Kennedy School Review

BY NIELS PLANEL, HAY BADRA, YUSAKU KAWASHIMA, RASHA KENAWI, SUMI KRISHNAN, AND NINA PAUSTIAN “It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America,”  U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley recently stated, strongly criticizing a new U.N. report doing just that. But is it really so ridiculous? For the past few decades, […]

BY MATT MCDOLE Editor’s note: As a policy journal, we strive to introduce smart, bold ideas for addressing pressing problems and to be a platform for new and unheard voices. We decided to publish this op-ed, written by a former managing editor of the Kennedy School Review because we believe diversity ought to be at […]

BY MAKSIM WYNN Rising out of the South Texas brush country, 50 acres of stadium lighting dominate the night sky. Directly to the east of those 50 acres is a small town fairly typical of this part of the state—low-slung buildings; a number of good Mexican restaurants; and a lot of corrugated steel, limestone, and […]

BY COLIN KILLICK People with disabilities know, firsthand, that America’s current social safety net is unsustainable. Wage stagnation,[i] automation, and outsourcing threaten jobs,[ii] meaning more and more people will find themselves unable to make ends meet through full-time work. This next generation of unemployed workers will need government programs to help them get back on […]

BY ANTHONY DANG In 2006, I was an enlisted US Marine deployed to Iraq. My closest friends were my fireteam – four of us who watched each other’s backs: Ryan was the most senior member of the team. He had survived many battles before our time and would often tell us about the First and […]

BY JENIE SON AND ANDREW HONG When Americans think of North Korea, they tend to focus on the country’s dictatorial leader and the threat of nuclear war as Kim Jong Un squares off with Donald Trump. It can be easy to forget that there are ordinary people living there, continuously suffering under the most repressive […]

BY BRENDAN ROACH In 1950, British mathematician Alan Turing took to the pages of the philosophical journal Mind to pose a question that has flummoxed philosophers and scientists ever since: can machines think?[1] At the time of writing, the question was almost preposterously optimistic: the world’s first computer, the ENIAC, was barely five years old […]

BY TAMAR SHAPIRA-COHEN With only 25 minutes to grab lunch, I walked to Clover, a Boston-area vegetarian chain. The menu includes all the top hits of the veggie scene, but something out of the ordinary caught my eyes: Impossible Meatballs. I was curious. I took my chances and bit into my first-ever meatless meatball sandwich. […]

BY CAMERON LINDSAY Last month, 27 of the 28 national European Union ambassadors to Beijing denounced China’s “Silk Road” project as one that hampers free trade and places Chinese companies at an advantage. The sentiments, in response to China’s One Belt Initiative (OBI), strongly contrast the themes of cooperation, openness, and mutual benefits espoused by […]

BY KHADIJAH TRIBBLE “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana […]

BY SASHA RAMANI President Trump’s long-promised trade war against China has begun. In March, President Trump unveiled tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, and later targeted China directly with tariffs on $60 billion worth of imports on technology and energy industry components. In April, he launched a further 25 percent tariff on Chinese industrial technology, […]

BY BEN MCGUIRE On Friday, May 25, 2018, the Republic of Ireland may be one of the first nations in history to legalize abortion by referendum. If the motion passes—recent polling has tightened to a very close race—Ireland will join much of the world over the last few decades in a trend toward relaxing abortion […]