Democracy and Institutions

BY NICK BUFFIE As you may have heard, in the United States the rich pay more federal income taxes than the poor – both in dollar terms and as a share of income. This point is acknowledged by commentators on both the Right and Left, serving as a rare example of nonpartisan objectivity in an […]

As Israel’s 2019 elections approach, Netanyahu remains popular despite corruption investigations and high-level defections from his ruling coalition in parliament. Centre-left parties must unite if they hope to defeat him.

BY PRIYANKA KAURA I talked about affirmative action way more than I planned to this fall, and I’m not going to stop. It began as a reaction to the divisive Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard lawsuit, in which a group of Asian Americans led by Edward Blum claimed that Harvard’s admissions process is  discriminatory. […]

Behavioral science techniques that engage non-activists are the next frontier in voter turnout BY ROBERT REYNOLDS AND DEV CHANDRA A few days before last November’s midterm election, a Texan named Martina received a text message asking her to remind three friends to vote. Martina isn’t an activist. Rather, she was targeted precisely because predictive data […]

BY TAHRA GORAYA It is a great victory for American democracy to have an unprecedented number of women and people of color join the ranks of the 116th Congress. The newly elected members are diverse ethnically, religiously, socially, professionally, geographically, sexually, and politically. While much has been written about these amazing individuals, recent headlines have centered […]

BY KEVIN FRAZIER When we think of great leaders, we often think of U.S. presidents. It’s easy to find books on what these presidents achieved, but what leadership traits made their accomplishments possible? It’s a question that John Kroger, a Hauser Leader in Residence at the Kennedy School of Government and a Fellow of the […]

Want to close the gender pay gap? Get men to look after their kids. BY ELLIOTT JAMES In the past 50 years, we’ve seen millions of American women join the workforce, deployed 300,000 to Iraq and Afghanistan, sent hundreds to Congress, appointed four to the Supreme Court and launched 40 into space. Which for some […]

Raed Fares was killed on November 23rd, but his work as a citizen journalist and activist lives on in the people he taught and empowered. Contributing writer Oula Alrifai, a Damascus-native and activist herself, remembers Raed.

BY HILARY GELFOND While in attendance at the Harvard Kennedy School’s bipartisan conference for newly elected members of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that “[our] ‘bipartisan’ Congressional orientation is cohosted by a corporate lobbyist group.” The conference, which was jointly hosted with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and […]

The Venezuelan crisis has become the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere, with more than 3 million people fleeing the country in the last few years. As conditions in the country worsen, more Venezuelans are expected to leave, causing greater instability throughout the region. Venezuela is a mixture of drug trafficking, money laundering, terrorism, […]

BY AMANDA PATARINO The day after the midterm elections, President Trump announced that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was resigning and that Matthew G. Whitaker would become the acting attorney general. Initial outcry focused on the fact that Whitaker would oversee the Mueller investigation, but discussions quickly shifted to the constitutionality of his appointment. While Trump […]

African states are increasingly leveraging the power of telecom operators to advance goals that the state itself struggles to secure (e.g. security and fiscal goals). This suggests a paradigmatic shift in African politics, whereby telecom operators have become a face of the state, exerting agency over state and citizen in pervasive and sometimes unexpected ways. […]