successes of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Speaking directly to the […]

Note: This post assesses President Obama’s State of the Union Address in 4 policy ares: K-12 Education, Higher Education, LGBTQ and Military Affairs. It is a follow up to KSR’s SOTU coverage here and here. POLICY AREA: K-12 EDUCATION BY ADRIENNE MURPHY As an education reform enthusiast, I was excited to hear the President kick […]

A Note of Explanation: For the first time, the Kennedy School Review has tapped into the policy expertise of students across the Harvard Kennedy School of Government to collect their perspectives on President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union Address.  For two days, HKS students are providing their analysis on a broad range of policy […]

A Note of Explanation: For the first time, the Kennedy School Review has tapped into the policy expertise of students across the Harvard Kennedy School of Government to collect their perspectives on President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union Address. Over the next two days we will share student analysis on a broad range of […]

This is part one of a two-part series on Saudi Arabia’s fossil fuel subsidies. This post discusses existing problems with Saudi Arabia’s subsidies program. The governments of developing, oil-exporting countries tend to maintain domestic fossil fuel prices at levels significantly lower than the free-market prices. Selling fossil fuels at domestic prices below the market leads […]

Individuals readily queue at the door to the visa office at the arrival terminal in the Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa. One individual presses the Ethiopian border guard about the timeliness of the process and the absence of concern for travelers’ time. The guard simply responds: “How do we plan for this [inflow]?” The […]

BY ELIZABETH A. KISLIK In a lecture at Harvard University in mid-October, New York Times columnist Gail Collins discussed how fundamentally women’s roles in American society have changed over the past half-century. Her talk reflected the theme of her 2009 book, When Everything Changed. Collins recalled the days of “executive flights,” on which young, unmarried […]

BY SHASHANK SHEKHAR SHUKLA As the city slept, the killer silently crept in. From the windows, doors, ledges and crevices, it came in silently, slaughtering not just hundreds but hundreds of thousands of innocent victims. The killer’s name was methyl isocyanate, and in 4 hours it instantly killed 8,000 people and maimed another 200,000. At […]

*what did you do before you came to the Kennedy School? Right before school, I helped my friends launch an airline in California called Surf Air. If you ever get a chance to work on a startup with your friends, do it. Before that, I worked on Governor Mitt Romney’s finance team for his two […]