PolicyCast

Forget smaller or bigger. If you want better government, invest.

Elizabeth Linos, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 10:42:15 +0000

Elizabeth Linos is the Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor for Public Policy and Management, and Faculty Director of The People Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The majority of her research focuses on how to improve government by focusing on its people and the services they deliver. Specifically, she uses insights from behavioral science and evidence from public management to consider how to recruit, retain, and support the government workforce, how to improve resident-state interactions, and how to better integrate evidence-based policymaking into government. Her research has been published in numerous academic journals including Nature Human Behaviour, Econometrica, The Journal for Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART), The Journal of Political Economy, Public Administration Review, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Behavioural Public Policy, and others. Prior to joining the Harvard Kennedy School faculty, Linos has been an assistant professor at UC Berkeley; the VP and Head of Research and Evaluation at the Behavioral Insights Team in North America; and policy advisor to the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, focusing on social innovation and public sector reform. Linos has been named one of the top 10 influencers in local government by ELGL, and was the 2023 recipient of the prestigious David N. Kershaw Award and Prize "established to honor persons who, before the age of 40, have made distinguished contributions to the field of public policy analysis and management."

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in political science from UCLA and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast has been provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support has been provided by Laura King. Web design and social media promotion support has been provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner. Editorial support has been provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill.

Christiane Amanpour says objective journalism means pursuing truth—not neutrality

Christiane Amanpour, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 4 Jun 2025 15:14:51 +0000

Christiane Amanpour is chief international anchor of CNN’s flagship global affairs program “Amanpour,” which airs weekdays on CNN International and nightly on PBS in the United States. She is also host of “The Amanpour Hour,” and is based in the network’s London bureau. Beginning in 1983 as an entry-level assistant on the international assignment desk at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta, Amanpour rose through the organization becoming a reporter at the New York bureau, and later, the network’s leading international correspondent. On the ground during the siege of Sarajevo, Amanpour exposed the brutality of the Bosnian War, reporting on the daily tragedy of life for civilians in the city. She was outspoken, calling out the human rights abuses, massacres and genocide committed against the Bosnian Moslems, later saying “There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice.” Throughout her time at CNN, Amanpour has secured exclusive interviews with global power players. In the wake of the September 11 attacks she was the first international correspondent to interview British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. During the height of the Arab Spring she conducted an Emmy-winning interview with Libya’s former leader ‘Colonel’ Moammar Gadhafi, and she was also the last journalist to interview Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak just before he was deposed. In January 2014, Amanpour also exclusively broke the news of a dossier of testimony and photographs which alleged to show systematic torture of prisoners by government forces in Syria, evidence she used to confront Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev about his government’s support for the Assad regime. In addition to her work as an anchor and reporter, Amanpour is an active rights campaigner. A board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Centre for Public Integrity and the International Women’s Media Foundation, she has used her profile to raise awareness of key global issues and journalists’ rights. She has interviewed educational rights activist Malala Yousafzai for CNN on several occasions – bringing focus to her courage and international advocacy work. Amanpour has earned 16 News and Documentary Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards, three duPont-Columbia Awards and the IWMF’s Courage in Journalism Award. She has received nine honorary degrees, is an honorary citizen of Sarajevo, and a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Freedom of the Press and the Safety of Journalists. Amanpour holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Rhode Island.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina.Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and Delane Meadows. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill.

The Arctic faces historic pressures from competition, climate change, and Trump

John Holdren, Jennifer Spence, Ralph Ranalli — Fri, 16 May 2025 13:52:35 +0000

John Holdren is the Teresa and John Heinz Research Professor for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and co-director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is a former Professor of Environmental Science and Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Affiliated Professor in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science. He is also President Emeritus and Senior Advisor to the President at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, a pre-eminent, independent, environmental-research organization. From 2009 to 2017, Holdren was President Obama’s Science Advisor and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, becoming the longest-serving Science Advisor to the President in the history of the position. Before joining Harvard, was a professor of energy resources at the University of California, Berkeley, where he founded and led the interdisciplinary graduate-degree program in energy and resources. Prior to that he was a theoretical physicist in the Theory Group of the Magnetic Fusion Energy Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a Senior Research Fellow at Caltech. He has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the MacArthur Foundation and Chairman of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the National Academy of Sciences. During the Clinton Administration, he served for both terms on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, leading multiple studies on energy-technology innovation and nuclear arms control. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a foreign member of the Royal Society of London and the Indian National Academy of Engineering and a former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His many honors include one of the first MacArthur Prize Fellowships (1981) and the Moynihan Prize of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. In 1995, he gave the acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization of scientists and public figures. He holds SB and SM degrees from MIT in aeronautics and astronautics and a Ph.D. from Stanford in aeronautics and astronautics and theoretical plasma physics.

Jennifer Spence is the Director of the Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, with expertise related to sustainable development, international governance, institutional effectiveness, and public policy. Spence currently co-chairs the Arctic Research Cooperation and Diplomacy Research Priority Team for the Fourth International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP IV), participates as a member of the Climate Expert Group for the Arctic Council’s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, and sits as a member of the Yukon Arctic Security Advisory Council. Spence was the Executive Secretary of the Arctic Council’s Sustainable Development Working Group from 2019-2023. Previously, she taught and conducted research at Carleton University and worked for a 2-year term at the United Nations Development Programme. She also worked for 18 years with the Government of Canada in senior positions related to resource management, conflict and change management, strategic planning, and leadership development. Spence holds a Ph.D. in public policy from Carleton University, a MA from Royal Roads University in conflict management and analysis, and a BA in political science from the University of British Columbia.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina.Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill.

Moments that matter: How to bake fairness into the workplace

Iris Bohnet, Siri Chilazi, Ralph Ranalli — Tue, 6 May 2025 15:08:40 +0000

Iris Bohnet is the Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government and the co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. She is a behavioral economist, combining insights from economics and psychology to improve decision-making in organizations and society, often with a gender or cross-cultural perspective. Her most recent research examines behavioral design to embed equity at work. She is the author of the award-winning book “What Works: Gender Equality by Design” and co-author of the book “Make Work Fair.” Professor Bohnet advises governments and companies around the world, including serving as Special Advisor on the Gender Equality Acceleration Plan to the UN Secretary-General/Deputy Secretary-General and as a member of the Gender Equality Advisory Council of the G7. She was named one of the Most Influential Academics in Government and one of the most Influential People in Gender Policy by apolitical. She served as academic dean of Harvard Kennedy School for six years and as the faculty chair of the executive program “Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century” for the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders for more than ten years. She presently serves as the faculty director of the social sciences at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and on a number of boards and advisory boards.

Siri Chilazi is a senior researcher at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School whose life’s work is to advance gender equality in the workplace through research and research translation. She operates at the intersection of academia and practice, both conducting research on how organizations can become more inclusive and bringing those research insights to practitioners through speaking, training, and workshops. As an academic researcher, Siri specializes in identifying practical approaches to close gender gaps at work by de-biasing structures and designing fairer processes. As an advisor and speaker, Siri frequently collaborates with organizations ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies and leading professional service firms in order to close gender gaps. Shei is the coauthor, with Iris Bohnet, of “Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results.” She has earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, and a BA in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard College.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill.

Crypto is merging with mainstream finance. Regulators aren’t ready

Timothy Massad, Howell Jackson, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 20:37:17 +0000

Timothy Massad is currently a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School and a consultant on financial regulatory and fintech issues. Massad served as Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2014-2017. Under his leadership, the agency implemented the Dodd Frank reforms of the over-the-counter swaps market and harmonized many aspects of cross-border regulation, including reaching a landmark agreement with the European Union on clearinghouse oversight. The agency also declared virtual currencies to be commodities, introduced reforms to address automated trading and strengthened cybersecurity protections. Previously, Mr. Massad served as the Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that capacity, he oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the principal U.S. governmental response to the 2008 financial crisis. Massad was a partner in the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, LLP. His practice included corporate finance, derivatives and advising boards of directors. Massad was also one of a small group of lawyers who drafted the original ISDA standard agreements for swaps.

Howell Jackson is the James S. Reid, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. His research interests include financial regulation, consumer financial protection, securities regulation, and federal budget policy. He has served as a consultant to the United States Treasury Department, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. He frequently consults with government agencies and congressional committees on issues related to financial regulation. From 2023 to 2024, he was a Senior Adviser to the National Economic Council. Since 2005, Professor Jackson has been a trustee of College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF). He has also served as a director of Commonwealth, a non-profit dedicated to strengthening financial opportunities for low and moderate-income consumers. At Harvard University, Professor Jackson has served as Senior Adviser to the President and Acting Dean of Harvard Law School. Before joining the Harvard Law School faculty in 1989, Professor Jackson was a law clerk for Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall and practiced law in Washington, D.C. Professor Jackson received his J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Harvard University in 1982 and a B.A. from Brown University in 1976.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina.Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill .

Professor Joe Nye coined the term “soft power.” He says America’s is in decline under Trump

Joseph Nye, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 9 Apr 2025 15:23:28 +0000

Joseph S. Nye Jr. is a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus, and former Dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He has served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and as deputy undersecretary of state for security assistance, science and technology. In a recent survey of international relations scholars, he was ranked as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy, and in 2011, Foreign Policy named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers. His most recent book, published in 2024, is “A Life in the American Century.” His other books include “The Power to Lead,” “The Future of Power,” “Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era,” and "Is the American Century Over?” He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and the American Academy of Diplomacy. He received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Princeton University, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, and earned a PhD in political science from Harvard.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill.

America’s geopolitical realignments, authoritarianism, and Trump’s endgame

Wendy Sherman, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 3 Apr 2025 17:10:11 +0000

Ambassador Wendy Sherman, the 21st U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and the first woman in that position, has been a diplomat, businesswoman, professor, political strategist, author, and social worker. She served under three presidents and five secretaries of state, becoming known as a diplomat for hard conversations in hard places. As Deputy Secretary, she was the point person on China. While serving as Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Sherman led the U.S. negotiating team that reached an agreement on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the P5+1, the European Union and Iran. And, as Counselor at the State Department, she led on North Korea and was engaged on Middle East negotiations. For her diplomatic accomplishments she was awarded the National Security Medal by President Barack Obama. At Harvard Kennedy School, she was a professor of the practice of public leadership, director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School (where she is now a Hauser Leadership Fellow), and a current and former Senior Fellow at the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. In 2002, along with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Sherman built a global consulting business, The Albright Group. Sherman previously served on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, chaired Oxfam America’s Board of Directors, served on the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Policy Board, and was Director of Child Welfare for the State of Maryland. She is the author of the book: “Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power and Persistence.” Sherman attended Smith College and received a B.A. cum laude from Boston University and a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Maryland.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner of the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team.

If the U.S. courts can’t defend the rule of law, who can?

Maya Sen, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 17:05:31 +0000

With a Republican Congress apparently unwilling to check Trump’s power, many Americans fear a looming constitutional crisis and are looking to the federal courts to ride to the rescue. But political scientist and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Maya Sen, who studies the federal judiciary, says the cavalry probably isn’t coming. The Trump administration has seemingly defied judicial orders on deportations, withholding congressionally appropriated funds for federal programs, eliminating birthright citizenship, and other issues. Meanwhile, surrogates like Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire Elon Musk have stated in social media posts that Trump is simply not bound by judicial decisions and can do pretty much whatever he pleases. Trump has even joined with some of his political supporters calling for impeachment of judges who rule against him, prompting Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to respond and call Trump’s statement “inappropriate.” With the legislative branch of government sitting on the sidelines and without a credible threat of impeachment, Sen says the judiciary is no match for an authoritarian executive in terms of speed of action and political muscle—and was never intended to be. And even if it had been, structural issues with the way decisions are made and how judges are chosen give conservatives an advantage, and have resulted in a Supreme Court that is largely out of step with public opinion. Sen talks with PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli about what can be done to restore both the separation of powers and the balance of power in the U.S. government during this unprecedented pivotal moment in American history.

Maya Sen’s Policy Recommendations:

Pass a constitutional amendment to end lifetime appointments and limit terms for federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, to 18 years to help depoliticize the process of judicial selection.
Exert public and electoral pressure on Congress and political leaders to defend the legislative branch’s constitutional prerogatives and to stop ceding power to the executive branch.

Episode Notes:

Maya Sen is a political scientist whose interests include law, political economy, race and ethnic politics, and statistical methods. She has testified before Congress and presidential commissions on issues pertaining to the federal courts, and her research has been published in numerous academic journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and The Journal of Politics. . Her writings also include the books “The Judicial Tug of War: How Lawyers, Politicians, and Ideological Incentives Shape the American Judiciary,” and “Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics,” which won the 2019 William H. Riker Book Award for best book published in political economy. She is currently working on a book on the relationship between the Supreme Court and public opinion. Professor Sen earned a PhD from the Department of Government at Harvard University in 2012 and holds an AM in Statistics and an AB in Economics, both from Harvard University, as well as a JD from Stanford Law School.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner of the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team.

AI can make governing better instead of worse. Yes, you heard that right.

Daneille Allen, Mark Fagan, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 15:02:04 +0000

Danielle Allen and Mark Fagan say that when tested, thoughtfully deployed, and regulated AI actually can help governments serve citizens better. Sure, there is no shortage of horror stories these days about the intersection of AI and government—from a municipal chatbot that told restaurant owners it was OK to serve food that had been gnawed by rodents to artificial intelligence police tools that misidentify suspects through faulty facial recognition. And now the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE say they are fast-tracking the use of AI to root out government waste and fraud, while making public virtually no details about what tools they are using or how they’ll be deployed.

But Allen and Fagan say that while careless deployment creates risks like opening security holes, exacerbating inefficiencies, and automating flawed decision-making, AI done the right way can help administrators and policymakers make better and smarter decisions, and can make governments more accessible and responsive to the citizens they serve. They also say we need to reorient our thinking from AI being a replacement for human judgement to a partnership model, where each brings its strengths to the table. Danielle Allen is an HKS professor and the founder of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation. Mark Fagan is a lecturer in public policy and faculty chair of the Delivering Public Services section of the Executive Education Program at HKS. They join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to explain the guidelines, guardrails, and principles that can help government get AI right.

Policy Recommendations:

Danielle Allen’s Policy Recommendations:

* Federally license firms leading AI development in the same way other national high-risk labs are licensed, and require close reporting out of what they are discovering on an ongoing basis.

* Support the "people's bid" for TikTok and generally promote an alternative, pro-social model for social media platforms.

* Establish AI offices in state governments: Create offices that use AI to enhance openness, accountability, and transparency in government.

Mark Fagan's Policy Recommendations:

* Implement "sandbox" spaces for regulatory experimentation that allow organizations to test different policy ideas in a controlled environment to see what works.

