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By Nathan Finney and Billy Pope, MC/MPA’13 As my hands were burning from the hot dishwater and my eyes filled with tears listening to a nation’s leader console his people, I was also laughing out loud at a more base, yet more real form of healing. Over curt words of profanity and good-natured inter-service rivalry, […]

The development challenges for contemporary democratic states of Africa are enormous. This somewhat sweeping phrase takes for granted the question of whether those countries claiming to be democratic are so in organisation and practice. For instance, only Mauritius was categorised as full democracy out of 44 sub-Saharan African countries evaluated in Democracy Index, 2010; 8 […]

Though people tend to see themselves as objective interpreters of the world, they are often active self-deceivers. Self-deception is a psychological process whereby one selectively chooses knowledge that confirms a positive self bias. Affecting people on an individual and group level, self-deception can have destructive consequences. It is thus important to understand self-deception’s role in […]

Abstract: The Arab Spring provides a rare opportunity to examine the roles of natural resources and state structure in the face of popular discontent. While the Gulf monarchies have all weathered the events of 2011, the diverging fates of the two oil-producing republics in North Africa—Algeria and Libya—suggest that neither factor alone can account for […]

By The Citizen Staff Capping more than seven months of research, meetings and phone calls; the Kennedy School second year Masters of Public Policy (MPP) students turned in their culminating project last week. The Policy Analysis Exercise (more commonly known as the PAE) is an extensive research project for an organization or government agency that […]

Esraa Abdelfattah, already a leading activist prior to 2011, played a major role in the January 2011 Egyptian revolution. She has been a political activist since 2008, when she created the April 6 Strike Group on Facebook, which grew to 70,000 members and resulted in her arrest. She is currently vice-chairman of the Egyptian Democratic […]

Yoel Guzansky, the former Iran coordinator at Israel’s NationalSecurity Council, is a research fellow at the Institute for NationalSecurity Studies at Tel Aviv University and a doctoral candidate ininternational relations at Haifa University.     Benedetta Berti is a fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, a member […]

  Jon B. Alterman is director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Prior to joining CSIS in 2002, he served as a member of the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State and as a special assistant to the assistant secretary of state for Near […]

Over the course of 10 days, hundreds of students sought out exotic locations on what is now aptly termed “student-led treks.” These trips ranged from politically charged regions to relaxing beachfront destinations. All places served to inspire, inform and integrate students with local culture, food, and of course, government perspectives. The following are stories shared […]

By Anthony Barrows, MC/MPA ’13, Staff Writer As a Gleitsman Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership, I had the privilege of spending spring break in New York City for our field experience. This four-day trip gave the Gleitsman and Zuckerman Fellows a snapshot of how America’s largest city grapples with some of today’s toughest […]

By Alexandra Raphel, MPP’14, Staff Writer When Halimatou Hima (MPP’14) received a phone call from the Gates Foundation one Sunday morning during winter break, her first thought was that they had the wrong number. In fact, they were calling to invite Halima to speak at TEDxChange, an event co-organized by TED and the Gates Foundation […]

By Khurram Ali, MPP’14, Correspondent Last week, I had the opportunity to sit down with ex-Harvard President and current Charles W. Eliot Professor of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers. Known as one of the most brilliant economists of his time, Larry Summers has also served as the U.S. Secretary of Treasury under Bill Clinton and as […]