Gender, Race and Identity

This piece was published in the 27th print volume of the Asian American Policy Review. The forces of gentrification have reached the gates of Chinatowns. Across America, upscale property developments threaten to encroach on venerable ethnic enclaves that happen to sit on very valuable real estate. While Chinatown gentrification in some ways repeats a pattern played […]

This piece was published in the 27th print volume of the Asian American Policy Review. On January 14, 2017, a week before President Donald Trump’s inauguration day, Junsoo Lee, a nineteen-year-old undocumented Korean American from Virginia, gave a speech at the “Here To Stay” rally in Washington, DC. He said, “Because of the ignorance and hatred […]

BY NABILA ABU-HANTASH I was sitting behind the wheel in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, with my close friend in the passenger’s seat. The car was parked with the ignition switched off. We were waiting for her husband to come back from souvenir shopping, so that we could begin the twenty-three-hour drive back home to Kuwait. He […]

As Muslim-Americans, we need to play a more active role in defining our faith, or will continue to have others define it for us BY NADIA VISWANATH The tantalizing smell of pepperoni pizza. Greasy, cheesy, meaty, salty decadence—to me, it wafts of paradise. Once my go-to late-night snack in college, I have since given up […]

Introduction On 16 November 2017, in light of the prominence of the global #MeToo movement and discussions of sexual harassment and assault, the Gender Policy Union and the Live Poets Society of the Harvard Kennedy School organized a campus-wide event to share these stories. Our goal was to raise awareness of the trauma that sexual […]

An Interview with Dr. Elisa Choi Commissioner, Commonwealth of Massachusetts Asian American Commission Dr. Elisa Choi is the Chairperson of the Asian American Commission of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the chair of its Health and Human Services Committee. She is also the Governor-elect of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American College of Physicians, where […]

BY JENNIFER HELFRICH I am an environmentalist. Friends call me a “tree hugger.” Tree huggers are a rare breed here at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). My fellow students each have their public policy area of focus—and the environment is not one of them. I understand the dilemma; HKS students tend to exhaust themselves through […]

This piece was published in the 27th print volume of the Asian American Policy Review. I still recall my father’s expression of disappointment when he learned I planned to marry Tina, a multiracial, Catholic Dominican American. He never said it explicitly, but I knew he thought I was making a big mistake by marrying someone of […]

This past Saturday 25th of February, Thomas E. Pérez became the first Latino to be elected as chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The DNC constitutes the governing body for the United States Democratic Party. Among the main activities of the organization are the quadrennial elaboration of a Democratic platform where the central ideas […]

UPHOLDING THE CONSTITUTION AND PROTECTING CIVIL LIBERTIES DURING THE DARKEST OF TIMES IN AMERICAN HISTORY Lessons learned from the Japanese American internment during World War II are more relevant than ever. In a recent opinion-editorial in the New York Times, Karen Korematsu, Fred Korematsu’s daughter, and Executive Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, compared President’s […]

BY YAHYA CHAUDHRY Last week, capping off a successful awards season, Mahershala Ali won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Moonlight — the first time a Muslim has won in an acting category. Ali portrayed Juan, a Cuban-born drug dealer living in Miami who becomes a surrogate father to a bullied […]

BY NATALIE GOODNOW AND BOBBIE RAGSDALE Today is International Women’s Day, a fitting time to discuss a topic at the forefront of the news over the last several months: abortion and women’s rights. Though abortion has been legal for decades, the issue is still a contentious one in the public sphere. Unfortunately, many people today […]