* Adopt a risk-based regulatory approach similar to the EU that categorize AI regulations based on risk levels, with clear guidelines on high-risk activities where AI use is prohibited versus those where experimentation is allowed.

Danielle Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy and director of the Democratic Knowledge Project and of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation. She is also a seasoned nonprofit leader, democracy advocate, national voice on AI and tech ethics, and author. A past chair of the Mellon Foundation and Pulitzer Prize Board, and former dean of humanities at the University of Chicago, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Philosophical Society. Her many books include the widely acclaimed Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown v Board of Education; Our Declaration: a reading of the Declaration of Independence in defense of equality; Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.; Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus; and Justice by Means of Democracy. She writes a column on constitutional democracy for the Washington Post. Outside the University, she is a co-chair for the Our Common Purpose Commission and Founder and President for Partners in Democracy, where she advocates for democracy reform to create greater voice and access in our democracy, and to drive progress towards a new social contract that serves and includes us all. She holds Ph.Ds from Harvard University in government and from King’s College, University of Cambridge, in classics; master’s degrees from Harvard University in government and King’s College, University of Cambridge in classics; and an AB from Princeton in classics.

Mark Fagan is a lecturer in public policy and former senior fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School. He teaches Operations Management, Service Delivery via Systems Thinking and Supply Chain Management, and Policy Design and Delivery in the degree program. In executive education, he is the faculty chair for Delivering Public Services: Efficiency, Equity and Quality. In another program, he teaches strategy and cross boundary collaboration. The focus of his research is on the role of regulation in competitive markets. He is presently spearheading an initiative at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government that examines the policy and associated regulatory impacts of autonomous vehicles. He leads efforts to catalyze policy making through Autonomous Vehicle Policy Scrums, cross sector policy design sessions hosted by governments from Boston to Buenos Aries to Toronto. Fagan earned a Masters Degree in City and Regional Planning at Harvard University and a BA at Bucknell University.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner of the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team.

Ricardo Hausmann on the rise of industrial policy, green growth, and Trump’s tariffs

Ricardo Hausmann, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 5 Mar 2025 16:19:01 +0000

For market purists, any mention of the term industrial policy used to evoke visions of heavy-handed Soviet-style central planning, or the stifling state-centric protectionism employed by Latin American countries in the late 20th century. But that conversation turned dramatically over the last several years, as President Joe Biden’s signature legislative achievements like the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act showcased policies designed to influence and shape industries ranging from tech to pharma to green energy. My guest today, Harvard Kennedy School Professor Ricardo Hausmann, is the founder and director of the Growth Lab, which studies ways to unlock economic growth and collaborates with policymakers to promote inclusive prosperity around the world. Hausmann says he believes markets are useful, but have shown themselves inadequate to create public benefits at a time when public objectives like the clean energy transition and shared prosperity have become increasingly essential to human society. In a wide-ranging conversation, we’ll discuss why industrial policy is making a comeback, tools that the Growth Lab has developed to help poorer countries and regions develop and prosper, and the uncertainty being caused by President Trump’s pledge to raise tariffs and protectionist barriers.

Ricardo Hausmann's policy recommendations:

Encourage governments to track industries that are not yet developed but have the potential for growth and monitor technological advancements to identify how new technologies can impact existing industries or create new opportunities.
Develop state organizations with a deep understanding of societal trends and industrial potential, similar to Israel’s office of the Chief Scientist or the U.S. Presidential Commission on Science and Technology.
Encourage governments to develop a pre-approved set of tools—including training, educational programs, research programs, and infrastructure—that can be quickly mobilized for specific economic opportunities.
Teach policy design in a way that mirrors medical education (e.g., learning by doing as in a teaching hospital), because successful policy design requires real-world experience, not just theoretical knowledge.

Ricardo Hausmann is the founder and director of Harvard’s Growth Lab and the Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School. Under his leadership, the Growth Lab has grown into one of the most well regarded and influential hubs for research on economic growth and development around the world. His scholarly contributions include the development of the Growth Diagnostics and Economic Complexity methodologies, as well as several widely used economic concepts. Since launching the Growth Lab in 2006, Hausmann has served as principal investigator for more than 50 research initiatives in nearly 30 countries, including the US, informing development policy, growth strategies and diversification agendas at the national, regional, and city levels. Before joining Harvard University, he served as the first chief economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (1994-2000), where he created the Research Department. He has served as minister of planning of Venezuela (1992-1993) and as a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela. He also served as chair of the IMF-World Bank Development Committee. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lillian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King of the OCPA Design Team. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner of the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team.

Oligarchy in the open: What happens now as the U.S. confronts its plutocracy problem?

Archon Fung, Lawrence Lessig, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 21:15:33 +0000

Ten years ago, political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern took an extraordinary data set compiled by Gilens and a small army of researchers and set out to determine whether America could still credibly call itself a democracy. They used case studies 1,800 policy proposals over 30 years, tracking how they made their way through the political system and whose interests were served by outcomes. For small D democrats, the results were devastating. Political outcomes overwhelmingly favored very wealthy people, corporations, and business groups. The influence of ordinary citizens, meanwhile, was at a “non-significant, near-zero level.” America, they concluded, was not a democracy at all, but a functional oligarchy.

Fast forward to 2024 and a presidential campaign that saw record support by billionaires for both candidates, but most conspicuously for Republican candidate Donald Trump from Tesla and Starlink owner Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. That prompted outgoing President Joe Biden, in his farewell address, to warn Americans about impending oligarchy—something Gilens and Page said was already a fait accompli ten years before. And as if on cue, the new president put billionaire tech bro supporters like Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg front and center at his inauguration and has given Musk previously unimaginable power to dismantle and reshape the federal government through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. So what does it mean that American oligarchy is now so brazenly out in the open?

Joining host Ralph Ranalli are Harvard Kennedy School Professor Archon Fung and Harvard Law School Professor Larry Lessig, who say it could an inflection point that will force Americans to finally confront the country’s trend toward rule by the wealthy, but that it’s by no means certain that that direction can be changed anytime soon. Archon Fung is a democratic theorist and faculty director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at HKS. Larry Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School and a 2016 presidential candidate whose central campaign theme was ridding politics of the corrupting influence of money.

Archon Fung’s Policy Recommendations:

Involve the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in monitoring executive orders and changes to the federal government being made by President Trump, Elon Musk, and other Trump proxies.
Demand transparency from Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency about their actions in federal agencies, what changes and modifications they are making to systems, and an accounting of what information they have access to.

Lawrence Lessig’s Policy Recommendations:

Build support for a test court case to overturn the legality of Super PACs, which are allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against political candidates.
Experiment with alternative campaign funding mechanisms, such as a voucher program that would give individuals public money that they could pledge to political candidates.
Urge Democratic Party leaders to lead by example and outlaw Super PAC participation in Democratic primaries.

Episode Notes:

Archon Fung is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government and director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School. at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance. He focuses upon public participation, deliberation, and transparency. His books include “Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency” (Cambridge University Press, with Mary Graham and David Weil) and “Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy” (Princeton University Press). He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in professional journals. He holds two S.B.s — in philosophy and physics — and a Ph.D. in political science from MIT.

Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Prior to returning to Harvard, he taught at Stanford Law School, where he founded the Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court. Lessig is the founder of Equal Citizens and a founding board member of Creative Commons, and serves on the Scientific Board of AXA Research Fund. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, he was once cited by The New Yorker as “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era,” Lessig has turned his focus from law and technology to institutional corruption and the corrupting influence of money on democracy, which led to his entering the 2016 Democratic primary for president. He has written 11 books, including “They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy” in 2019. He holds a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge University, and a JD from Yale.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lillian Wainaina.Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner of the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team.

What the EU must do to compete—and become the leader the world needs

Alexander De Croo, Ralph Ranalli — Fri, 7 Feb 2025 16:51:43 +0000

Alexander De Croo became Belgium’s prime minister in October of 2020. It’s a relatively small country, with about 12 million inhabitants—slightly less than the city of Los Angeles—but it’s very much the face of Europe with the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and NATO all calling Brussels home. Prime Minister De Croo, who saw the country through the COVID pandemic, says that the geopolitical and economic upheavals already being instigated by the “America first” ethos of President Donald Trump will present another stiff test for the leadership of not only his country but the EU. In this episode of HKS PolicyCast with host Ralph Ranalli, De Croo says the key to Europe not just surviving that challenge but also thriving will depend on its ability to raise its level of economic competitiveness significantly in the coming decades. While still a powerful trading bloc, the EU’s economic growth has been slowing since the year 2000 and it’s an also-ran to the US and China in the vital tech sector, with only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies being based in Europe. It’s also facing the challenge of long-term demographic trends—by 2040 the EU’s workforce is projected to shrink by 2 million workers a year. So, as the US retreats from global leadership on fronts ranging from the green energy transition to human rights, De Croo says Europe must make urgent economic policy changes to maintain both its values and its status a leader on the world stage.

Programming note: As this discussion was being recorded, a coalition of five parties—led by the separatist New Flemish Alliance and not including Mr. De Croo’s center-right Open VLD party—agreed to form a new government, effectively ending his tenure as prime minister.

Alexander De Croo’s Policy Recommendations:

Eliminate excessive corporate reporting systems like CSRD (the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) that add bureaucratic burdens to businesses without improving corporate behavior.
Implement a non-permanent migration system that allows young people to study in Europe and stay for a set period of time, after which they are required to return to their home countries.
Maintain Europe's openness to the world while protecting core European interests, and act assertively in areas—trade, climate sustainability, development, diplomacy—where the EU is already a global leader.

Episode Notes:

Alexander De Croo is the outgoing Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Belgium, a post he held beginning in 2020. De Croo has had a long career in politics and business, including numerous ministerial posts. As Minister of Finance, he helped create a framework for a major European recovery package. As Minister of Pensions, he carried out Belgium's first pension reform package in recent history and was involved in setting up a Pension Reform Commission. As Minister of Development Cooperation, Digital Agenda, Telecom and Postal Services, he promoted measures to strengthen human rights, enhance local economic growth in partner countries, and maximize the economic potential of the digital economy. He spent his early career as a businessman and entrepreneur, and in 2006 he founded his own company, Darts-ip, an intellectual property consulting firm that now operates around the world. He started his political career in 2009, running unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament but winning the chairmanship of the center-right Flemish political party, Open Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (OpenVLD). He holds an MSc in business engineering from Vrije Universiteit Brussel and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Administrative support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team.

The policy changes needed now to avoid a climate-driven global food crisis

Wolfram Schlenker, Ralph Ranalli — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 15:37:53 +0000

The warning lights are blinking for the world’s food supply. At least that’s what 150 Nobel Prize and World Food Prize laureates said in a recently-published open letter calling for a “moonshot” urgency effort to start the immediate ramping up of food production to meet the global demands of 9.7 billion people by 2050. Harvard Kennedy School economist Wolfram Schlenker, the new Ray A. Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System says doing that will require urgent policy changes and, in some cases, policy reversals to meet those goals against the headwinds of climate change. Even as crop yields are under stress due to rising temperatures and extreme weather events, Schlenker says spending on research and development of new, climate-resistant crops and other food technologies has declined. Countries are also starting to put up more protectionist barriers around their domestic agricultural sectors, undermining the global free trade in staple food commodities that is essential to preventing severe agricultural shocks that can result in civil upheaval, mass migration, and global instability. Schlenker is the co-author of a groundbreaking study in 2009 which found that crop yields fall precipitously after reaching a certain heat threshold. The study’s conclusions were validated just three years later when a heat wave over the U.S. corn belt saw yields drop by 25 percent. With 700 million people globally already classified as undernourished and the world having at least temporarily breached the crucial 1.5 degrees Celsius warming standard in 2024, it may be the most important problem nobody’s talking about. Schlenker joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about the ticking global food crisis clock and policy changes that could make a difference.

Wolfram Schlenker’s Policy Recommendations:

Limit beggar-thy-neighbor agricultural policies where countries impose export restrictions when food prices rise. Specifically, implement the Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture passed at COP-28 by ensuring that the World Trade Organization has an enforcement mechanism that limits trade restrictions in agricultural markets following climatic events.
Reverse the current decline in public R&D funding for agricultural technologies. Private companies, which currently conduct most of the R&D, do not have the correct incentives to innovate when there are positive spillovers on others.
Ensure that the Social Cost of Carbon — the cost of emitting an extra ton of CO2 — reflects its impact on all countries and not just the U.S., as climate change is a global problem.

Episode Notes:

Wolfram Schlenker is the Ray A. Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System at Harvard Kennedy School. An economist and engineer by training, he studies the intersection of climate, agriculture, and the global economy. His research interests include:

The effect of weather and climate on agricultural yields and migration,
How climate trends and the U.S. biofuel mandate influences agricultural commodity prices
How pollution impacts both agricultural yields and human morbidity. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He currently serves on the Board of Reviewing Editors at Science.

Schlenker holds a PhD in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Berkeley, a master’s in engineering and management Sciences from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, and a master’s in environmental management from Duke University (1998).

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner of the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team.

From insight to impact: Dean Jeremy Weinstein wants the Kennedy School to embrace and solve complex public problems

Jeremy Weinstein, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 8 Jan 2025 15:09:28 +0000

Jeremy Weinstein became the newest dean in the 88-year history of the Harvard Kennedy School this past June, arriving from Stanford University, where he was an award-winning scholar and the founding faculty director of the Stanford Impact Labs. The pursuit of deep scholarly curiosity and roll-up-your-sleeves impact has been a theme in his life and career, as well as an approach he intends to accelerate schoolwide at HKS under his leadership. Growing up, Weinstein experienced a family run-in with government policy gone horribly wrong—one that could have inspired a deep cynicism about the role of government in people’s lives. He found inspiration instead and embarked on a career that has encompassed field research on the ground in post-conflict countries including Uganda, Mozambique, and Peru; wide-ranging scholarship in areas including political violence, the political economy of development, migration, and technology’s proper role in society; government service at the National Security Council and as Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration. He has also been an academic leader who has led major initiatives including the Stanford Impact Labs and the Immigration Policy Lab. His new job marks a return to HKS, where he earned both his master’s and PhD in political economy and government. He joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about his life experiences, how they shaped him as a scholar and leader, and what he believes the role of the Kennedy School should be in challenging times for academia, the United States, and the world.

