The Citizen

Delights of the intelligentsia’s social life in the City of Lights – A fiction based on real life memories and observations By Cassandre Pignon, MPA ‘13 In my native country of France, people take dinner conversation very, very seriously. My American friend Annika called me in a panic yesterday, barely hiding the nervousness in her voice. The issue was indeed nothing small. She […]

By Shloka Nath, News Editor, MPP’13 As of March 1st, Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government will join a slew of campuses across the U.S. in instituting a full smoking ban across its campus. The new policy, which closely aligns with similar changes at the Harvard Medical School, will ban smoking on all […]

By Cristina Garmendia, News Writer, MPP ‘13 There are no direct flights to Park City, Utah from Boston.  Luckily for our resident film buffs, on March 2-3 a bit of Sundance can be seen at the Gleitsman Social Change Film Forum (GSCFF), hosted by Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership. The GSCFF will bring together social […]

1. Is the MPP core worth it? This is an important question, and one both professor’s Dick Light and Dan Levy are looking into. To assess student learning, last year’s first-year MPP students were given two identical tests, one before they took the core and one after. Two sources who preferred not to be named […]

By Ryoji Watanabe, News Writer, MC/MPA’12 What started as a peaceful afternoon on March 11th, 2011 quickly became one of the most devastating and traumatic days Japan has ever seen. A tsunami crashed into the beautiful landscape of vast rice fields and seaside houses.  Massive waves tore buildings from their foundations and tossed cars into […]

By Rahul Daswani, MPP ’13 Before we get caught up in the madness that is HKS Spring 2012 (or am I too late?), I was hoping to share some of the reflections that I had over a peaceful five weeks of break in India in the hopes that we can at least delay giving in […]

By Sujoyini Mandal, Opinions Columnist, MPP ‘13 Will security assurance counter North Korea’s increasingly aggressive stance on nuclear weapons? This was the essential question at two recent Belfer Center events with guest speakers Dr. John Park from the United States Institute for Peace and Professor Sung-Yoon Lee from Tufts University. What is the current concern? […]

By José Miguel Ossa, MPA ’13 In my Column Writing class (MLD725 if you happen to be interested), one of my classmates, an international student, wrote that she wasn’t expecting “the small day to day chores to be so exhausting” when coming to the USA. After reading her piece, I started to think about the […]

By Zachary Rosenfeld, Assistant News Editor, MPP’13 Chalk it up to the decompression afforded by winter break, or maybe the merciful (if temporary) lack of problem sets and memorandums, or perhaps the new brand identity (Harvard Kennedy School Student Government or “HKSSG,” pronounced “eych kay double-ess gee” – you heard it here first). Whatever the […]

By Ryoji Watanabe, News Writer, MC/MPA’12 Following the Fall 2011 elections, when a critical error in the online voting system contaminated the results of all the contests (and most egregiously, that of the Mid-Careers and MPA1s), some Kennedy School students were wary that their votes might be miscounted again. “Back home, many of us have […]

By Alexander Remington, Culture Writer, MPP ‘13 For some people – particularly the florists, hoteliers, restaurateurs, and greeting card writers among us – the date of February 14 is associated with Valentine’s Day, arguably the most egregiously commercialized of all American religious holidays. But for me, it is always associated with the return of the […]

By Litcy Ludvic, Culture Contributor, MPP ‘13 Human Rights? Oh, No! Not now, please! I don’t want to get depressed about gruesome stuff happening in distant lands to unknown people. I know I should care. I am even empathetic. I feel bad for all those people. I might even donate something, if need be! [This is […]