Following news of Mariana’s passing, classmates sent messages to her and her family from around the world. A few of them agreed to share those messages with The Citizen.   “When I learned Mandela died, I was deeply saddened. The world lost a fearless fighter. Two hours later, I learned that my mother’s cousin lost […]

*What did you do before came to the Kennedy School? What didn’t I do. Yeesh. Officially I was a policy analyst with the Mississippi Economic Policy Center in Jackson, Mississippi. The organization’s mission was to provide analysis of state-level policy decisions with a lens toward how those decisions affect low-income families across the state. I […]

Nick Wilson, MPP ‘14 “I love you more than my own daddy, but if you get in my way, I’ll crush you.” As theatregoers shuffle into A.R.T.’s Loeb Drama Center in Harvard Square, the hallways are pulsating with discussion of the satisfying conclusion to Bryan Cranston’s brilliant transformation from humble chemistry teacher Walter White to […]

By Tommy Tobin Many of us are here at the Kennedy School because we want to make a difference to better society. Our version of asking “what you can do” often incorporates public service as a pathway to social change. But what about our time before HKS? How might have our college experiences shaped our […]

By Ted Zagraniski Since Veteran’s Day word reached me, and perhaps many of you, that at least one respected member of the Harvard community used Veterans Day to express disgust at Harvard University for the following “facts”: That Harvard College does not have a military officer training program on campus, and that our cadets have […]

Mark Dlugash Of all the reasons for our underperforming schools, perhaps the most overlooked is that students do not spend enough time learning. At first glance, that seems ridiculous – they spend nearly a third of their waking life, through age 18, in schools, with more time after that for homework.  But only a small […]

By Wei Ran Kennedy School Professor Dick Cavanagh, who teaches entrepreneurship and innovation, once told us that 95 percent of all the startups failed. So the immediate question would be: why is he still teaching this course, in which the students need to develop business plans for startups, at all? After indulging myself into a […]

Congress, connected (by a Harvard summer fellow), http://ConnectedCongress.org Philip Harding has a way of persisting in the face of doubt. During his fellowship on Capitol Hill this summer, Harding, a Kennedy School student, decided to tackle a question that many young adults have asked themselves about their representatives, despite outright effort to dissuade him otherwise. […]

By Nick Wilson As I traversed the Cambridge streets despite the chilly winds, I hung my head as I cursed the Daylight Savings Time gods for soon making it dark at 4 pm. But I was able to hold my head high when I remembered that I’d soon have a glorious mustache to protect my […]

By Simon R. Bone The Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab) just over the river from HKS serves as a valuable and free resource for students from all across Harvard interested in entrepreneurship and innovation. On Wednesday, 13th  November the i-lab held an event for Harvard students or fellows interested in one of the university-wide challenges and […]

By Simon R. Bone The City of London (not to be confused with London itself) is an area of roughly a square mile set centrally within the capital and which today serves as the main business and financial heart of the United Kingdom and to some extent Europe as a whole. As with other global […]

By Chrissie Long, Staff Writer Former army captain John Kurt Thompson, a student in the mid-career policy program at the Kennedy School of Government, confronted Army Chief of Staff Raymond T. Odierno in a forum presentation Thursday about an alleged army cover-up that turned him from a war hero to an outcast. Before an audience […]