Policy Recommendations:

Jeremy Weinstein’s recommendations for restoring trust in public institutions, expertise, and scholarship:

Reclaim the civic purpose of higher education and prioritize its role in serving democratic institutions and solving societal problems.
Reconnect to the real-world problems people are experiencing and ensure that the questions being asked and answered by scholars and researchers are ones that can help public institutions make progress.
Leverage expertise and use science and innovation to tackle pressing challenges including economic insecurity, housing insecurity, food access, access to health care, and geographic disparities in economic development.
Realign incentives and allocate resources to position higher education institutions as active problem-solving partners, particularly at the state and local level where governors, mayors, and county leaders design policies that directly impact people’s daily lives.
Demonstrate the value of science, expertise, and policy innovation by producing results people can see and benefit from, and emphasize their value in ensuring that government dollars at all levels are spent efficiently.

Episode Notes:

Jeremy Weinstein is Dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He is an award-winning researcher and teacher with expertise on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics; the political economy of development; democracy and accountability; and migration. Before coming to Harvard, he was the Kleinheinz Professor of International Studies at Stanford University, where he led major initiatives, including Stanford Impact Labs and the Immigration Policy Lab, which catalyzed partnerships between researchers and practitioners with the goal of generating innovative policies, programs, and interventions to meaningfully address important social problems.

Weinstein has also held senior roles in the U.S. government at the White House and State Department, most recently as Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during President Obama’s second term. As Deputy, Weinstein was a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee—the subcabinet policy committee with primary responsibility for advising the National Security Council, the Cabinet, and the President on foreign policy issues. Before becoming Deputy, he served as Chief of Staff at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. During President Obama’s first term, he served as Director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council staff at the White House.

Weinstein is the author of “Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence,” co-author of “Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action,” and co-editor of “Crime, Insecurity, and Community Policing.” For his research, Weinstein received the International Studies Association’s Karl Deutsch Award, given annually to the scholar under 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the study of international relations. In recent years, he has also written on issues at the intersection of technology and democracy, including in a co-authored book “System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot.”

He earned a BA from Swarthmore College and an MA and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host and producer of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds a BA in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney, Robert O’Neill, and the OCPA Editorial Team.

Legalized gambling is exploding globally. What policies can limit its harms?

Malcolm Sparrow, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 13:33:50 +0000

Turbocharged by the internet and mobile technology, legalized gambling has exploded across the globe, leaving behind ruined lives, broken families and financial hardships, and should now be classified as a major public health concern. A four-year study by a public health commission on gambling convened by The Lancet, the respected British journal of medicine, found that net global losses by gamblers could exceed $700 billion by the year 2028, and that 80% of countries now allow some form of legal gambling. But HKS Professor Malcolm Sparrow, a leading scholar on regulating societal harms, says that in reality the percentage of countries where gambling is practiced is closer to 100% because internet- and mobile-based gambling—often using cryptocurrencies—can easily circumvent borders. Among the commission's more concerning findings is that a significant portion of virtual gamblers are teenagers, and that more than 1 in 4 teens are at risk of becoming compulsive or problem gamblers. Sparrow tells PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli that the harms are also widespread, since the suffering from each problem gambler also affects on average six to eight people around them—ranging from spouses to relatives to friends to employers and co-workers. Sparrow says the commission has identified a number of policy solutions to mitigate the growing fallout from gambling expansion, ranging from limiting the speed and intensity of virtual gambling products to prohibiting gambling with credit cards and banning gaming companies from offering loans.

Policy Recommendations from The Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling:

Push governments to define gambling as primarily a public health issue, and prioritize health and wellbeing over economic gains when crafting gambling policies.
Adopt effective regulation in all countries—regardless of whether or not they have legalized gambling—including limiting promotion and marketing, providing accessible support for betting-related harms, and denormalizing gambling through public awareness campaigns.
Create independent regulators in jurisdictions where gambling is legal to enforce protections including safeguards for young people, consumer protections, and mandatory limits on gambling activities.
Shield development of gambling policies, research, and treatment from industry influence through a shift to independent funding sources.
At the international level, require UN entities and intergovernmental organizations to address gambling harms as part of broader health and wellbeing strategies.
Create an international alliance of stakeholders to lead advocacy, research, and collaboration on gambling-related issues.
Adopt a resolution recognizing the public health impacts of gambling at the World Health Assembly.

Episode Notes:

Malcolm K. Sparrow is professor of the practice of public management at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is faculty chair of the school’s executive education program on strategic management of regulatory and enforcement agencies. He is the offer of several books, including “The Regulatory Craft: Controlling Risks, Solving Problems, and Managing Compliance,” and “License to Steal: How Fraud Bleeds America's Health Care System.” An expert in regulatory management, his research interests include regulatory and enforcement strategy, fraud control, corruption control, and operational risk management. Before coming to HKS, he served 10 years with the British Police Service, where he rose to the rank of detective chief inspector and conducted internal affairs investigations, commanded a tactical firearms unit, and gained extensive experience with criminal investigation. A mathematician and patent-holding inventor in the area of computerized fingerprint analysis, he earned an MA in mathematics from Cambridge University, an MPA from the Kennedy School, and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Kent.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King, Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team. Administrative support is provided by Lilian Wainaina.

How emotion science could help solve the leading cause of preventable death

Jennifer Lerner, Vaughan Rees, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 7 Nov 2024 14:25:14 +0000

The World Health Organization says smoking is the leading cause of global preventable death, killing up to 8 million people prematurely every year—far more than die in wars and conflicts. Yet the emotions evoked by national and international anti-smoking campaigns and the impact of those emotions has never been fully studied until now. HKS Professor Jennifer Lerner, a decision scientist who studies emotion, and Vaughan Rees, the director for the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, say their research involving actual smokers in the lab shows that sadness—the emotion most often evoked in anti-smoking ads—can actually induce people to smoke more. Lerner and Rees’ research also found that evoking gratitude, an emotion that appears to function in nearly the exact opposite manner to sadness, made people want to smoke less and made them more likely to join a smoking-cessation program. Lerner and Rees join host Ralph Ranalli on the latest episode of the HKS PolicyCast to discuss their research and to offer research-backed policy recommendations—including closer collaboration between researchers who study emotion science, which is also known as affective science, and agencies like the Centers for Disease Control.

Policy Recommendations:

Jennifer Lerner’s Policy Recommendations:

Promote active collaboration between researchers and public health agencies (e.g., CDC, FDA) to develop health communications that leverage the most current, research-backed findings from affective and decision science.
Rigorously assess not only the benefits of public service announcements but also potential harms. Assessments often overlook the emotional distress these messages can cause, despite the potential of distress to undermine desired outcomes.

Vaughan Rees’ Policy Recommendations:

Expand research into integrating emotion-based strategies, such as gratitude exercises, into school-based prevention programs for adolescents to reduce the risk of tobacco and other substance use, as well as risky sexual behaviors.
Introduce research-backed, emotion-based components in cessation counseling and support systems, helping individuals better manage high-risk situations and maintain abstinence after quitting.

Dr. Jennifer Lerner is the Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy, Management and Decision Science at the Harvard Kennedy School.She is the first psychologist in the history of the Harvard Kennedy School to receive tenure. Lerner, who also holds appointments in Harvard’s Department of Psychology and Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, conducts research that draws insights from psychology, economics, and neuroscience and aims to improve decision making in high-stakes contexts. Together with colleagues, Lerner developed a theoretical framework that successfully predicts the effects of specific emotions on specific judgment and choice outcomes. Among other honors, Lerner received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to scientists and engineers in early stages of their careers. Lerner earned her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California–Berkeley and was awarded a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA. She joined the Harvard faculty and received tenure in 2007, and from 2018-2019 she took a temporary leave from Harvard to serve as the Chief Decision Scientist for the United States Navy.

Vaughan Rees is Director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The center’s mission is to reduce the global burden of tobacco-related death and disease through training, research, and the translation of science into public health policies and programs. Rees also directs the Tobacco Research Laboratory at the Harvard Chan School, where the design and potential for dependence of tobacco products are assessed. Studies examine the impact of dependence potential on product use and individual risk, to inform policy and other interventions to control tobacco harms. Rees also leads an NIH funded study which seeks to reduce secondhand smoke exposure among children from low income and racially/ethnically diverse backgrounds. His academic background is in health psychology (substance use and dependence), and he trained at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and did postdoctoral training through the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the United States.

Note: Lerner and Rees collaborated on this research with former HKS doctoral student Charlie Dorison, who is now an assistant professor at Georgetown University, and former HKS doctoral student Ke Wang, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia. Both were co-authors on the research paper on sadness and the research paper on gratitude, which were both published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Policies—and a new global program—to fight anti-LGBTQI+ discrimination

Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Diego Garcia Blum, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 13:27:10 +0000

Anti-LGBTQI+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex) discrimination is on the rise, both in the United States, where hate crime statistics are climbing, and globally, with the increase in right-wing populist governments weaponizing public sentiment against marginalized people. But there are also rights advocates around the world pushing back, despite threats of physical harm, prosecution, and even death. The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy’s Timothy McCarthy and Diego Garcia Blum, who are leading a new program to support those advocates, joined host Ralph Ranalli to on the most recent episode of PolicyCast to talk about the project and about policy responses to a growing threat. The Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program recently held a summit featuring 20 leading rights advocates from countries including Kenya, Russia, Brazil, Bangladesh, Morocco, and Pakistan to explore research-based methods to build social movements and to dismantle myths and stigmas harming their communities. McCarthy, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is the program’s faculty chair, Garcia Blum is program director and a member of the Carr Center staff. Together they also co-teach the course “Queer Nation: LGBTQI+ Protest, Politics, and Policy in the United States” at HKS.

Policy Recommendations:

Diego Garcia Blum’s Policy recommendations:

Applying international pressure on countries enacting anti-LGBTQI+ laws is crucial, but it must be applied consistently across all nations to effectively curb such policies.
Appoint LGBTQI+ individuals to public leadership roles and encourage them to run for public office to increase visibility, listen to their input, and show strong commitment to equality.

Tim McCarthy’s Policy recommendations:

Work with post-colonial nations to remove language from colonial-era statutes that continue to be used to discriminate against LGBTQI+ people.
Revoke the tax-exempt status of U.S.-based religious and nonprofit organizations that fund and promote efforts to pass anti-LGBTQI+ statutes in other countries.
Require U.S. embassies to work in collaboration with the State Department, and specifically the Office of the Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons, to grant access to LGBTQI+ people traveling to the United States and asylum to those fleeing persecution.
Pass the Equality Act in the U.S. Congress to reaffirm America's commitment to LGBTQI+ freedom and equality at home and strengthen its moral standing as a global advocate for human rights.

Contributors:

Timothy Patrick McCarthy was the first openly gay faculty member at the Kennedy School and is faculty chair of the Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Currently a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Public Leadership at HKS, where he received the 2019 Manuel C. Carballo Award, the Kennedy School’s highest teaching honor, as well as the 2015 HKS Dean’s Award for Exceptional Leadership on Diversity and Inclusion. A co-recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama, McCarthy has published five books, most recently Reckoning with History: Unfinished Stories of American Freedom. A historian of politics and social movements, McCarthy gave expert testimony to the Pentagon Comprehensive Working Group on the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and currently serves as Board Chair for Free the Slaves, a leading global NGO in the fight against modern slavery. As founding director of Harvard’s Alternative Spring Break Church Rebuilding Program, he spent fifteen years organizing hundreds of students to help rebuild Black churches destroyed in racist arson attacks throughout the United States. McCarthy holds an AB in History and Literature from Harvard College and earned his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in History from Columbia University.

Diego Garcia Blum MPP 2021 is the Program Director for the Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. His work is dedicated to advocating for the safety and acceptance of LGBTQI+ individuals globally, particularly in regions where they face significant risks. At Harvard, Garcia Blum's efforts have centered on driving social change through policy, impactful research, political engagement, storytelling, community organizing, coalition-building, and developing training programs for advocates. Prior to his current role, he worked under former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick researching LGBTQI+ issues and creating educational programs as a Social Change Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership. Since 2020, he has co-taught "Queer Nation: LGBTQ Protest, Politics, and Policy in the United States" alongside Tim McCarthy at HKS. Garcia Blum previously served on the National Board of Governors of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQI+ advocacy group in the U.S. He holds a master’s in public policy HKS, as well as bachelor’s degrees in nuclear engineering and political science from the University of Florida.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he earned an BA in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lillian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Delane Meadows, Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

The essential reforms needed to fix the housing crisis

Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, Miro Weinberger, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 9 Oct 2024 17:40:06 +0000

America is in the grip of a severe housing crisis. Tenants have seen rents rise 26 percent while home prices have soared by 47 percent since early 2020. Before the pandemic, there were 20 US states considered affordable for housing. Now there are none. And 21 million households—including half of all renters—pay more than one-third of their income on housing. Harvard Kennedy School Associate Professor Justin de Benedictis-Kessner and former Burlington, Vermont Mayor Miro Weinberger say that’s because homebuilding hasn’t kept up with demand. They say housing production is mired in a thicket of restrictive zoning regulations and local politics, a “veto-cracy” that allows established homeowners—sometimes even a single disgruntled neighbor—to block and stall new housing projects for years. Weinberger, a research fellow at the Taubman Institute for State and Local Politics, and de Benedictis-Kessner, whose research focuses on urban policy, say even well-intentioned ideas like so-called “inclusionary zoning” laws that encourage mixed-income housing development may also be contributing to the problem. They join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to discuss how housing became a affordability nightmare for millions of people. During this episode, they offer policy ideas on how streamline the inefficient and often subjective ways home building projects are regulated and how to level the democratic playing field between established homeowners and people who need the housing that has yet to be built.

Miro Weinberger’s policy pecommendations:

Remove subjective standards such as “neighborhood character” from housing approval processes in favor of objective, measurable ones.
Loosen zoning restrictions that enforce suburban-style housing development in favor of creating denser, more urban environments that historically provided more housing and are popular today.
Encourage leaders of municipal governments to take an active role in housing development, seeing themselves as developers taking an active role in more housing being built.

Justin de Benedictis-Kessner’s policy recommendations:

Integrate housing policy with other related policies including transportation and economic development in a holistic way that drives across-the-board progress.
Transfer approval power currently exercised by appointed boards and elected city councils to municipal housing and planning staff experts and empower them with objective standards.

Justin de Benedictis-Kessner is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His current research focuses on some of the most important policy areas that concern local governments, such as housing, transportation, policing, and economic development. His research also examines how citizens hold elected officials accountable, how representation translates the public's interests into policy via elections, and how people’s policy opinions are formed and swayed.He also leads courses on urban politics and policy, including an experiential field lab that partners student teams with cities and towns to work on applied urban policy problems. His work has received the Clarence Stone Emerging Scholar Award and the Norton Long Young Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association. He earned his PhD from the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his B.A. in Government and Psychology from the College of William & Mary.

