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By Imran Sarwar, News Writer, MPP ‘13 Microfinance has lost its halo. Once touted as the instrument for economic advancement of the poor, an enterprise model that was not only self-sustainable but also socially responsible, the microfinance sector’s efficacy is now in doubt. Microfinance started out as the work of nonprofit organizations and then shifted […]

By Shloka Nath, News Editor, MPP ‘13 In what is likely to be seen as a significant boon for Venezuelan democracy, Leopoldo López – HKS alum, technocrat and former mayor of the affluent Chacao district of Caracas – recently launched his campaign to contest President Hugo Chavez in elections next year. Previously barred from seeking […]

By Khaleel Seecharan, News Writer, MC/MPA ‘12 Last month, President Obama proposed a ten-year plan aimed at shaving of $3 trillion dollars of the United States deficit.  Coming on the heels of the acrimonious debt ceiling agreement that paralyzed the nation over the summer, Obama hopes to submit this plan to the bi-partisan committee that […]

By Christopher Gustafson, Humor Columnist, MPP ‘12 Folks, have you ever seen a commercial where a random person performs a feat of learned skill, only to then say that his/her only qualification to perform said feat of learned skill was that (s)he “stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night”? Needless to say, I have […]

By Alex Remington, Sports Writer, MPP ‘13 Kevin Durant is making a movie. Deron Williams is going to play in Turkey. The D-League, prohibited from employing NBAers during a lockout, is planning for a season with a much smaller talent pool. Training camp, which was supposed to start yesterday, was indefinitely postponed. All over the […]

President         Jieun Baek, MPP2 (56%) Shashank Shukla, MC MPA (44%)   Executive Vice President        Simon R. Bone, MC MPA (36%) Maggie Williams, MPP2 (64%)   VP International Student Affairs Mario Jaimes, MPA1 (59%) Lance Li, MPP1 (41%)   VP Technology and Operations          Shradha Balakrishnan, MPA2 (61%) George Xue, MC MPA (39%) […]

By Cristina Garmendia, MPP ‘13 The Institute of Politics (IOP) is housed within the Harvard Kennedy School in Littauer but organizes events for the benefit of the entire Cambridge and Boston community. Executive Director Cathy McLaughlin reports that the IOP mailing list gets sent to 7200 people. In contrast, the Forum space only holds 750 […]

The 9/11 decennial brought no end of opinions. Here, The Citizen has compiled a taste of what you may or may not have read to mark the occasion. This national mood was (and remains) completely oblivious to the legitimate grievances that pervaded the Arab world. These grievances were associated with Western appropriations of the region’s […]

By Zachary Hughes At a conference last week in Tel Aviv, Israeli General Eyal Eisenberg warned, “What is called the ‘Arab Spring’ can become a radical Islamic winter.” His assessment echoed the fears of many concerned with the specter of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood even in January, when the series of uprisings across the Middle East […]

By Ahmed Moor, MPP ‘13 Decades of fruitless, frustrating and ultimately self-defeating negotiations have yielded nothing meaningful for the Palestinians. For the Israelis, however, 20 years of the Oslo process have been immensely productive. During that period, the number of Israelis colonizing East Jerusalem and the West Bank swelled by several hundred thousand; today, there […]

By Irene Shih, Editor-in-Chief, MPP ‘13 May, 2011. Picture it: I am twenty-four years old – young, confident, homely. My head is still spinning from the excitement of being a future K-School student. Whilst swimming in this expensive, $140K surreality, I formulate the following two-and-a-half concrete thoughts: 1) “I need to stock up on Reduced-Fat […]

By John DiGiovanni, Culture Writer, MPP ‘12 “Son, I reckon it’s a song you need.” Late Sunday in Harvard Square, illuminated by street lights but beyond that all dark, this thin voice rises up from behind, a welcome interruption to an unsettling life-contemplating meditation. I wheel around to find a weathered musician, guitar in hand. […]