blog

BY VIRIDIANA RIOS, PH.D While the emergence of civilian self-defense groups in Mexico has gained the most attention as a strategy to fight drug cartels, the most profound change in that country’s security strategy has largely passed unnoticed. Early on 2014, Mexico approved an entirely new national code of judicial procedures that will transform the […]

POLICY AREA: HEALTH CARE BY EMILY HARTMANN It is clear that President Obama wants to move the conversation forward on health care. In the State of the Union address he acknowledged the early struggles launching health care exchanges, but he quickly turned to the successes of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Speaking directly to the […]

A Note of Explanation: For the first time, the Kennedy School Review has tapped into the policy expertise of students across the Harvard Kennedy School of Government to collect their perspectives on President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union Address.  For two days, HKS students are providing their analysis on a broad range of policy […]

BY ELIZABETH A. KISLIK In a lecture at Harvard University in mid-October, New York Times columnist Gail Collins discussed how fundamentally women’s roles in American society have changed over the past half-century. Her talk reflected the theme of her 2009 book, When Everything Changed. Collins recalled the days of “executive flights,” on which young, unmarried […]

BY SHASHANK SHEKHAR SHUKLA As the city slept, the killer silently crept in. From the windows, doors, ledges and crevices, it came in silently, slaughtering not just hundreds but hundreds of thousands of innocent victims. The killer’s name was methyl isocyanate, and in 4 hours it instantly killed 8,000 people and maimed another 200,000. At […]

BY GOVERNOR JEB BUSH As adults, we are responsible for the educational success of our children. And as adults we can easily thwart young learners. Let me ask you a question. A child enters kindergarten. His mother is a single-parent who works a minimum wage job. Perhaps he lives in the inner city or he […]

BY SAMUEL STOLPER Like it or not, renewable portfolio standards (RPSs) are a major part of United States climate and energy policy. Thirty states and the District of Columbia have enacted RPSs, and seven more states have analogous voluntary (non-binding) programs[i]. RPSs have been active since the early 2000s, so some states have as much […]

By Will Hickey The time has come for sovereign wealth funds to produce some meaningful value. Now conservatively valued at around 6 trillion dollars, sovereign wealth funds, or SWFs, are massive state-owned investment vehicles of stocks, bonds, property, precious metals and other financial instruments, including private equity. They are overwhelmingly funded through oil and gas […]

  BY EMILY FRANCIS HARTMANN Federal health insurance exchanges (also known as insurance marketplaces) are off to a slow start. As we await the first official enrollment figures in mid-November, however, it is important to recognize that a slow start is not a surprise. Most of those who have been forecasting exchange enrollment over the […]

BY TOMMY TOBIN Whatever you think about former Vice President Dick Cheney, his upcoming book Heart provides new fodder for debates around the 25th Amendment and America’s system of presidential succession.  Cheney’s imperilled health during his term in office demonstrated that the 25th Amendment and the nation’s procedures for handling inability, disability, and vacancy in […]

Note: This is part 2 of a 2 part series. Read Brian’s first post here. Photo credit: Michael S. Williamson (source here). BY BRIAN CHIGLINSKY Yesterday, we introduced the concept of the Great Decoupling – the idea that middle class income growth is no longer connected to the growth of the broader American economy. Today, we look […]

Note: This post is part 1 of a 2 part series. Part 2 will be available on Friday, October 18. BY BRIAN CHIGLINSKY It sounded like a fantasy novel. In the heyday of furniture manufacturing, she said, a high school student could drop out, walk out of his schoolhouse, down the road by the river […]