Miro Weinberger MPP ‘98 served as the Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, from 2012 to 2024. The longest-serving mayor in the city’s history, Weinberger led significant initiatives that transformed Burlington, earning recognition for his leadership in sustainability, economic development, and public health. Under his stewardship Burlington became the first city in the United States to achieve 100 percent renewable energy status. His housing reforms quadrupled the rate of housing production, and his proactive approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic helped keep Burlington’s infection and death rates among the lowest in the country. Prior to becoming mayor, Weinberger co-founded The Hartland Group, a real estate development and consulting firm based in Burlington, Vermont, and completed $40 million in development projects, creating more than 200 homes across Vermont and New Hampshire. He holds a Master’s in Public Policy and Urban Planning from HKS and an AB in American Studies and Environmental Studies from Yale University.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial assistance is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team.

How to change the narrative on women as leaders

Hannah Riley Bowles, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 22:03:04 +0000

As Vice President Kamala Harris making a strong bid for the U.S. presidency, HKS Women and Public Policy Program Co-Director Hannah Riley Bowles says Harris is just one of many “path breakers” who have dramatically increased leadership opportunities for women. But she also says the reaction to Harris’ campaign in the media and the public conversation shows how the popular narrative about the efficacy of female leaders still lags behind the reality of what successful women are achieving. And she says that narrative also isn’t supported by research, including multiple studies showing that on average women are actually rated higher than men for a number of important leadership qualities associated with performance. Bowles is the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the HKS, she chairs the HKS Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences (MLD) Area, and she is currently wrapping up her tenure as co-director of the Center for Public Leadership. She’s a recognized expert in the study of negotiation and gender. She joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about how studies say women in leadership roles are really performing, the ways women can successfully attain positions of responsibility and power despite traditional obstacles, and some forward-looking policy recommendations that could make things better.

Hannah Riley Bowles’ Policy Recommendations:

- Adopt family-friendly workplace policies that engage men equally in unpaid family and caregiving work.

- Adopt more transparency in salary standards and more equity in making both women and men aware of the resources available to help them achieve higher-paying positions and positions of authority.

- Require organizations to report their gender pay gaps to help them determine whether women are underpaid compared to men in the same job or if they are underrepresented in higher-level positions.

Hannah Riley Bowles is the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). Hannah chairs the HKS Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences (MLD) Area and co-directs the HKS Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP) and the Center for Public Leadership. A leading expert on gender in negotiation, Hannah’s research focuses on women’s leadership advancement and the role of negotiation in educational and career advancement, including the management of work-family conflict. Her work has been featured in Harvard Business Review’s “Definitive Management Ideas of the Year” and she is the faculty director of Women and Power and Women Leading Change, the HKS executive programs for women in senior leadership from the public, private and non-profit sectors. She won the HKS Manuel Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003. She holds a doctorate in business administration degree from the Harvard Business School, a master’s in Public Policy from HKS, and a BA from Smith College.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Design and graphics support for PolicyCast is provided by Laura King, Catherine Santrock and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O'Neill.

How to turn back a rising tide of political threats and violence

Erica Chenoweth, Archon Fung, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 1 Aug 2024 17:58:05 +0000

The attempted assassination of former President and candidate Donald Trump has catalyzed an important discussion about both actual violence and threats of violence against political candidates, office-holders, policymakers, election officials, and others whose efforts help make our democracy work. Harvard Kennedy School professors Erica Chenoweth and Archon Fung join host Ralph Ranalli to talk about political violence, what it is, what it isn’t, why it has grown, and—most importantly—strategies for mitigating it to ensure the health of democratic governance in the United States and beyond. The motivations and political leanings of the 20-year-old Pennsylvania man who shot and wounded Trump with an AR-15-style assault rifle, Thomas Crooks, remain murky, making it difficult to make sense of why it happened. In one sense it was a continuation of an unfortunate 189-year-old tradition of assassinations and attempted assassinations of U.S. presidents. But for many scholars, researchers, and political analysts, it also appeared to be a culmination of a more recent uptick in the willingness of some people to use violence to achieve their political aims in today’s highly polarized society. Fung is director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at HKS and has talked to numerous local officials about their first-hand accounts of being on the receiving end of violent threats. Chenoweth is director of the Nonviolence Action Lab and is a longtime scholar of both political violence and nonviolent alternatives.

Please also see: The Ash Center's webinar on Political Violence and the 2024 Election

Erica Chenoweth is the Academic Dean for Faculty Engagement and the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School. Chenoweth studies political violence and its alternatives. They have authored or edited nine other books and dozens of articles on mass movements, nonviolent resistance, terrorism, political violence, revolutions, and state repression, including the recent “Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know” (2021) and “On Revolutions” (2022). Along with Zoe Marks, Chenoweth is also the author of the forthcoming book “Bread and Roses: Women on the Frontlines of Revolution,” which explores how women's participation impacts mass movements. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that uses social science tools and evidence to support movement-led political transformation. Foreign Policy ranked Chenoweth among the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013. They hold a Ph.D. and an M.A. in political science from the University of Colorado and a B.A. in political science and German from the University of Dayton

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Robert O’Neill and Nora Delaney of the OCPA Editorial Team.

Self-destructive populism: How better policy can reverse the anti-clean energy backlash

Dustin Tingley, Robert Z. Lawrence, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 15 May 2024 18:51:06 +0000

Populism—the political term that describes a group of self-described common people who oppose elite—has turned up in what for many is an unexpected place: the push for a worldwide transition to clean energy. Even though they’re vital to preventing the most catastrophic consequences of the manmade global climate crisis, clean energy measures are encountering pushback from multiple sources ranging from local citizens groups, to cost-conscious consumers, to self-styled conservationists, to right-wing politicians, and to corporate boardrooms. Harvard Kennedy School Professor Robert Z. Lawrence and Professor Dustin Tingley from Harvard’s Department of Government say a number of forces are shaping the new clean energy pushback, including genuine popular resentment in some communities left over from economic transitions like the loss of manufacturing jobs due to globalization. Robert Lawrence is a former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and an economist affiliated with the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government who studies trade policy. Dustin Tingley of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences is a political scientist researching the politics of the climate crisis and co-author of the new book “Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse.” With time running out for the world to make significant reductions in fossil fuel use, they join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to discuss strategies and policy ideas to keep the momentum going toward a sustainable energy future.

Policy Recommendations:

Robert Z. Lawrence’s Policy recommendations:

Move away from protectionism and use international open trade to create opportunities for developing countries to contribute to the energy transition and grow economically.
Accelerate investment in clean energy technology development to ensure that green energy solutions are significantly more cost-effective than fossil fuel alternatives.
Replace current incentive-based government programs to encourage clean energy development with a carbon tax to bring in increased revenue and fund clean energy research and infrastructure changeover.
Exempt imported steel from current U.S. tariffs when it is used in making clean energy infrastructure such as wind turbines.

Dustin Tingley’s policy recommendations

At the federal level, systematically analyze the public finance challenge that states and communities are going to face from the clean energy transition and plan support
Prioritize transparency when making green investments in communities, to ensure they are effective and that companies are playing by the rules.
Pass legislation to share revenue from wind and solar project leases on federal lands with state and regional governments in the same manner those governments receive funds from oil and gas leases.
Encourage clean energy technology companies to get more civically involved with the communities where they are located.

Episode Notes:

Robert Z. Lawrence is the Albert L. Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment at HKS and is affiliated with the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. He is Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on trade policy and he currently serves as Faculty Chair of The Practice of Trade Policy executive program at Harvard Kennedy School. He served as a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1998 to 2000 and has also been a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author or co-author of numerous books, including “Crimes and Punishments? Retaliation under the WTO;” “Regionalism, Multilateralism and Deeper Integration;” and “Can America Compete?” Lawrence has served on the advisory boards of the Congressional Budget Office, the Overseas Development Council, and the Presidential Commission on United States-Pacific Trade and Investment Policy. He earned his PhD in economics at Yale University.

Dustin Tingley of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences is a Professor of Government in the Harvard Department of Government and Deputy Vice Provost for Advances in Learning. His research has spanned international relations, international political economy, climate change, causal inference, data science/machine learning, and digital education, with most focus now on the politics of climate change and energy transitions. His new book with Alex Gazmararian, “Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse,” was published with Cambridge University Press. The book features the voices of those on the front lines of the energy transition -- a commissioner in Carbon County deciding whether to welcome wind, executives at energy companies searching for solutions, mayors and unions in Minnesota battling for local jobs, and fairgoers in coal country navigating their community's uncertain future. His book on American foreign policy with Helen Milner, Sailing the Water's Edge, was published in fall 2015, and was awarded the Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published in the field of U.S. national policy.

He teaches courses on the politics of climate change and the environment, data science, and international relations. In the fall of 2023 he is teaching a new course called Energy at Harvard Business School. He received a PhD in Politics from Princeton and BA from the University of Rochester.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Editorial assistance for PolicyCast is provided by Nora Delaney, Robert O’Neill, and Jim Smith of the Harvard Kennedy School Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

Public policy, values, and politics: Why so much depends on getting them right

Douglas Elmendorf, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 13:07:18 +0000

Public policy has great power, both to improve people’s lives if it is planned and executed well and to cause significant suffering if it is not, says Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf, who will step back from his post this summer to rejoin the faculty. He joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli in this episode to discuss the crucial role policy plays in everyday life, the often-imperfect ways it gets made, and the factors that shape it, including politics, values, education, and communication. He also addresses the issue of public distrust in policy advice and the vital role that values play in policy making and educating public leaders, even when those values—including economic justice and diversity and inclusion—are under attack by some in the political sphere. “Our job is to enunciate our values, and to explain how those values can help us serve the world,” he says. Elmendorf became dean of HKS in 2015 after a career steeped in policy research and formulation, mostly involving his chosen field of economics. He has worked as the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a deputy assistant director of the U.S. Treasury, an assistant director of research at the Federal Reserve Board, and a senior economist at the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers. As dean, he’s seen the school through a campus expansion, the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing polarization and attacks on government and higher education in the public sphere, and the current domestic political fallout from the conflict between Gaza and Israel—all while diversifying the school’s community of students and scholars and affirming the important role of training public leaders and developing workable policy solutions to big public challenges.

Doug Elmendorf’s Policy Recommendations:

Experts should be humble, admit the limitations of their knowledge, and make sure that the policies they propose benefit all members of society.
Policymakers should talk with experts in an appropriately constructive, critical manner, ask questions designed to get at the truth most effectively, and use that truth in what they do.
Members of the public should prioritize interacting with other people in their societies and their communities who are different from them.
The publish should have empathy for leaders given the difficulty of making good policy, but they should also be appropriately demanding and expect their leaders to be straight with them and to work hard on policies that can help improve people's lives.

Douglas Elmendorf has been dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School since 2016. He had been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution after serving as the director of the Congressional Budget Office from January 2009 through March 2015. He had previously been a senior fellow at Brookings, assistant director of the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board, deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department, senior economist at the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, and an assistant professor at Harvard University. In those policy roles, Doug worked on budget policy, health care issues, the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy, Social Security, income security programs, financial markets, macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, and a range of other topics. He earned his PhD and AM in economics from Harvard University and his AB summa cum laude from Princeton University.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Editorial support for PolicyCast is provided by Nora Delaney, Robert O’Neil, and James Smith of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

The Ghost Budget: How U.S. war spending went rogue, wasted billions, and how to fix it

Linda Bilmes, Ralph Ranalli — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 21:06:56 +0000

HKS Senior Lecturer Linda Bilmes, an expert on public finance who has studied post-9/11 war costs for the past 20 years, says their staggering $5 trillion cost was enabled by what she calls “The Ghost Budget.” Using an unprecedented combination of borrowing, accounting tricks, and outsourcing, presidential administrations, Congress, and the Pentagon were able to circumvent traditional military budget processes in a way that kept war costs out of the public debate and resulted in trillions being spent with minimal oversight. The result: corporations and wealthy investors raking in huge profits, massive waste and fraud, and—combined with the Bush and Trump tax cuts—a shifting of the burden of the costs of war away from the wealthy and onto middle- and lower-income people and future generations. Of course by any metric, the United States-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were costly. Human life? At least 430,000 Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistani civilians dead, along with more than 7,000 U.S. military personnel and thousands of civilian contractors. Democratic progress? Afghanistan is once again an authoritarian theocracy under the Taliban, and instead of transforming Iraq and the region, the U.S. invasion and occupation undermined popular sentiment toward democracy, unleashed sectarian violence, and strengthened autocratic regimes. But the budgetary problems are something we can address now, Bilmes says, with congressional reforms and planning prudently for the long-term costs of the wars, including caring for veterans. “The Ghost Budget” is also the title of Bilmes’ next book, which will be published next year.

Linda Bilmes’ Policy Recommendations

Create a veterans trust fund with an oversight board to pay for the long-term costs of caring for military personnel who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, costs which will not peak for as much as 50 years.
Amend existing laws to automatically cover Iraq and Afghanistan veterans for toxic exposure to burn pits.
Pass legislation requiring a set aside of a certain amount of funding long-term veterans care for every dollar appropriated for war spending.
Restrict the ability of the White House and Congress to use the emergency and OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) funding mechanisms to spend money on conflicts and to move war spending back into the main defense budget process.
Address budgetary dysfunction in Congress by strengthening and empowering the House and Senate budget committees and streamlining their complicated and confusing budget subcommittee structures.

Episode Contributors:

Linda J. Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, is a leading expert on budgetary and public financial issues. Her research focuses on budgeting and public administration in the public, private and non-profit sectors. She is interested in how resources are allocated, particularly defense budgets, costs of war, veterans, sub-national budgeting and public lands. She is a full-time Harvard faculty member, teaching budgeting, cost accounting and public finance, and teaching workshops for newly-elected Mayors and Members of Congress. Since 2005, she has led the Greater Boston Applied Field Lab, an advanced academic program in which teams of student volunteers assist local communities in public finance and operations. She also leads field projects for the Bloomberg Cities program. She served as the Assistant Secretary and CFO of the U.S. Department of Commerce under President Bill Clinton. She currently serves as the sole United States member of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA), and as Vice-chair of Economists for Peace and Security. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University. She was a member of the National Parks Second Century Commission and served on the U.S. National Parks Service Advisory Board for eight years.

She has testified to Congress on numerous occasions and has authored or co-authored numerous books, including the New York Times bestseller “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict” (with Joseph E. Stiglitz) and “The People Factor: Strengthening America by Investing in Public Service” (with W. Scott Gould). She was also featured in the Academy-award nominated documentary "No End in Sight," and was the recipient of the 2008 Speaking Truth to Power Award from the American Friends Service Committee. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, Bilmes earned a BA and an MBA from Harvard University and a PhD from Oxford University.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Design and graphics support for PolicyCast is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by the OCPA Editorial Team: Nora Delaney, Robert O’Neill, and James Smith.

