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 COLIN MURPHY In the United States, twenty-two million people work in government.[1] These people sweep our streets, educate our children, and protect our borders. So much of our quality of life depends on how well these employees and their teams are working. Government performance—the ability of the people and organizations within government to deliver […]

BY HAMADA ZAHAWI The windy, unpaved coastal road seemed to stretch forever. We were clearly lost, driving as we had been for miles in search of the almost mythical ‘Lifejacket Graveyard’ near Molyvos. We were in Greece as part of a group of 45 student volunteers from myriad countries, professions, and schools across Harvard—tasked with […]

BY MARTA MILKOWSKA “This technology will save millions of patients!” This was the elated comment from the head of a tuberculosis health facility in Lesotho, in response to my prototype of a mobile phone application. Last summer, I was exploring the value of machine learning in predicting patients’ default rates in HIV and tuberculosis treatment […]

BY HAIYANG ZHANG Over two thousand years ago during China’s Han dynasty, a Chinese imperial envoy blazed a land route via Central Asia that derived its name from the lucrative silk trade. Then, during the Ming dynasty in the 15th century, the imperial court’s admiral commanded his fleet to the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa […]

BY STEVEN SARAO Introduction It is estimated that over one thousand New Yorkers died of unintentional drug overdoses in 2016, more than three times the homicide rate in the city that same year.[1],[2] While a breakdown of the 2016 overdose data is not yet available, based on 2015 data we can expect the vast majority […]

Youth unemployment is a major driver of radicalization in Tunisia, which supplies more fighters to Syria and Iraq than any other country.

BY CHRISTIAN ASANTE African societies have made enormous strides with respect to women’s rights and empowerment. Mother’s Day is widely recognized and celebrated in many parts of Africa.  On that holiday, people will call and send text messages to their mothers; hashtags will trend; and politicians, governments and gender ministries will issue press statements praising […]

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 […]

BY MATTHEW SPECTOR The first months of the Trump administration have radically reshaped the calculus of social entrepreneurship. Institutions that opened themselves to public accountability during the Obama years now face little demand to adhere to the transparency and environmental rules they helped negotiate. At Harvard’s Social Enterprise Conference (SECON) this year, reflections from local […]

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 […]