By Julia Fetherston, MPP’14 Ninety nine days ago, I began asking second-year public policy students: What is one thing you learned at HKS? Their responses amount to a remarkable catalogue of life at 79 JFK Street, including: Dean David Ellwood will accept any invitation to perform a musical number in costume. The supply of bathrooms […]

By Asma Jaber, MPP’14 Fifteen years ago, my daily routine was to say to my late father, “No! Not at the entrance. Drop me off here!” – hoping my adolescent friends would not see me running from a glaring yellow taxi into my middle school. The taxi was how my father, a twice-displaced Palestinian refugee, […]

By Adrienne Murphy, MPP’14 As the students filed out of my classroom one mid-May afternoon, I noticed Ricky lingering quietly, pretending to read the newspaper articles posted on a bulletin board in the back of the room. “Ricky, do you need something?” I asked. (No student ever actually stopped to read the articles.) After a […]

By Claudia Newman-Martin, MPP’14 I clearly remember arriving here two years ago. I remember spending 20 minutes searching for Littauer, and the next 15 looking for a bathroom that was (a) empty; (b) clean; and (c) not able to be heard by everyone in the library. The thing I remember most clearly was the question […]

Simon R. Bone, MC/MPA Overcast grey skies that whisper wildly with the wind. A chilling cold that cuts through bone and carcass. An airport that closes down due to bad weather A sense of isolation as you long for new experiences of the outside world. But this is not what you expect. This is not […]

By Sarmad Palijo, MPA’14 When I first came to the Kennedy School I asked someone — What does Veritas mean? — After all, it is Harvard University’s motto. I was told it means ‘truth’. In the last two years, I never visited this question again but upon graduation I have been reflecting on what Veritas […]

By Sara Minkara, MPP’14 Like most, my greatest source of comfort as a child was my mother’s watchful gaze. One look into her brown, loving eyes put all my concerns at ease and allowed me to walk confidently… I felt I was safe as long as I could keep her within my sight. But, at […]

By Sanjay Gokhale, MC/MPA’14 After three years of brutal civil war, 150,000 deaths and nine million refugees; Syria is still burning with no end in sight. International regimes are at stake, stability in the Middle East is under threat and, most importantly, millions of lives in Syria are at risk. The crisis itself is wretchedly […]

By Roman Rubchenko, MC/MPA’14 For the last 23 years, since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been struggling to become a democracy. The Ukrainian constitution outlines a system with a representative democracy, where people elect the representatives, president and the parliament who run the country on their behalf. But unfortunately the system of […]

By Christina Marin, MPP’14 One of the unique aspects of studying at the Kennedy School is how news events anywhere in the world can have a personal effect on one (or many) members of the community. This year was no different. Whether it was the government shutdown, the rebound of the Boston Marathon or the […]

With the diverse background and skillsets of public policy and administration students, one of the most exciting moments is seeing where they end up after the Harvard Kennedy School. On average, two thirds of graduating students enter the public or nonprofit sectors, accepting employment at anywhere from small, rural governments to large international nonprofits. Because […]

By Simon R. Bone, Editor-in-Chief A few weeks ago, Dean David T. Ellwood and University President Drew G. Faust shared the Forum with two heads of state to launch the “Campaign for Harvard Kennedy School”. With a goal of raising $500 million, the campaign will allow HKS to provide a new level of leadership and […]