On Sunday, November 23, the Obama administration announced that they had reached a preliminary deal with Iran over that country’s nuclear program. The tentative deal is being hailed in the media as a sign of rapprochement between the two historical enemies, but Banai warned during his talk that the rift runs deeper than many observers […]

The negotiations in Geneva are exciting, but miss much of the action. As US and Iranian diplomats sit down for the much-anticipated nuclear negotiations in Geneva, attention has focused on the drama unfolding in Europe. From Secretary Kerry’s premature departure from Israel on Friday, to French indignation over weak concessions on Saturday, there has been […]

  BY EMILY FRANCIS HARTMANN Federal health insurance exchanges (also known as insurance marketplaces) are off to a slow start. As we await the first official enrollment figures in mid-November, however, it is important to recognize that a slow start is not a surprise. Most of those who have been forecasting exchange enrollment over the […]

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 […]