The Great Creep Backward: Policy responses to China’s slowing economy

Rana Mitter, Meg Rithmire, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 17:07:27 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Rana Mitter and Harvard Business School Associate Professor Meg Rithmire say that after decades of tremendous growth, an economically slowing China is the new normal. With a growing debt-to-GDP ratio, an aging population, a devastating real estate bubble, and a loss of confidence among both foreign investors and domestic consumers, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party face a daunting array of thorny problems—including ones of their own making resulting from the One Child law policy and other home-grown policies. So how should the United States and other Western countries respond? Is it a moment China's rivals can use to their advantage, or one where great power rivalry can give way to great power cooperation? And how will an economic slowdown affect China’s geopolitical ambitions, and is an annexation of Taiwan now more or less likely? Rana Mitter is a historian and the S.T. Lee Chair in U.S.-Asia relations at the Kennedy School and the former director of the China Center at Oxford University. Harvard Business School Associate Professor Meg Rithmire is a political scientist who studies the comparative political economy of development in Asia and China’s economic relations with the rest of the world, particularly the United States. They join host Ralph Ranalli to explore some of the underlying reasons behind for the country’s current malaise, and to offer some policy ideas to help create a positive outcome with relations with China moving forward.

Rana Mitter’s Policy Recommendations:

Liberal nations should take a realistic view of security issues involved in engagement with China, while preserving cultural interaction and scientific knowledge exchanges with the long-term benefits to both sides.

The United States should focus on deepening free trade agreements and opening up new markets and in the Asia Pacific region to counter-balance China's influence.

Meg Rithmire’s Policy Recommendations:

U.S. and Western officials should reassure China they that they want to see its economy succeed as long as it isn’t weaponizing trade and is moderating its geopolitical ambitions to reduce conflict.

Continue pursuing “de-risking” policies instead of decoupling policies that would lead to a hard economic break with China.

Avoid framing the situation as a choice between bringing jobs back to the United States or keeping them in China, while also addressing the fallouts of global trade and compensating those who are negatively affected.

Episode Notes:

Rana Mitter is the ST Lee Chair in U.S.-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and a member of the board of directors of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. A historian who focuses on the politics and history of modern China, particularly during the communist era, he was formerly director of the China Centre at Oxford University, Mitter is the author of several books, including “Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II,” which was named a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and Economist. His latest book is “China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism.” His recent audio documentary on contemporary Chinese politics "Meanwhile in Beijing" is available on BBC Sounds. He won the 2020 Medlicott Medal for Service to History, awarded by the UK Historical Association. A Fellow of the British Academy, he holds a master’s degree and a PhD from King’s College, Cambridge (UK).

Meg Rithmire is the F. Warren McFarlan Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, where she teaches in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit. A political scientist, her my teaching and research focus on comparative politics and political economy with a geographic focus on Asia, especially China and Southeast Asia. Rithmire is also faculty affiliate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, where she convenes a seminar on the Chinese economy. Her first book, “Land Bargains and Chinese Capitalism,” examines the role of land politics, urban governments, and local property rights regimes in the Chinese economic reforms. Her most recent book, “Precarious Ties: Business and the State in Authoritarian Asia” investigates the relationship between capital and the state and globalization in Asia, comparing China, Malaysia, and Indonesia from the early 1980s to the present. The book examines how governments attempt to discipline business and how businesses adapt to different methods of state control. She holds a master’s degree in political science from Emory University and a master’s and a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Design and graphics support for PolicyCast is provided by Laura King, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill provide editorial support.

Two peoples. Two states. Why U.S. diplomacy in Israel and Palestine needs vision, partners, and a backbone

Edward Djerejian, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 15:48:44 +0000

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Ed Djerejian says Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin once told him “There is no military solution to this conflict, only a political one.” Rabin was assassinated a few years later and today bullets are flying, bombs are falling, and 1,200 Israelis are dead after the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 and nearly 30,000 Gazans have been killed in the Israeli response. Yet Djerejain still believes that a breakthrough is possible even in the current moment, as horrible as it is. Djerejian, a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Relations, says the crisis has shaken the regional status quo to the point where—if the United States pursues diplomacy that includes principled pragmatism, coalition-building, and good old- fashioned backbone—a breakthrough may finally be possible. But in a recent paper he argues that any breakthrough will have to be built around a two-state solution, which he says is the only path to peace and stability not only in Israel and Palestine, but the wider Middle East. Djerejian’s career as a diplomat spanned eight U.S. presidential administrations beginning with John F. Kennedy’s, and he also served as U.S. Ambassador to Syria and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.

Ed Djerejian's Policy Recommendations:

The U.S. should stake out a strong, principled position on a two-state solution based on land for peace.
The U.S. should build a broad multinational coalition around its diplomacy in the region.
U.S. leaders and diplomats should make American national security interests clear, both globally and in the region.

Ambassador (Ret.) Edward P. Djerejian is a residential Senior Fellow at the Middle East Initiative in Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Relations. Djerejian joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1962 and his 32-year diplomatic career spanned eight presidential administrations from John F. Kennedy to William J. Clinton. Djerejian is a leading expert on national security, foreign policy, public diplomacy, and the complex political, security, economic, religious, and ethnic issues of the broader Middle East. He is the author of “Danger and Opportunity: An American Ambassador's Journey Through the Middle East.” He recently completed a nearly 30-year tenure as founding director of Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. Ambassador Djerejian graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1960. He received an Honorary Doctorate in the Humanities from his alma mater in 1992 and a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, from Middlebury College. He speaks Arabic, Russian, French, and Armenian. His many awards and honors include the Presidential Distinguished Service Award, the Department of State’s Distinguished Honor Award, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the Anti-Defamation League’s Moral Statesman Award, the Award for Humanitarian Diplomacy from Netanya Academic College in Israel, the National Order of the Cedar.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

We can productively discuss even the toughest topics—here’s how

Julia Minson, Erica Chenoweth, Ralph Ranalli — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 12:32:19 +0000

As our discourse and our politics have become both more polarized and paralyzed, Harvard Kennedy School faculty members Erica Chenoweth and Julia Minson say we need to refocus on listening to understand, instead of talking to win. In mid-2022, the School launched the Candid and Constructive Conversations initiative, based on the idea that frank yet productive discussions over differences are not only vital to democracy and a functioning society, but that the ability to have them was also an essential skill for students, staff, and faculty in the Harvard community and beyond to learn. The effort—which uses techniques and principles based on surveys and decision science—took on even greater urgency after the recent events in Israel and Gaza and their fallout in the U.S., including at Harvard and other universities. Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment and the academic dean for faculty Engagement at HKS, as well as one of the world’s leading authorities on conflict and alternatives to political violence. Associate Professor of Public Policy Julia Minson is a decision scientist who studies the psychology of disagreement, and has developed research-based, practical methods that nearly anyone can use to make difficult conversations into productive ones.

Policy Recommendations:

Erica Chenoweth’s Policy Recommendations:

Have local governments invest more in creating opportunities for bridging divides in civil society
Making election day a national holiday and supporting activities that are about participating in the political process and so it feels like something we all do together
Use the Chatham House Rule and other tools to create conversational spaces that encourage open and inclusive dialogue.

Julia Minson’s Policy Recommendations:

Create a curriculum for teenagers to learn the skills of constructive conversation across differences
Teach HEAR and other easy-to-understand conversational receptiveness training methods widely to enable candid and constructive conversations between individuals.

Erica Chenoweth is the Academic Dean for Faculty Engagement and the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School, Faculty Dean at Pforzheimer House at Harvard College, and Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. They study political violence and its alternatives. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that provides empirical evidence in support of movement-led political transformation. Chenoweth has authored or edited nine books on mass movements, nonviolent resistance, terrorism, political violence, revolutions, and state repression. Their recent book, “Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know,” explores what civil resistance is, how it works, why it sometimes fails, how violence and repression affect it, and the long-term impacts of such resistance. Their next book with HKS Lecturer in Public Policy Zoe Marks, “Bread and Roses: Women on the Frontlines of Revolution,” investigates the impact of women’s participation on revolutionary outcomes and democratization. Chenoweth maintains the NAVCO Data Project, one of the world’s leading datasets on historical and contemporary mass mobilizations around the globe. Along with Jeremy Pressman, Chenoweth also co-directs the Crowd Counting Consortium, a public interest and scholarly project that documents political mobilization in the U.S. since January 2017.

Associate Professor of Public Policy Julia Minson is a decision scientist with research interests in conflict, negotiations and judgment and decision making. Her primary line of research addresses the “psychology of disagreement” – How do people engage with opinions, judgments and decisions that are different from their own? She is particularly interested in simple, scalable interventions to help people be more receptive to views and opinions they strongly oppose. Much of Julia’s research is conducted in collaboration with the graduate and post-doctoral members of MC² – the Minson Conflict and Collaboration Lab. At the Kennedy School Julia is affiliated with the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, the Center for Public Leadership, and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government. Julia teaches courses on negotiations and decision-making as part of the Management, Leadership and Decision Science area, as well as through HKS Executive Education. Prior to coming to the Kennedy School, Julia served as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where she taught Negotiations at both the MBA and the undergraduate levels. She received her PhD in Social Psychology from Stanford University and her BA in Psychology from Harvard University.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney. Design and graphics support is provided by Delane Meadows, Laura King, and the OCPA Design Team.

The document that redefined humanity: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 75

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 18:09:30 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Kathryn Sikkink and former longtime Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth have spent years both studying the transformational effects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and have worked on the ground to make its vision of a more just, equal world a reality. On December 10th, the world celebrated not only the annual Human Rights Day, but also the 75th anniversary of the UDHR, which some historians and social scientists consider to be the greatest achievement in the history of humankind. It was the first time representatives of the world community declared that every human person on earth was entitled to the same rights as every other, without discrimination, and no matter the circumstances.

It was an achievement that was both historically radical—legal slavery in the United States had ended just 80 years earlier—and yet one which made perfect, urgent sense in the post-World-War-II context of a humanity whose collective conscience was still reeling at the horrors and inhumanity of conflict. Appalled by the dehumanization and mass slaughter of human beings in the Holocaust, where 6 million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis along with Poles, Roma, homosexuals and other groups, by Japanese atrocities including 2.7 million people murdered in Northern China alone, by the first use of atomic weapons, and by other acts of mass civilian killing, the world’s nations gathered to write a new definition of what it means to be human.

The result was the UDHR, which was drafted by a committee led by former U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. It was radical not just because it was so universal, but also because it was remarkably comprehensive—going far beyond basics like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to enumerating human rights to privacy, health, adequate housing, freedom from torture and slavery, the right to nationality, to take part in government, to work for equal pay, to have protection against unemployment, to unionize, to a decent standard of living, to rest and leisure, to enjoy culture, art, and science, and finally to a social and international order where the rights in the Declaration could be fully realized. ikkink is a faculty affiliate of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at HKS, where Roth just finished a senior fellowship. They join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to explain how the UDHR has forever changed the way we think about our fellow human beings, and to suggest policies that will keep pushing the global community toward a more just, fair, and compassionate world.

Policy Recommendations:

Kathryn Sikkink’s Policy Recommendations:

Make teaching about the global origins and transformative impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a core component of studying civics and human rights.
Renew the global campaign for democracy and authoritarianism, because history has shown that democracy and human rights complement and help promote one another.
Renew the international community’s diplomatic efforts to prevent and stop wars, particularly civil wars and intra-country armed conflicts, which are a major source of human rights violations.

Ken Roth’s Policy Recommendations:

Use the celebrations of the UDHR’s 75th anniversary to underscore the idea that the UDHR is not a collection of platitudes but a set of international norms that individual world governments must be held accountable to.
Strengthen international protections for human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which play an important role in investigating, and identifying human rights abuses and holding responsible parties to account in the public sphere.
Encourage world governments to adopt foreign policy positions that hold their allies accountable for human rights as well as their adversaries.

Kathryn Sikkink is the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a faculty affiliate of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Sikkink’s work centers on international norms and institutions, transnational advocacy networks, the impact of human rights law and policies, transitional justice, and the laws of war. She has written numerous books, including “The Hidden Face of Rights: Toward a Politics of Responsibilies,” “Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century,” and “The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics,” which was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Center Book Award and the Washington Office on Latin America/Duke University Human Rights Book Award. She holds an MA and a PhD from Columbia University and has been a Fulbright Scholar in Argentina and a Guggenheim fellow. She is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kenneth Roth is the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading international human rights organizations, which operates in more than 90 countries. Roth has been called “the godfather of the human rights” for his dedication to the cause and for helping change the way rights violations were covered in the international media. He first learned about human rights abuses from his father, whose Jewish family ran a butchery near Frankfurt in Hitler’s Germany. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, Roth served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington, DC. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world. He has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations. He was most recently a senior fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at HKS.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows, Laura King, and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

Legacy of privilege: David Deming and Raj Chetty on how elite college admissions policies affect who gains power and prestige

David Deming, Raj Chetty, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 16:06:13 +0000

Legacy admissions, particularly at elite colleges and universities, were thrust into the spotlight this summer when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended affirmative action in admissions. The ruling raised many questions, and fortunately, Harvard Kennedy School professor David Deming and Harvard Economics Professor Raj Chetty were there with some important answers—having just wrapped up a 6-year study of the impact of legacy admissions at so-called “Ivy-plus” schools. Students spend years preparing to face judgment by colleges and universities as a worthy potential applicant. They strive for report cards filled with A’s in advanced placement courses. They volunteer for service projects and participate in extracurricular activities. They cram furiously high-stakes standardized tests. They do all that only to find a big question many top colleges have is effectively: “Who’s your daddy? And who's your mother? Did they go to school here?” Using data from more than 400 colleges and universities and about three and a half million undergraduate students per year, the two economists found that legacy and other elite school admissions practices significantly favor students from wealthy families and serve a gate-keeping function to positions of power and prestige in society.

Read Chetty and Deming's paper (co-authored by John Friedman): Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of College Admissions

David Deming’s Policy Recommendations:

Build a robust system of collecting and measuring the distribution of income for admitted students at colleges across the country.
Make standardized data in student income distribution transparent and widely available to facilitate better educational policy decisionmaking.

