By Zach Crowley, MC-MPA’13, Staff Writer Under Hillary Clinton, the State Department has successfully reversed the nation’s steep downward trend in foreign opinion by aggressively – listening. In January, the Christian Science Monitor reviewed her record in an article titled “The Listening Legacy of Hillary Clinton”.  It’s the sort of counter-intuitive approach to make a […]

What Shih Said (Musings from a Former Editor):  Cameron Russell: Of Heroism and Its Distractions By Irene Shih, MPP ’13 This month, I finally had a chance to view Cameron Russell’s TED Talk, given in October 2012. In it, she offers a very personal view about the privilege and social complexities of being commercially beautiful. […]

By Fredo Arias-King, HBS ’96, GSAS ’98, Correspondent President Felipe Calderón did what most Mexicans only dreamed of—he struck with force at the organized crime taking over the country. Why, then, is he so disliked? When Harvard invited the now ex-president to serve as a fellow at the Kennedy School, this created a small uproar […]

By Neil Gundavda, MPP ’14, Assistant Opinions Editor In President Barack Obama’s most recent State of the Union address, he outlined an ambitious yet important plan to make preschool available for every child in America. He stressed the crucial link between early education and academic success in the future. It’s a tough sell: The plan […]

By William Sentence, MPP ’14, Correspondent Harvard held an event last week entitled ‘Digital Humanities Across the Spectrum’. It is part of an explosion of interest in the area – the total number of sessions on the subject at the Modern Language Association Conference in Boston doubled to nearly 70 over the past 3 years. […]

By Litcy Kurisinkal, MPP ’13, Correspondent Inclusivity and diversity have been buzzwords in the recent years. While there have been several initiatives aimed at ensuring diversity at most Harvard graduate schools, the main focus has been on proportional representation in admissions and faculty hiring. How do students of Harvard handle their daily life issues concerning […]

By Nathan K. Finney, MC/MPA’13, Assistant News Editor and Nadir Vissanjy, MPP’14, Correspondent Here at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) we often hear of the alumni that meet the ultimate political goal in their home countries, such as former President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, or former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. There are many […]

We asked a number of students across HKS what meaning, if any, March 8 had for them. The responses we got were varied and interesting. Read on: A Day to Celebrate Women the World Over Being asked to write about the meaning that International Women’s Day held for me, I realized I actually didn’t even […]

In 2009, a group of academics, policy makers, and industry professionals came together and created the Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) and the DESERTEC Foundation with the goal of meeting 15% of Europe’s electricity needs and two thirds of the Middle East and North Africa’s electricity needs with renewable power generated in the deserts of northern […]

Meet America’s new ally in Africa. With 16 million people, a per capita income of $360 (PPP),52,875 refugees, and dysfunctional neighbors, Niger seems less than the ideal partner in the growing U.S. strategic footprint in Africa, but its geographic location places it at the frontlines.Landlocked between the hotbed of Mali and the oil basin in […]

BY VIVEK CHILUKURI When President Obama announced an ambitious plan to reduce gun violence, he surrounded himself with children. By invoking their safety as his chief aim, the president imbued his efforts with our deeply felt and universal impulse to protect the young. When it comes to protecting their futures, however, Washington has shown no […]

 Introduction Sierra Leone is consistently ranked among the countries with the highest maternal mortality ratio (970 per 100,000) and women in Sierra Leone have a 1 in 21 lifetime risk of dying as a result of pregnancy.  Despite some progress, Sierra Leone still ranks 5th in the world for countries with the highest under-five mortality […]