By Ran Wei, MC-MPA’14 With the academic year coming to an end, the HKS student newspaper, The Citizen, invited Professor Nicholas Burns to offer his thoughts on global affairs. Burns is the Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project […]

Taking advantage of a few minutes of downtime between the festivities surrounding IDEASpHERE (May 14-May 16) and Commencement (May 27-May 30), The Citizen asked Dean David Ellwood a few questions pertinent to this year’s graduating class. Dean Ellwood will be celebrating his 10th year at the helm of the Kennedy School this July. He joined […]

By Karly Schledwitz, graduating MPP student and Asia Leadership Trek participant In a few short days, an eager group of Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) students and new graduates will embark on the trip of a lifetime. I am fortunate to be among them. The Asia Leadership Trek (ALT) is a whirlwind adventure packed with an […]

By Simon R. Bone, Editor-in-Chief In a five-times oversubscribed event, the Harvard Kennedy School was fortunate enough to host Tony Blair, Ex-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Middle East Peace Envoy, in an event sponsored by The Center for Public Leadership. After being introduced, he remarked that he was reminded of being asked once […]

No, you’re not dreaming. It’s almost finished. Remember that very first time a thousand years ago when you first set foot in the Littauer building and realized why MC-Escher was not better known for architecture? Reflect upon when you got a B for that paper you’d spent weeks on, while your friend who just rewrote […]

By Christina Marin, MPP’14 For the 565 students accepting a diploma this week, the moment comes with a mix of honor and trepidation. Honor to be among the 46,000 Kennedy School graduates tasked with improving the communities in which they live and trepidation because they know the challenges are great. A few weeks before graduation, […]

By Ted Zagraniski, Culture Editor While no official figures exist as yet, you may safely bet that a large number of the 500-plus HKSers who are soon to graduate will find their next (or first) employment in one of two places: Washington DC or Boston. Besides walkable street grids, monumental architectural icons, and an increasingly […]

Earlier in May, HKS hosted the IDEASpHERE, a celebration of big and powerful ideas among our professors, students and alumni. Among the globally renowned line-up of speakers were President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the current President of Liberia in her second term, and the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.  On the opening panel […]

What did you do before you came to the Kennedy School? I worked at Google Headquarters in the Sales Department, and spent a lot of my time working for Google Ideas as Google’s North Korea Lead to bring technology and online tools to North Korean defectors. Before that, I hung out at HKS way too […]

What did you do before you came to the Kennedy School? That is a short question with a long but very exciting answer.  Before coming to the Kennedy School, I worked for the New York City Police Department (NYPD); my last assignment was the 30th Precinct Detective Bureau as their Executive Officer.  I supervised a […]

Interview with Tommy Tobin, The Citizen The Kennedy School teaches students lessons in policy and politics inside and outside the classroom. The energy of the Forum spills into class discussions and informs student conversations. Some students don’t just talk politics, they live it. Many have come from political posts prior to HKS and others are […]

By Tommy Tobin Kennedy School students come to this institution with a variety of passions, interests, and abilities. We are challenged to “ask what we can do” to improve the world. While many of us aim to sharpen our quantitative skills here, fewer seem to focus on the arts to shape and inform policy discussions. […]