United States of America

Climate change is transforming the circulation patterns which bring us our weather, but do journalists have enough scientific understanding to tell us what’s going on? BY MEGAN ALBON 2014 was the year a polar vortex came to town, wreaking wintery havoc for months on end. Reporters were quickly on its tail. “Trapped in a ‘polar […]

We are back for the Spring semester and excited to share our interview with Soledad O’Brien. Soledad is one of America’s most distinguishable and recognizable journalist. For over 20 years she has reported and anchored television shows on NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Aljazeera, and most recently on HBO. She has also won many awards. Including an Emmy and the NAACP President’s Award as well as the Journalist of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

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 […]