Kennedy School Review

BY MOUNIR MAHMALAT Imagine a young couple at a boring dancing party. While one tries to animate and initiate the dancing, the other remains seated, complaining, finding excuses. Suddenly, the party ends, and both go home – frustrated. Reforming the European Union (EU) might be less appealing than a dance party. However, the current political […]

BY MAX NATHANSON The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will change Pakistan. CPEC — a proposed network of highways, power plants, and Special Economic Zones (SEZs) worth a reported $62 billion — is set to bring Pakistan more than double the entire volume of foreign direct investment that the country received since 2008. But who, exactly, […]

BY ANGELICA QUICKSEY and EMILY BROAS An internet connection is a gateway to the modern world: communication, education, economic opportunity, entertainment, and more. Yet, 19 percent of U.S. households lack a home broadband subscription and are excluded from these benefits. The digital divide – the gulf between those who have ready access to the internet […]

BY QUINTON MAYNE For many Americans, cities have become a beacon of hope. The can-do, eye-level politics of our city halls is increasingly viewed as an antidote to what seems like a culture of top-down, self-serving, and polarizing party politics inside the Beltway. An important question then is whether city leaders will live up to […]

BY FRANCISCA VILLALOBOS Pamela, the community leader of La Isla, had worked ten years towards this moment. Last November, La Isla shantytown celebrated the foundation stone-laying ceremony to kick off the construction of one hundred houses for La Isla’s families. To the crowd of community dwellers, representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and local government officials […]

BY LINA HIDALGO In Harris County, Texas, the third largest county in the nation and home to Houston, the “education gap” is something that tens of thousands of families struggle with daily. One-in-five children in Texas is born in Harris County, and nearly 35 percent of them live below the federal poverty line. Low-income students […]

By VARYA MERUZHANYAN For over a century, April has been a moment of a deafening silence for Armenians. Every year, on April 24, Armenians around the world pause to commemorate the 1.5 million victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire. This year, however, the silence was broken by the loud sounds of vuvuzelas […]

BY AYNA AGARWAL About three years ago, a little-known researcher named Aleksandr Kogan began a social science experiment at Cambridge University. Nothing unusual here. But just a few years later, he became embroiled in a Silicon Valley scandal of epic proportions. Over 80 million raw profiles of users—including their friends, activity, and private information—were scraped […]

BY ALISON COLLINS AND BAR PELED The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) has done very little over the years to prioritize women—not at its founding, not during its transition to a professional and international institution, and certainly not today. The administration’s failure to address the gender imbalance among the faculty and in the curriculum, as well […]

BY JACK PEAD Last year wasn’t great for the climate. We saw the potential for rising ocean temperatures to turn the Atlantic into an increasingly violent hurricane-producing system. The average global concentration of CO2 permanently surpassed 400 parts per million, making something of a mockery of 350.org, an advocacy organization set up to try to […]

BY LAURA MERRYFIELD and PRANAV REDDY Black Panther begins with T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) grappling with the dilemma presented by his new role as king of Wakanda. His country is rich in vibranium, a valuable metal that has allowed Wakanda to develop advanced technology and quiet prosperity for its citizens. The previous king, T’Challa’s father, disguised […]

BY BOB PAYNE “Jim” boards the plane in Denver. After a weekend of high-elevation hiking and brewery IPAs, he’s packed his checked bag with pot brownies, which his wife loves. Home in New Orleans, he drives straight from the airport to his office, the pot brownies still in his bag. The youth nonprofit he works […]