Raj Chetty’s Policy Recommendations:

Rework legacy admissions and other practices at elite colleges to reduce bias in favor of students from high-income families
Improve access for low- and middle-income students to a broader array of private, public, and community colleges as a means to promote economic mobility

Raj Chetty is the William A. Ackman Professor of Public Economics at Harvard University. He is also the director of Opportunity Insights, which uses “big data” to understand how we can give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better chances of succeeding. Chetty's research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. His work on topics ranging from tax policy and unemployment insurance to education and affordable housing has been widely cited in academia, media outlets, and Congressional testimony. Chetty received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2003 and is one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard's history. Before joining the faculty at Harvard, he was a professor at UC-Berkeley and Stanford University. Chetty has received numerous awards for his research, including a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and the John Bates Clark medal, given to the economist under 40 whose work is judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field.

David Deming is the Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy and the academic dean of the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also the faculty dean of Kirkland House at Harvard College and a research associate at NBER. His research focuses on higher education, economic inequality, skills, technology, and the future of the labor market. He is a principal investigator (along with Raj Chetty and John Friedman) at the CLIMB Initiative, an organization that seeks to study and improve the role of higher education in social mobility. He is also a faculty lead of the Project on Workforce, a cross-Harvard initiative that focuses on building better pathways to economic mobility through the school-to-work transition. He recently co-founded (with Ben Weidmann) the Skills Lab, which creates performance-based measures of “soft” skills such as teamwork and decision-making. In 2022 he won the Sherwin Rosen Prize for outstanding contributions to Labor Economics. In 2018 he was awarded the David N. Kershaw Prize for distinguished contributions to the field of public policy and management under the age of 40. He served as a Coeditor of the AEJ: Applied from 2018 to 2021. He also writes occasional columns for the New York Times Economic View, which you can find linked on his personal website.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Need to solve an intractable problem? Try collaborative governing

Jorrit de Jong, Amy Edmondson, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 9 Nov 2023 21:07:07 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School faculty member Jorrit de Jong and Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson say the big, intractable problems challenges facing city leaders today are too complex to be addressed by any one agency or government department. Complex challenges like the shortage of economic opportunity and affordable housing, homelessness, the effects of the climate crisis, crime—and can only be solved by multiple organizations working together. But that’s easier said than done. Bringing together government agencies, nonprofits, private business, academia, and the public into successful collaborations can be a huge challenge. Different people bring different agendas and goals. They don’t necessarily trust each other. Sometimes they can’t even agree on what the problem actually is and they fail before even getting started. In a recent study, de Jong and Edmondson found that the most successful problem-solving collaborations have a number of things in common, including building a culture of safety and trust and being empowered to try, fail, and learn from mistakes. Sometimes, they say, the key can be just finding a place to start.

Jorrit de Jong is the Emma Bloomberg Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School. He is director of the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University. His research and teaching focus on the challenges of making the public sector more effective, efficient, equitable, and responsive to social needs. A specialist in experiential learning, Jorrit has taught strategic management and public problem-solving in degree and executive education programs at HKS and around the world. He is also Faculty Co-Chair of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a joint program of Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School, the world’s most comprehensive effort to advance effective problem-solving and innovation through executive education, research, curriculum development, and fieldwork in cities.

He is also Academic Director of the Innovations in Government Program at the Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. In that capacity, he launched the Innovation Field Lab, an experiential learning, executive education, and action-oriented research project working with 15 cities in Massachusetts and New York to help them leverage data, community engagement and innovation to revitalize distressed and underinvested neighborhoods. He holds a PhD in Public Policy and Management from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, as well as a Master in Philosophy and a Master in Public Administration from Leiden University. He has written extensively, including the books “The State of Access: Success and Failure of Democracies to Create Equal Opportunities;” “Agents of Change: Strategy and Tactics for Social Innovation;” and “Dealing with Dysfunction: Innovative Problem Solving in the Public Sector.”

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, a chair established to support the study of human interactions that lead to the creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the betterment of society. Edmondson has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked No. 1 in 2021. he also received that organization’s Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019, and Talent Award in 2017. 

She studies teaming, psychological safety, and organizational learning, and her articles have been published in numerous academic and management outlets. Her 2019 book, “The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth,” has been translated into 15 languages. Her prior books: “Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate and compete in the knowledge economy;” “Teaming to Innovate;” and “Extreme Teaming” explore teamwork in dynamic organizational environments. Edmondson’s latest book, “Right Kind of Wrong,” builds on her prior work on psychological safety and teaming to provide a framework for thinking about, discussing, and practicing the science of failing well. Edmondson received her PhD in organizational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design from Harvard University.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

How to keep "TLDR" syndrome from killing your policy proposal

Todd Rogers, Lauren Brodsky, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 19:31:36 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Todd Rogers and Lecturer in Public Policy Lauren Brodsky say trying too hard to sound intelligent—even when communicating complex or nuanced ideas—isn't a smart strategy. Because today’s overburdened information consumers are as much skimmers as readers, Rogers and Brodsky teach people how to put readers first and use tools like simplification, formatting, and storytelling for maximum engagement. They say you can have the most brilliant, well-researched ideas in the policy world, but you can’t communicate them, they’ll never reach the ultimate goal—making an impact. Rogers is the faculty chair of the Behavioral Insights Group at the Kennedy School and the author of “Writing for Busy Readers: The Science of Writing Better.” Brodsky is senior director of the HKS Communications Program and the author of “Because Data Can’t Speak for Itself,” a book about how to more effectively communicate the data that supports groundbreaking research and evidence-based policy proposals. They say snarky millennials may be to something when they dismissively mocked your wordy social posts and text messages by replying “TLDR”—"too long; didn’t read”—because that’s how many busy readers feel about a lot of the writing that researchers, academics, and policy wonks do.

Todd Rogers is a Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is a behavioral scientist who works to improve communication, increase student attendance, and strengthens democracy. At Harvard, he is the faculty director of the Behavioral Insights Group and faculty chair of the executive education program Behavioral Insights and Public Policy. He received a Ph.D. jointly from Harvard's department of Psychology and Harvard Business School, and received a B.A. from Williams College, majoring in both Religion and Psychology. He is also co-founded two social enterprises: the Analyst Institute which focuses on improving voter communications, and EveryDay Labs, which partners with school districts to reduce student absenteeism. He is the author of the book “Writing for Busy Readers: The Science of Writing Better.”

Lauren Brodsky is the senior director of the HKS Communications Program and a lecturer in public policy who teaches courses on policy writing and persuasive communications. She is also faculty chair of the executive education program “Persuasive Communication: Narrative, Evidence, Impact.” A co-author of the book “Because Data Can’t Speak for Itself,” she also publishes the website Policy Memo Resource (www.policymemos.hks.harvard.edu) at HKS. Lauren lectures widely on policy communications and the use of evidence in writing for governmental agencies and non-profit organizations. She is a former Theodore Sorensen Research Fellow at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, where she conducted archival research on public diplomacy programs during the Kennedy administration. She holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A.L.D. and Ph.D. from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky on making health care policy under fire

Rochelle Walensky, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 5 Oct 2023 12:55:20 +0000

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who served as CDC director from 2021 to 2023, calls the job “probably the hardest thing I will ever do.” But she also calls it “the honor of a lifetime.” When she was appointed by President Biden as the CDC’s 19th director, she was already used to politicized health care issues, having spent her formative years as a physician working on HIV and AIDS. But COVID thrust her into an unprecedented spotlight, forcing her to lead a demoralized agency through the challenges of implementing policy and informing the public while navigating a highly polarized and often toxic public sphere and rapidly changing scientific data. Walensky says she learned some hard and valuable lessons during her tenure. After stepping down from the post this summer, Walensky is now a senior fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, studying the topic of women’s leadership in the health care field. She is also exploring health care policy issues in concurrent fellowships at both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky is a renowned expert exploring the challenges and what it means for leaders, organizations, and the world to protect public health. Dr. Walensky was the chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and served as the 19th director of the CDC and the ninth administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Having received an M.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, she also trained in internal medicine and earned an MPH in clinical effectiveness from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2001. In the earliest part of the pandemic, Dr. Walensky served on the front lines, taking care of patients, serving on the Massachusetts General Hospital incident management team, and conducting research on vaccine delivery and strategies to reach underserved communities. Dr. Walensky’s tenure at the CDC began on January 20th, 2021, when she led the nation—and the world—through unprecedented times, facing the largest density of infectious threats likely ever seen in the United States. Dr. Walensky has also worked to improve HIV screening and care in South Africa, led health policy initiatives, and researched clinical trial design and evaluation in a variety of settings. She was chair of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health from 2014 to 2015. She has also been a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents and served as co-director of the Medical Practice Evaluation Center at Massachusetts General Hospital since 2011 before assuming the position of CDC director.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

AI can be democracy’s ally—but not if it works for Big Tech

Bruce Schneier, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 12:39:37 +0000

Kennedy School Lecturer in Public Policy Bruce Schneier says Artificial Intelligence has the potential to transform the democratic process in ways that could be good, bad, and potentially mind-boggling. The important thing, he says, will be to use regulation and other tools to make sure that AIs are working for us, and just not for Big Tech companies—a hard lesson we’ve already learned through our experience with social media. When ChatGPT and other generative AI tools were released to the public late last year, it was as if someone had opened the floodgates on a thousand urgent questions that just weeks before had mostly preoccupied academics, futurists, and science fiction writers. Now those questions are being asked by many of us—teachers, students, parents, politicians, bureaucrats, citizens, businesspeople, and workers. What can it do for us? What will it do to us? Will it take our jobs? How do we use it in a way that’s both ethical and legal? And will it help or hurt our already-distressed democracy? Schneier, a public interest technologist, cryptographer, and internationally-known internet security specialist whose newsletter and blog are read by a quarter million people, says that AI’s inexorable march into our lives and into our politics is likely to start with small changes, like AI helping write policy and legislation. The future, however, could hold possibilities that we have a hard time wrapping our current minds around—like AI entities creating political parties or autonomously fundraising and generating profits to back political candidates or causes. Overall, like a lot of other things. it’s likely to be a mixed bag of the good and the bad.

Bruce Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, a faculty affiliate at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at HKS, a fellow at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. An internationally renowned security technologist, he has been called a "security guru" by the Economist and is the New York Times best-selling author of 14 books—including A Hacker's Mind—as well as hundreds of articles, essays, and academic papers. His influential newsletter “Crypto-Gram” and blog “Schneier on Security” are read by over 250,000 people. Schneier is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and AccessNow, and an advisory board member of EPIC and VerifiedVoting.org. He is the Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

PolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

The more Indigenous nations self govern, the more they succeed

Joseph Kalt, Megan Minoka Hill, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 8 Jun 2023 19:43:30 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Joseph Kalt and Megan Minoka Hill say the evidence is in: When Native nations make their own decisions about what development approaches to take, studies show they consistently out-perform external decision makers like the U.S. Department of Indian Affairs. Kalt and Hill say that’s why Harvard is going all in, recently changing the name of the Project on American Indian Economic Development to the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development—pushing the issue of governance to the forefront—and announcing an infusion of millions in funding. When the project launched in the mid-1980s, the popular perception of life in America’s indigenous nations—based at least partly in reality—was one of poverty and dysfunction. But it was also a time when tribes were being granted increased autonomy from the federal government and starting to govern themselves. Researchers noticed that unexpected tribal economic success stories were starting to crop up, and they set about trying to determine those successes were a result of causation or coincidence. Over the decades, Kalt and Hill say the research has shown that empowered tribal nations not only succeed themselves, they also become economic engines for the regions that surround them. The recent announcement of $15 million in new support for the program, including an endowed professorship, will help make supporting tribal self-government a permanent part of the Kennedy School’s mission.

Joseph P. Kalt is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and director of the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development, formerly the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. He is the author of numerous studies on economic development and nation building in Indian Country and a principal author of the Harvard Project's The State of the Native Nations. Together with the University of Arizona's Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, the Project has formed The Partnership for Native Nation Building. Since 2005, Kalt has been a visiting professor at The University of Arizona's Eller College of Management and is also faculty chair for nation building programs at the Native Nations Institute. Kalt has served as advisor to Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, a commissioner on the President's Commission on Aviation Safety, and on the Steering Committee of the National Park Service's National Parks for the 21st Century. A native of Tucson, Arizona, he earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles, and his B.A. in Economics from Stanford University.

Megan Minoka Hill is senior director of the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development and director of the Honoring Nations program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Honoring Nations is a national awards program that identifies, celebrates, and shares outstanding examples of tribal governance. Founded in 1998, the awards program spotlights tribal government programs and initiatives that are especially effective in addressing critical concerns and challenges facing the more than 570 Indian nations and their citizens. Hill serves on the board of the Native Governance Center, is a member of the NAGPRA Advisory Committee for the Peabody Museum, and is a member of the Reimagining our Economy Commission at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Hill graduated from the University of Chicago with a Master of Arts Degree in the Social Sciences and earned a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs and Economics from the University of Colorado Boulder.

The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows, and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

If you don’t have multiracial democracy, you have no democracy at all

Archon Fung, Khalil Muhammad, Ralph Ranalli — Tue, 16 May 2023 18:14:26 +0000

The history of American democracy has always been fraught when it comes to race. Yet no matter how elusive it may be, Harvard Kennedy School professors Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Archon Fung say true multiracial democracy not only remains a worthy goal, but achieving it is critically important to our collective future. From the earliest, formative days of the American political experiment, the creation of laws and political structures was often less about achieving some Platonic ideal of the perfect democratic system than it was about finding tenuous compromises between people and groups who had very different beliefs and agendas when it came to the status of people of other races. Those tensions have been baked into our system ever since, and the history of the movement toward a true multi-racial democracy in the United States has been marked with conflict, progress, reaction, and regression—from the 3/5’s Compromise to the Civil War to Jim Crow to the Civil Rights movement and on up to threats to democracy in our present day. Fung is a leading scholar of citizenship and self-governance and the faculty director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Muhammad is a professor of history, race, and public policy and director of the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project. He is also the former director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the world’s leading library and archive of global black history. They say that in our increasingly diverse and interconnected country and world, the question isn’t whether or not to strive for a multiracial democracy, but, if you don’t fully reckon with how race has shaped our system of governance, can you really have democracy at all?

