Kennedy School Review

BY JONATHAN HILLMAN Would you ask an ophthalmologist to remove your gall bladder? Would you pay a traffic cop for legal advice? Probably not — unless you happen to be that dashing, danger-seeking Dos Equis guy. Yet when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, Americans seem content accepting counsel from dubious sources. Who can blame […]

BY SARAH ALLIN The nation’s political system was designed as a counterweight to economic inequality, but what happens when inequality enters the democratic sphere that we perceived to be immune? Alex Keyssar, professor of history and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, posed this question last week during the taping of WBUR’s On Point. […]

BY KARLY SCHLEDWITZ With a historic overhaul of our health care system underway, I felt like a good public policy student should understand the basics of American health policy. Dutifully, I enrolled in “Introduction to U.S. Health Policy,” a semester-long course co-taught by Sheila Burke and Richard Frank. I knew there would be new vocabulary […]

BY PATRICK KIBBE Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for a case that could be worse for the American public than Citizens United v. FEC, and unleash countless millions of special interest dollars into political campaigns. In this case ­– McCutcheon and the Republican National Committee v. FEC – Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama […]

BY BRIAN CHIGLINSKY On the bright, sunny morning of Thursday, July 28, 2012, a group of reporters and interns could be seen in their best work outfits and most comfortable running shoes sprinting out of the regal, marble halls of the Supreme Court to the legions of cameras situated just beyond the front steps. In […]

BY DAN MCCONNELL As President Obama made the case for military action in Syria Sunday, he was clear that such actions would be proportional in scope, reiterating, “What we are envisioning is something limited.” Now that the President has placed the onus for a decision on the legislature, it is at least as important for […]

BY JOSH RUDOLPH  Over the summer, US bank regulators announced that the eight largest US banks will have to maintain leverage ratios[1] (equity / total assets) of at least 5% for their holding companies and 6% for their depository institutions. This new supplement to the international standard of 3% is a step in the right direction, but […]

BY VIRIDIANA RIOS At an undetermined time, somewhere in Mexico, a violent war among drug cartels erupted. For too long it was difficult to elaborate—with absolute certainty—on that statement. Just after the turn of the millennium, drug lords who had “peacefully” conducted operations to introduce cocaine and other illegal substances into the United States since […]

BY ABIGAIL BELLOWS If you are a child in India under the age of five, there is a 42 percent chance you are suffering from malnutrition. According to Reuters, every day across India, three-thousand children your age will die as a result. The government of India runs the world’s largest food distribution system for the […]

BY JONATHAN E. HILLMAN A Book Review of Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present by Max Boot.  If there was ever a funeral for U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates delivered the eulogy. In February 2011, as reported in the New York Times, Gates told cadets […]

BY MARK DIAZ TRUMAN I was a junior in college before football fandom got its hooks into me. A few friends and I bonded over my fledgling love for the Denver Broncos, one of the only sports teams close enough to my home state of New Mexico to catch my interest. On Sundays we would […]

BY IRENE SHIH Much has been made this year about Zero Dark Thirty, Hollywood’s first stab at dramatizing the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) hunt for Osama bin Laden. Even Graham Allison, professor of government and founding dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, has written about the Oscar-nominated film. A […]