In May 2012, eleven students of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University visited El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, as part of a Leadership Service Seminar (LSS) program sponsored by the Center for Public Leadership and the offices of the Academic Dean and the Dean of Students.

BY DAN MCCONNELL As President Obama made the case for military action in Syria Sunday, he was clear that such actions would be proportional in scope, reiterating, “What we are envisioning is something limited.” Now that the President has placed the onus for a decision on the legislature, it is at least as important for […]

There is an ongoing campaign of terror in Nigeria. Since July 2009, Boko Haram, an extremist jihadist group from northern Nigeria, has killed over 3,500 people in the wake of an Islamic insurgency, with the death toll rising almost on a daily basis. The group has carried out frequent gun attacks and bombings, in some […]

I recently read Dambisa Moyo’s Winner Take All: China’s Race for Resources and What it Means for the World. The book is a thorough review of the resource landscape – from water to land to energy, and what China’s drive to acquire these means for the West and the developing world including Africa. Moyo conducts due diligence on […]

Abstract This article examines regulatory policy of cryptography in Africa. Some consider public availability of strong cryptography to be a civil right. Whether used to protect sensitive information or verify identities, individuals and corporations alike benefit from cryptographic software in a world that is becoming increasingly networked. By the same token, users of cryptography might commit […]

BY VIRIDIANA RIOS At an undetermined time, somewhere in Mexico, a violent war among drug cartels erupted. For too long it was difficult to elaborate—with absolute certainty—on that statement. Just after the turn of the millennium, drug lords who had “peacefully” conducted operations to introduce cocaine and other illegal substances into the United States since […]

BY JONATHAN E. HILLMAN A Book Review of Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present by Max Boot.  If there was ever a funeral for U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates delivered the eulogy. In February 2011, as reported in the New York Times, Gates told cadets […]

BY IRENE SHIH Much has been made this year about Zero Dark Thirty, Hollywood’s first stab at dramatizing the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) hunt for Osama bin Laden. Even Graham Allison, professor of government and founding dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, has written about the Oscar-nominated film. A […]

Anne-Marie Slaughter is the Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. From 2009 to 2011 she served as Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. Department of State, the first woman to hold that position. Hanna Siegel is a 2013 Master in Public Policy candidate at the John […]

BY JEFFREY M. VOTH The morning of 2 March 2013 could have started better for Americans. Although most did not wake up to Sonny and Cher singing “I Got You, Babe” as their Saturday morning alarm, it was hard to avoid turning on the television, opening the paper, or glancing at the latest news feed […]

BY JACOB KURIEN & BERNARD GEOXAVIER In the decades since it began its economic reforms in the early 1980s, China has experienced impressive growth rates—in some years exceeding 10 percent increases in gross domestic product (GDP). Since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, politician and reformist leader of the Communist Party of China, more than 500 […]

BY DAVE COUGHRAN  On 20 October 2011, Mahmoud Jibril, the interim Prime Minister of the Libyan National Transitional Council, publicly announced the death of former Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi. Qaddafi’s overthrow was the culmination of months of intense effort from Libyan revolutionary militias, the United States, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The victory […]