United States of America

BY MATTHEW VIGEANT For the first time in two years, Iraq is back on many Americans’ radars. The media has flashed alerts about Al Qaeda taking over cities in Anbar Province, and death tolls being at their highest since 2008. Meanwhile, the Obama Administration and Congress blame each other for the violence as they debate […]

BY THOMAS TOBIN As the nation celebrates Presidents’ Day and students nationwide enjoy the long weekend, this holiday is a time to reflect on the nation’s highest office. U.S. Presidential history is rife with stories of political intrigue, personal triumph, and leadership in turbulent times. Yet while some presidents are carved into mountains or enshrined […]

BY ALISON FLINT I first learned about hackathons when I saw an ad for an event called Datafest hosted at Stanford University three years ago. Like most people, I primarily associated ‘hacking’ with computer programming. However, this Datafest looked different. It turned out that Teresa Bouza, a Knight Fellow at Stanford, had organized the hackathon […]

Note: This post assesses President Obama’s State of the Union Address in 4 policy ares: K-12 Education, Higher Education, LGBTQ and Military Affairs. It is a follow up to KSR’s SOTU coverage here and here. POLICY AREA: K-12 EDUCATION BY ADRIENNE MURPHY As an education reform enthusiast, I was excited to hear the President kick […]

A Note of Explanation: For the first time, the Kennedy School Review has tapped into the policy expertise of students across the Harvard Kennedy School of Government to collect their perspectives on President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union Address. Over the next two days we will share student analysis on a broad range of […]

BY ELIZABETH A. KISLIK In a lecture at Harvard University in mid-October, New York Times columnist Gail Collins discussed how fundamentally women’s roles in American society have changed over the past half-century. Her talk reflected the theme of her 2009 book, When Everything Changed. Collins recalled the days of “executive flights,” on which young, unmarried […]

Immigration Reform is unquestionably one of the most important political topics for Latinos in the United States. Our communities endure more deportations, live deeper in the shadows, and suffer most from the patchwork of laws that make up our immigration system. For 20 years no national figure has been more vocal in his support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform than Congressman Luis Gutierrez.

BY GOVERNOR JEB BUSH As adults, we are responsible for the educational success of our children. And as adults we can easily thwart young learners. Let me ask you a question. A child enters kindergarten. His mother is a single-parent who works a minimum wage job. Perhaps he lives in the inner city or he […]

Latinos voted for Barack Obama in throngs in 2008. The landslide turnout of Latino voters was due in large part to the promise of comprehensive immigration reform. I was among those Latinos. Many of us knew that change would not come easily, but we did not expect the plight of immigrants to actually worsen—as it has under the radical expansion of the federal program Secure Communities

On Sunday, November 23, the Obama administration announced that they had reached a preliminary deal with Iran over that country’s nuclear program. The tentative deal is being hailed in the media as a sign of rapprochement between the two historical enemies, but Banai warned during his talk that the rift runs deeper than many observers […]

Educational Equity: Where We Are and Where We Need To Be Since 2001, Congressman Mike Honda has represented the 17th Congressional District of California in the U.S. House of Representatives. His district includes Silicon Valley, the birthplace of technology innovation and the leading region for the development of the technologies of tomorrow. First as a […]

Get Off the Sidelines and Get into the Game: An Interview with Senator Mazie Hirono Born in Fukushima, Japan, Mazie K. Hirono was nearly eight years old when her mother brought her and her older brother to Hawaii to escape an abusive husband and seek a better life. Hirono served in the Hawaii House of […]