By Alexi White, Opinions Editor, MPP ‘13 In fiscal year 2011, HKS collected $37.3 million in revenue from investment income, the annual return on our $1 billion endowment. About half went to core operations such as faculty chairs, financial aid, events, maintenance, staff, etc.; the other half went to funding the IOP and research centers. […]

By Sophie Brion, MPP ‘12 In a recent class, our discussion turned to the ubiquitous topic of immigration. As per the Kennedy School usual, the comments were informed and thoughtful. My classmates eruditely discussed negative perceptions of immigrants. They pondered what role race plays in U.S. immigration policy and parsed the practical demands of running […]

By Brian Hull, MPP2 Recently, an email was sent out by KSSG that contained an image depicting a certain female Black student as “Muffy,” the monkey character from the cartoon Arthur. This, understandably, led to a school-wide conversation on diversity attended by well over one hundred students. While I do not wish to discuss the […]

By Alex Pak, HBS Class of 2013 As much as I am a fan of both social movements and camping, what is occurring on our campus under the guise of Occupy Harvard disturbs me. My perception of Occupy Harvard is that it is less of a social movement than a proxy war being waged by […]

By Matt Bieber, News Writer, MPP/MDiv ‘13 pbieber@mail.harvard.edu In October of 2009, MP David Bahati introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in the Ugandan Parliament.  The bill [link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Homosexuality_Bill] – which proposed the death penalty for homosexuality – immediately became infamous around the world. At that time, Val Kalende was a veteran activist in the struggle for […]

By Zachary Rosenfeld, Assistant News Editor, MPP ‘13 We have just a few updates this week. Kevin Chee’s Finance Committee has formed three new sub-committees to work on transparency, funding regulations, and sponsorship, respectively. They also discussed major funding requests for the African Caucus and Women’s Policy Journal and established a new “Quorum Call” funding […]

By Zachary Rosenfeld, Assistant News Editor, MPP ‘13 As one of the chief architects of Greek monetary policy during the 1990s, Lucas Papademos helped his country to stabilize the value of the drachma, win the confidence of international financial experts, and transition the Greek national currency to the euro. But with some European heads of […]

By Dharana Rijal, News Writer, MPP ‘13 A week before Thanksgiving, the 2nd HKS Annual Hunger Banquet brought together students to share an unusual meal and reflect on the issues surrounding world food security. Students attending the event agreed that the arrangement of the meal highlighted the inequalities that exist around the world, and often, […]

By Sharon Bourne-Clarke In this intellectual candy store [1]called the Harvard Kennedy School one has to struggle to identify the over arching or predominant culture that prevails. The Kennedy School is composed of 1,013 students from over 92 countries in four degree programs[2] yet it is difficult to identify a prevailing culture. By virtue of […]

By Alexi White, Opinions Editor, MPP ‘13 Imagine there were a bridge connecting Taubman to Belfer. Imagine a new building where the courtyard parking lot sits. Imagine the courtyard itself were raised to ground level and a central hub connecting all of HKS placed beneath it. These are just some of the ideas that have […]

By Cristina Garmendia, News Writer, MPP ‘13 This is the third part of the Harvard Citizen series: Politics in Practice. This week, Cristina Garmendia interviews Boston-area alumni of the Rappaport Fellowship, which matches students from area graduate programs to state and local government positions for a summer. She asks two graduates who continued to work […]

By Ryoji Watanabe, News Writer, MC/MPA’12 On October 26 thousands of people, swinging colorful flags and following behind farming tractors, took to the streets of Tokyo to protest against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a new free trade agreement negotiated among nine Asia-Pacific nations including the U.S. This populist movement was organized in anticipation of […]