Archon Fung is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance. He focuses upon public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He co-directs the Transparency Policy Project and leads democratic governance programs of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School. His books include Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy. He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in professional journals. He received two SBs — in philosophy and physics — and his PhD in political science from MIT.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He directs the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project and is the former Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library and the world’s leading library and archive of global black history. Before leading the Schomburg Center, he was an associate professor at Indiana University. His scholarship examines the broad intersections of racism, economic inequality, criminal justice and democracy in U.S. history. He is co-editor of “Constructing the Carceral State,” a special issue of the Journal of American History, and the award-winning author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. He is currently co-directing a National Academy of Sciences study on reducing racial inequalities in the criminal justice system. A native of Chicago’s South Side, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Economics in 1993, and earned his PhD in U.S. History from Rutgers University.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

Why smart infrastructure is a smart investment—for both Democrats and Republicans—in an era of historic public works spending

Stephen Goldsmith, Ralph Ranalli — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 13:47:13 +0000

As the U.S. prepares to spend hundreds of billions on new projects, HKS Professor Stephen Goldsmith says successfully upgrading our infrastructure will not only require spending all that money smartly, but spending it on infrastructure that is itself smart—full of sensors that can anticipate problems before they require costly repairs and that serve multiple functions instead of just one. With the passage of 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, the federal government has ushered in levels of infrastructure spending we haven’t seen since the days of President Dwight Eisenhower. Between direct spending and loans, there could be as much as $800 billion dollars in spending the coming years on everything from roads and bridges to water treatment to public transit to climate readiness to clean energy to internet access. While the current infrastructure spending has been pushed mainly by Democrats, he says he’d also like to see Republicans rediscover their Eisenhower-style belief in public investment—both in physical infrastructure and what he calls soft infrastructure like job training and education to address social and economic inequities. Goldsmith is director of the Innovations in American Government Program at the Kennedy School, but he is also a veteran of the infrastructure front lines—having served as the mayor of Indianapolis, a deputy mayor in New York City, as a chief domestic policy advisor to the George W. Bush campaign in 2000.

Stephen Goldsmith is the Derek Bok Professor of the Practice of Urban Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and director of Data-Smart City Solutions at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University. He currently directs Data-Smart City Solutions, a project to highlight local government efforts to use new technologies that connect breakthroughs in the use of big data analytics with community input to reshape the relationship between government and citizen. He previously served as Deputy Mayor of New York and Mayor of Indianapolis, where he earned a reputation as one of the country's leaders in public-private partnerships, competition, and privatization. Stephen was also the chief domestic policy advisor to the George W. Bush campaign in 2000, the Chair of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and the elected prosecutor for Marion County, Indiana from 1977 to 1989. He has written numerous books, including The Power of Social Innovation; Governing by Network: the New Shape of the Public Sector; Putting Faith in Neighborhoods: Making Cities Work through Grassroots Citizenship; The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance; and most recently Growing Fairly, How to Build Opportunity and Equity in Workforce Development.

The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

Transitioning to clean power without workers absorbing the shock

Gordon Hanson, James Stock, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 6 Apr 2023 12:20:02 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Gordon Hanson and Harvard Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability James Stock say an important part of the green energy transition will be mitigating its effects on employment, both in the United States and overseas. Talking about the clean energy transition can conjure up images of commuters using sleek electric trains and electric cars powered by the sun and wind, and of workers with good-paying jobs installing the infrastructure of the future. But the outlook for communities that are economically tied to the fossil fuel economy that will be left behind isn’t quite as sunny. Stock is director of Harvard's Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, which brings together researchers from around the university to collaborate on climate solutions. Hanson is co-director of the Reimagining the Economy Project at the Kennedy School's Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. They say making the green energy transition is urgent and vital, but to do it successfully will mean planning a different sort of transition for almost a million workers in just the American fossil fuel extraction and refining industries alone—not to mention millions of workers further up the fossil fuel ecosystem. Thanks to previous economic shocks like globalization, automation, and the decline of the coal industry, we’ve seen first-hand the devastation that large-scale job loss can wreak on one-industry cities and company towns. Hanson and Stock say harnessing the lessons from those prior transitions can help power a future that’s both green and inclusively prosperous.

Gordon Hanson is the Peter Wertheim Professor in Urban Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He is also Chair of the Social and Urban Policy Area at HKS, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Hanson received his PhD in economics from MIT in 1992 and his BA in economics from Occidental College in 1986. Prior to joining Harvard in 2020, he held the Pacific Economic Cooperation Chair in International Economic Relations at UC San Diego, where he was founding director of the Center on Global Transformation. In his scholarship, Hanson studies the labor market consequences of globalization. He has published extensively in top economics journals, is widely cited for his research by scholars from across the social sciences and is frequently quoted in major media outlets. Hanson’s current research addresses how the China trade shock has affected US local labor markets, the causes and consequences of international migration, and the origins of regional economic divides.

James H. Stock is Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University; the Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; and a member of the faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School. His current research includes energy and environmental economics with a focus on fuels and on U.S. climate change policy. He is co-author, with Mark Watson, of a leading undergraduate econometrics textbook. In 2013-2014 he served as Member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, where his portfolio included macroeconomics and energy and environmental policy. He was Chair of the Harvard Economics Department from 2007-2009. He holds a M.S. in statistics and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

The rising tide no one’s talking about—finding homes for millions of climate crisis migrants

Jacqueline Bhabha, Hannah Teicher, Ralph Ranalli — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 14:10:03 +0000

When it comes to the climate crisis, there’s barely a day that goes by when we don’t hear about the impending effects of rising sea levels and storm-driven tides. But Harvard professors Jaqueline Bhabha and Hannah Teicher say there’s another rising tide that’s not getting as much attention, despite its potential to reshape our world. It’s the wave of climate migrants—people who have been and will be driven from their homes by rising seas, extreme heat, catastrophic weather, and climate-related famine and economic hardship. Some will try to relocate within their home countries, others across international borders, but most experts predict that there will be hundreds of millions of them. In fact the United Nations says hundreds of millions of people globally have already been forced to relocate for climate-related reasons, and experts say as many as a billion people could be seeking new homes by 2050. Meanwhile, immigration is already a political third rail in many countries, including the United States, and has driven a rise in both authoritarianism and ethnonationalism. So where will they go? And what kind of welcome will they receive when they get there? Bhabha and Teicher are working on those questions, examining everything from the language we use when we talk about climate migration to international law and human rights to urban planning policies that can help create win-win situations when newcomers arrive. They say major changes to our climate and to the earth’s habitable spaces are coming, and a large part of adjusting to that successfully will involve another difficult change—to our way of thinking about how we share the world with our fellow humans.

Jacqueline Bhabha is a faculty affiliate of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, director of research for the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, a professor of the practice of health and human rights at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School. From 1997 to 2001 Bhabha directed the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago. Prior to 1997, she was a practicing human rights lawyer in London and at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. She has published extensively on issues of transnational child migration, refugee protection, children's rights and citizenship. She is author of Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age, and the editor of Children Without A State and Human Rights and Adolescence. Bhabha serves on the board of directors of the Scholars at Risk Network, the World Peace Foundation, and the Journal of Refugee Studies. She is also a founder of the Alba Collective, an international NGO currently working with rural women and girls in developing countries to enhance financial security and youth rights. She received a first class honors degree and an M.Sc. from Oxford University, and a J.D. from the College of Law in London.

Hannah Teicher is an assistant professor of urban planning at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Her research is broadly concerned with how mitigation and adaptation to climate change are shaping urban transformations across scales. Her current research explores how receiving communities for climate migrants can learn from other forms of relocation to address tensions between host communities and newcomers. She is interested in how local level planning will grapple with the confluence of adaptation and migration as well as how urban restructuring will evolve at national and transnational scales. For the Climigration Network, Teicher co-chairs the Narrative Building Work Group which guided development of Lead with Listening, a guidebook for community conversations on climate migration. She is also an active member of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals. She holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT, a Master of Architecture from the University of British Columbia, and a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Swarthmore College.

The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and digital support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

Local news is civic infrastructure. And it’s crumbling. Can we save it?

Nancy Gibbs, Thomas Patterson, Ralph Ranalli — Tue, 7 Mar 2023 14:35:08 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School professors Nancy Gibbs and Tom Patterson say local news is civic infrastructure. And it's crumbling. Like bridges, local news organizations use facts to help people connect with each other over the chasm of partisan political divides. People need reliable information to make important decisions about their lives—Where should I send my child to school? Who should I vote for? Should I buy a bigger house or a new car?—just as much as they need breathable air, clean water, and safe roads. Unfortunately, internet-driven market forces have cut traditional sources of revenue by 80 percent, and vulture capitalists have bought up local newspapers, sold off their physical assets and gutted newsroom staffs. Across America, more than 2,000 local news organizations have shut their doors in just the past two decades. Meanwhile, studies show that when local news declines, voting and other key forms of civic participation decline with it. Gibbs and Patterson join host Ralph Ranalli to talk about how to rebuild the local news ecosystem and with it, the civic health of America’s community life.

Nancy Gibbs is the director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics Public Policy and the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice of Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Until September 2017, she was Editor in Chief of TIME, the first woman to hold the position. During her three decades at TIME, she covered four presidential campaigns and she is the co-author, along with Michael Duffy, of two best-selling presidential histories: The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity (2012), and The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House (2007). She has interviewed five U.S. presidents and multiple other world leaders, and lectured extensively on the American presidency. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and a master’s degree in politics and philosophy from Oxford University, where she was a Marshall Scholar. She has twice served as the Ferris Professor at Princeton University, where she taught a seminar on politics and the press.

Thomas Patterson is Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at HKS. He has authored numerous books, including Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism; How America Lost Its Mind: The Assault on Reason That's Crippling Our Democracy, and Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself?. An earlier book, The Vanishing Voter, examined electoral participation, and his book on the media’s political role, Out of Order, received the American Political Science Association’s Graber Award as the best book of the decade in political communication. His first book, The Unseeing Eye, was named by the American Association for Public Opinion Research as one of the 50 most influential books on public opinion in the past half century. His articles have appeared in Political Communication, Journal of Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, and other academic journals, as well as in the popular press. He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1971.

There's groundbreaking new science to help cut methane emissions, but is there the political will?

Robert Stavins, Daniel Jacob, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 8 Feb 2023 16:19:31 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Robert Stavins and Professor Daniel Jacob of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are at the forefront of new efforts to monitor and control methane, a potent greenhouse gas. It used to seem like methane wasn't such a big deal. It was that other climate gas, the one that was the butt of cow flatulence jokes and that only stayed in the atmosphere for a decade or so. But since important global warming targets are now just 7 years away and science has developed a better understanding of both methane’s pervasiveness and its potent role in warming the atmosphere, it’s now very much on the front burner for increasingly concerned climate policymakers. The good news is that the science of monitoring methane emissions has taken huge leaps forward recently, thanks to advances in supercomputing, weather modeling, and satellite imaging, to the point where we could soon have daily real-time monitoring and measuring of methane emissions around the globe. Our two guests are playing an important role in that effort. Robert Stavins is an economist and the director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Project and the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements. Daniel Jacob was named the world’s top environmental scientist last year by Research.com and his groundbreaking work has been instrumental in creating methane monitoring systems so precise they can track emissions to a specific company or another individual source—from space. Both say that the need to address the methane issue is urgent and that the countries of the world now have the wherewithal to get methane emissions under control. There are hopeful signs, including a major international agreement called the Global Methane Pledge, but the big question will be whether global leaders have the will to follow through.

Robert Stavins is the A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy & Economic Development, Director of Graduate Studies for the Doctoral Programs in Public Policy and in Political Economy and Government, Cochair of the MPP/MBA and MPA/ID/MBA Joint Degree Programs. He is the Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a University Fellow of Resources for the Future, former Chair of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Economics Advisory Board, and a member of the editorial councils of scholarly periodicals. His research has examined diverse areas of environmental economics and policy and has appeared in a variety of economics, law, and policy journals, as well as several books. Stavins directed Project 88, a bipartisan effort cochaired by former Senator Timothy Wirth and the late Senator John Heinz to develop innovative approaches to environmental problems. He has been a consultant to government agencies, international organizations, corporations, and advocacy groups. He holds a BA in philosophy from Northwestern University, an MS in agricultural economics from Cornell, and a PhD in economics from Harvard.

Daniel Jacob is the Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Harvard University. His research covers a wide range of topics in atmospheric chemistry, from air quality to climate change, and has led the development of the GEOS-Chem global 3-D model of atmospheric composition. In 2022, he won both the Best Scientist Award and the Environmental Sciences in United States Leader Award from Research.com as the top environmental scientist in the world. Jacob has also served as a mission scientist on eight NASA aircraft missions around the world and was awarded NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal in 2003. Jacob has trained over 100 Ph.D. students and postdocs over the course of his career. In 1994 he was made a Fellow of American Geophysical Union (AGU) and was awarded the James B. Macelwane Medal. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Caltech.

Joe Aldy on the complex economics of the clean energy transition

Joe Aldy, Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 18:17:42 +0000

Economist and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Joe Aldy says possibly the most complex—and one of the most existentially important—problems facing humanity is how to pull out the roots of fossil fuel infrastructure that are so deeply embedded in the global economy. The work is complex and the scale is immense; In fact it’s been said that transitioning the global economy from fossil fuels to sustainable sources will require the largest reallocation of capital in human history. Meanwhile Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its willingness to weaponize oil and natural gas distribution was a sign to many that the green energy transition will be bumpy and buffeted by geopolitical crises and the domestic politics of countries around the world. Joe Aldy is here to help us swap our rose-colored glasses for a clear-eyed vision of what the future holds for the economics of climate.

Joe Aldy is a Professor of the Practice of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a University Fellow at Resources for the Future, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also the Faculty Chair for the Regulatory Policy Program at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. His research focuses on climate change policy, energy policy, and regulatory policy. In 2009-2010, Aldy served as the Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Environment, reporting through both the National Economic Council and the Office of Energy and Climate Change at the White House. Aldy was a Fellow at Resources for the Future from 2005 to 2008 and served on the staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 2000. He also served as the Co-Director of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, Co-Director of the International Energy Workshop, and Treasurer for the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists before joining the Obama Administration. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University, a Master of Environmental Management degree from the Nicholas School of the Environment, and a BA from Duke University.

Goals and realities: What World Cup performances can teach us about development in African countries

Matt Andrews, Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli — Fri, 9 Dec 2022 14:16:57 +0000

Matt Andrews, the faculty director of the Building State Capability program at Harvard Kennedy School, says the reasons why African nations haven’t done better at soccer’s world championships have a lot in common with why much of the continent’s economic promise has also gone unfulfilled. The World Cup, the biggest championship in soccer—or football, depending on where you are from—is currently underway and it's one of the two most-watched sporting events on the planet, the other being the Olympic Games. Yet even though it’s a world-wide event, the list of World Cup champions is dominated by European countries like France, Italy, and Germany, plus a handful of South American ones like Argentina and Brazil. No African nation, meanwhile, has ever made it even as far as the semifinals, although Morocco will have the opportunity to make history tomorrow when they face off against Portugal in the quarterfinals. Some possible reasons for Africa’s lack of success were recently outlined in a research paper by Matt Andrews, the Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development at HKS and faculty director of the Building State Capability program. Andrews, who grew up as a soccer fan in South Africa, says the problem isn’t talent—in fact, top professional soccer teams around the world are loaded with African-born players. Instead, Andrews says the reasons Africa’s soccer teams don’t do better look a lot like the reasons their economies don’t do better—they lack the institutional support that would help them realize their latent talent and promise. Matt Andrews is here today to talk football, goals, aspirations, and how to put African on a winning path.

