Education, Training and Labor

BY IVAN RAHMAN Having worked as a teacher and school leader, I attended Harvard’s 2017 Social Enterprise Conference (SECON) with the hope of discovering solutions to some of education’s most pressing problems. Instead, the conference raised a series of thought-provoking questions about education. Does innovation in public education preserve, or even exacerbate, the status quo […]

BY HAIYANG ZHANG A group of textile artisans protested against the newly developed labor-replacing machinery. They were afraid that the many years they spent mastering the skills would go to waste and that the machines would eventually rob them of their jobs. The violence broke out when people started smashing the knitting machines, and eventually […]

BY DAVID PAYNE In 1st grade, I was labeled as gifted in math. One problem, I was not gifted. I can understand the error; I solved advanced problems with ease. Over the years, my teachers kept me occupied with a variety of approaches while my classmates were in math class. In 2nd grade, I was […]

BY ANDREW MCCLURE Last week, the Harvard Kennedy School Student Government (KSSG) voted on a Resolution that would “support the Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) workers’ decision to strike for a fair contract.” The statement comes after some 700 food service employees have been on strike since October 5, 2016 following the expiration of their […]

BY NYASHA WEINBERG Sex education at my school was a joke. It consisted of an awkward encounter between a bald geography teacher, a banana, and a condom. There was no mention of consent. The class didn’t tackle any of the problems that arise in relationships: resolving differences of opinion, dealing with emotions, or what to […]

By Zouhair Mazouz, MPP 2017 Full disclosure: That night, I meant to stir the pot. In the 2015 academic year, I had made a point out of boycotting meetings organized by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Arab Caucus. As an Arab myself, I was outraged to learn that the Caucus explicitly described its events as “intended […]

BY CHARLOTTE HALL The 600+ employees of the Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) are now on strike. The outcome of this strike has as much to do with the future of Harvard as it does with HUDS employee wages and benefits. At its heart, this labor dispute is about what kind of employer Harvard is […]

Wars may be started by adults, but the effects of war do not discriminate by age. The lives, and futures, of children are just as vulnerable to the physical and mental traumas of modern warfare. Today, Aleppo is one of the most violent battlefields of the war in Syria, and an estimated 75,000 children survive amidst barrel bombs, […]

In this personal essay, Janiece Mackey discusses how she navigated the complexities of race within the educational context. Now, having progressed from student to teacher, she promotes civic engagement and intersectional empowerment among underserved youth. Janiece’s story  serves as a precursory example of the Black student and educator experience, discussed in depth in our 2016 feature of “The Politics of […]

Most Australians today accept that the mining boom of the mid-to late 2000s, which reshaped the country, is largely over. But an overlooked segment of history is that the end of the stunning run in bulk commodity prices came as a rapid and unexpected shock to most of the nation. Despite predictions of weaker Chinese […]

BY KAVI PATEL Democrats added a $15 federal minimum wage to their platform before the Democratic National Convention at a time when the minimum wage debate is a hot topic and the “Fight for 15” Movement has already been successful in California and New York.  Advocates of an increase in the minimum wage argue that it […]

BY BENJAMIN GILLIES This piece appeared in our 2016 print journal. You can order your copy here. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato argued that in order for a democratic society to function properly, the wealthiest members should never be more than five times as rich as its poorest.[i] Yet, in modern America, CEOs and other elites […]