Matt Andrews is the Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He has worked in over 50 countries across the globe as a civil servant, international development expert, researcher, teacher, advisor and coach. He has written three books and over 60 other publications on the topics of development and management. He is also the faculty director of the Building State Capability program at Harvard, which is where he has developed – with a team – a policy and management method to address complex challenges. This method is called problem driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) and was developed through over a decade of applied action research work by Matt and his team. It is now used by practitioners across the globe. Matt holds a BCom degree from the University of Natal, Durban (South Africa), an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD in Public Administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

How American cities can prepare for an increasingly destructive climate

Bill de Blasio, Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 16:13:36 +0000

Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has a unique perspective on the topic of climate resiliency. He was a city official in 2012 for Superstorm Sandy—which many call the worst disaster in New York City’s history—and in 2021 for Hurricane Ida, which caused $24 billion worth of flooding in the Northeastern United States, making it the costliest and most damaging storm since Sandy nine years before. He was also mayor during most of those nine years, when policymakers, planners, and the citizens of New York tried to grapple with the enormous task of making the city more resilient in the face of ever more destructive and dangerous weather events driven by the man-made climate crisis and global warming. With 520 miles of shoreline, 443 miles of underground railroad and subway tracks, and 14 major under-river tunnels, New York City is a nightmare to protect from rising seas and catastrophic rainfall, and de Blasio and city planners proposed billions in dollars of resiliency projects—including extending Manhattan’s shoreline 500 feet at the island’s vulnerable southern tip. But those plans, he says, encountered some surprisingly strong headwinds, including neighborhood opposition, short political and public attention spans, and competing concerns including the COVID-19 pandemic. So how do vulnerable localities like New York City overcome such obstacles and prepare for an increasingly adversarial climate? de Blasio, who is currently a visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School, explores the possibilities with host Ralph Ranalli.

Bill de Blasio is a Fall 2022 Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. He served as the 109th mayor of New York City from 2014 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he held the office of New York City Public Advocate from 2010 to 2013 and started his career as an elected official on the New York City Council, representing the 39th district in Brooklyn from 2002 to 2009. Prior to being an elected official, de Blasio served as the campaign manager for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s successful senatorial campaign of 2000 and got his start in NYC government working for Mayor David Dinkins. He launched a campaign for president during the 2020 Democratic primary but ended his bid before the primary election. He holds an A.B. from New York University in metropolitan studies, and a master of international affairs degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an A.B. in Political Science from UCLA and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University.

Why women are authoritarianism’s targets—and how they can be its undoing

Erica Chenoweth, Zoe Marks, Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 3 Nov 2022 06:08:26 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Erica Chenoweth and Lecturer in Public Policy Zoe Marks say the parallel global trends of rising authoritarianism and attempts to roll back women’s rights are no coincidence. The hard won rights women have attained over the past century—to education, to full participation in the workforce, in politics, and civic life, and to reproductive healthcare—have transformed society and corresponded with historic waves of democratization around the world. But they have also increasingly become the target of authoritarian leaders and regimes looking to displace democracy with hierarchies controlled by male elites and to re-confine women in traditional roles as wives, mothers, and caregivers. LGBTQ people and others who don’t fit into the traditional binary patriarchal model have become targets not just in places like Iran, Russia, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia but also China, Hungary, Poland, and the United States. But Chenoweth and Marks say the authoritarians are also fearful of empowered women—and that their research says they should be. Social movements like the protests currently underway in Iran that include large numbers of women tend to be more resilient, creative, and ultimately successful—which means the future of democracy and the future of women’s empowerment in this pivotal historic era may go hand-in-hand.

Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University. They study political violence and its alternatives. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that provides empirical evidence in support of movement-led political transformation. Chenoweth has authored or edited nine books and dozens of articles on mass movements, nonviolent resistance, terrorism, political violence, revolutions, and state repression. Their recent book, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2021), explores what civil resistance is, how it works, why it sometimes fails, how violence and repression affect it, and the long-term impacts of such resistance. They also recently co-authored the book On Revolutions (Oxford, 2022), which explores the ways in which revolutions and revolutionary studies have evolved over the past several centuries. Their next book with Zoe Marks, tentatively titled Rebel XX: Women on the Frontlines of Revolution, investigates the impact of women’s participation on revolutionary outcomes and democratization.

Chenoweth maintains the NAVCO Data Project, one of the world’s leading datasets on historical and contemporary mass mobilizations around the globe. Along with Jeremy Pressman, Chenoweth also co-directs the Crowd Counting Consortium, a public interest and scholarly project that documents political mobilization in the U.S. since January 2017.

Foreign Policy magazine ranked Chenoweth among the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013 for their efforts to promote the empirical study of nonviolent resistance and they are a recipient of the Karl Deutsch Award, which the International Studies Association gives annually to the scholar under 40 who has made the greatest impact on the field of international politics or peace research.

They are also a Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, where Chenoweth and Zoe Marks co-chair the Political Violence Workshop. They hold a Ph.D. and an M.A. in political science from the University of Colorado and a B.A. in political science and German from the University of Dayton.

Zoe Marks is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research and teaching interests focus on the intersections of conflict and political violence; race, gender and inequality; peacebuilding; and African politics. In addition to her research on peace and conflict, Professor Marks is committed to creating space for conversations about ethical research praxis and making academia more inclusive. She has convened workshops related to decolonizing the academy and with colleagues at the University of Cape Town edited a related special double issue of the journal Critical African Studies. Her research has been published in leading journals in the field, including Political Geography, African Affairs, and Civil Wars, and in peer-reviewed books and edited volumes from Oxford University and Palgrave press. Her dissertation received the Winchester Prize for the best dissertation in Politics at the University of Oxford. She serves on the editorial boards for the journals Critical African Studies and Civil Wars, and on the editorial committee of the Journal of Peace Research. Dr. Marks holds a DPhil in Politics and MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Government and African American Studies from Georgetown University. She has previously worked for UN and non-governmental organizations in Ethiopia, France, Sierra Leone, South Africa, the UK, and the US.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an A.B. in Political Science from UCLA and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University.

Former Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven on stemming the tide of right-wing authoritarianism

Stefan Löfven, Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 16:33:49 +0000

During his 7 years leading Sweden’s government from 2014 to 2021, Stefan Löfven had a front row seat to observe the rise of right-wing and neo-fascist political parties both at home and around Europe. A former welder, and union leader from working class roots, Löfven earned the nickname “the escape artist” during his years as prime minister for his knack for holding together governments despite his country’s increasingly fractious and polarized politics. But this year the Sweden Democrats—a party with its roots in fascist and white nationalist ideology—became the second leading vote-getter and were embraced as part of a ruling coalition government by other conservative and centrist parties. Löfven says the Sweden Democrats, who were once politically radioactive, are now the tail wagging the dog of Sweden’s new government. And he says the rise of far-right parties is a trend all over Europe, most recently in Italy, but also in Poland and Hungary, where they have fanned fears of economic insecurity, cultural displacement, and crime to scapegoat immigrants and offer authoritarianism as a cure-all, which has enabled them to steal followers from more mainstream parties and take power. Löfven says Europe’s democratic multilateralists are now on the back foot, trying to sell democracy and tolerance in a social-media-driven communications culture that favors the simplistic slogans and memes favored by the right. In this tumultuous era in European politics, he says only time will tell whether the rapid pace of societal change will keep driving voters into the arms of extremist parties, or whether the unpopular Russian war on Ukraine being prosecuted by the Godfather of the continent’s strongmen, Vladimir Putin, will take some the shine off authoritarianism’s allure.

Stefan Löfven grew up as foster child in a working-class family in the small town in northern Sweden. He studied social work at university and worked as a welder for a manufacturer of railcars. In 1981 he began taking an active role in the Swedish Metalworkers’ Union, ultimately become the president 2006–2012. In 1973 he started a local Swedish Social Democratic Youth League club. In 2012 he became leader of the party. In the parliamentary election in September 2014 Löfven won, and his party is still the leading and largest party in Sweden. He stepped down as a prime minister in November 2021. Today, Löfven is chairman of the board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, as well as chairman of the board of the Olof Palme Memorial Fund. A staunch supporter of the United Nations and multilateralism, he was appointed to lead the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism by Secretary-General António Guterres in February.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an A.B. in Political Science from UCLA and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University.

Low-wage and gig workers have it worse than we thought—and why that matters for us all

Susan Hughes, Danny Scheider, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 5 Oct 2022 12:00:00 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Danny Schneider says research shows that even as they were being lauded as heroes during the COVID-19 pandemic, working conditions for hourly workers were deteriorating. Eight years ago, Schneider co-founded The Shift Project, which has built an unprecedented repository of data on scheduling and working conditions for hourly service workers. But if there was silver lining to the pandemic, it was that it also put a spotlight on the plight of workers who had been largely invisible as they dealt with low pay, ruthlessly unpredictable algorithmic scheduling, and health problems related to stress and overwork. And, as evidenced by recent successful efforts to unionize at places like Starbucks and Amazon, Schneider says hourly workers may even have found a voice in shaping their own working environments. The question, he says, is, "Are corporate executives and policymakers are actually listening?"

Data analysis and policy design—not good intentions—will fix healthcare post COVID

Amitabh Chandra, Soroush Saghafian, Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 17:11:27 +0000

As healthcare policy navigates what is widely seen as a historic inflection point, Harvard Kennedy School professors Amitabh Chandra and Soroush Saghafian say policymakers need to pursue change with care, deeply analyzing the weaknesses the COVID-19 pandemic exposed and using that data to design intelligent policy that can create truly transformational change. COVID stretched the U.S. health care system and health care systems across the world to the breaking point and beyond, buy if there’s a silver lining, it may be that there is now the urgency and will among politicians and policymakers to pursue meaningful changes that could result in improved access to healthcare services that are both more affordable and higher quality. But Saghafian and Chandra say quick-fix policy changes—even those that are well-intentioned—may be destined to fail, including the health care provisions in the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which were hailed as a breakthrough if for nothing else other than finally breaking the pharmaceutical industry’s stranglehold on any attempt to control prescription drug prices. Professor Chandra is the director of Health Policy Research at the Kennedy School, and his research focuses on innovation and pricing in the biopharmaceutical industry and value and racial disparities in health care delivery. Professor Saghafian is the founder of the Public Impact Analytics Science Lab at Harvard and his work combines big data analytics, health policy, and decision science to discover new insights and provide new solutions to various existing problems. They’re here to talk through this important historic moment in healthcare policy, both in terms of challenges and opportunities.

Values, courage, and how good public leadership can save us

Deval Patrick, Susan Hughes, Delane Meadows, Ralph Ranalli — Fri, 2 Sep 2022 17:17:44 +0000

New Center for Public Leadership co-director Deval Patrick ascribes bad leadership as a root cause of many of the huge problems facing human society and the world, including the climate crisis, and threats to democracy and human rights. But are bad leaders flawed because of their personal shortcomings or are they an inevitable product of the flawed systems they operate within? And what makes a good leader? Is it their ability to get people to follow them? Or is it choosing the right things to lead those people toward? Patrick recently became co-director with Hannah Riley Bowles of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, or CPL, as it’s usually referred to here in Cambridge. Transcending his humble beginnings growing up as the son of a single mother on the South Side of Chicago, Patrick has built an impressive—and impressively varied—leadership resume, including serving as governor of Massachusetts, becoming the first Black man to do so. He also served as the Assistant US Attorney General for Civil Rights under President Bill Clinton, as a top corporate executive at Texaco and Coca-Cola, and even launched a brief bid for the White House in 2020. Patrick says that too many of today’s leaders are focused on getting into leadership positions and keeping them—with all the power and perks that entails—but have lost track of the greater meaning of what they can achieve for the common good. He joins us to talk about how good, values-based leadership can help turn things around—and the role he hopes CPL can play in that effort.

He predicted globalization’s failure, now he’s planning what’s next

Dani Rodrik, Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 14:46:16 +0000

For more than a quarter century, economist and Harvard Kennedy School professor Dani Rodrik has been ringing alarm bells about the dangers of globalization. And for a long time, it didn’t seem like a whole lot of people were listening. Now as record economic inequality, a climate in crisis, and global financial shocks from to the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have exposed the vulnerabilities and shortcomings of unchecked globalization and neoliberal orthodoxy about the primacy of markets, Rodrik may be having the world’s least-satisfying “I told you so” moment. But while the temptation might be to look backward for vindication, Rodrik is choosing to look toward solutions instead. He says that finding a way forward for the world economy will require two kinds of thinking: small picture—about how to create good jobs in an equitable way in specific settings—and big picture: imaging possible futures and what a more inclusive, post-globalization economy might look like. And he says it will also mean freeing political and economic discourse from what he calls a “prison of ideology” that rigidly limits policymakers’ ability to consider solutions outside of market-centric approaches. Rodrik recently launched a new project called Reimagining the Economy with fellow professor Gordon Hansen, supported by a $7.5 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The initiative will be based at the Kennedy School's Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy.

Reform, refugees, and the war next door: President Maia Sandu of Moldova

Maia Sandu, Jacob Beizer, Ralph Ranalli, Susan Hughes, Delane Meadows — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 15:26:34 +0000

As war rages in neighboring Ukraine, Moldovan President Maia Sandu talks to about fighting corruption, moving her country toward the European Union, and the half million refugees who’ve crossed the border since February. Sandu is a popular choice on lists of up-and-coming world leaders, including a recent one that nicknamed her “the tightrope walker.” Sandu’s task has been daunting—preserving her country’s young democracy while fighting endemic corruption; modernizing Moldova’s economy and turning its focus toward the European Union and away from Russia; and dealing with the pro-Russian breakaway region of Transnistria. And she’s had to take on all of those challenges in the context of the COVID pandemic and the Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine, which has sent an estimated 500,000 refugees over the country’s eastern border, of which 100,000 have taken up temporary residence in Moldova. Sandu has shown resilience in the face of challenges and setbacks—as education minister she was frustrated by the corruption she found in the country’s education system, so she and some allies founded their own political party, the party of Action and Solidarity. She lost her post as prime minister in 2019 after just five months, but a year later she was elected president and helped her party sweep into power in parliamentary elections. Sandu says the key to her success has been convincing ordinary Moldovans, who she says are weary from decades of pervasive corruption and scandal in government, that political reforms and an economic and political alignment with Europe hold the key to a better future.

The pandemic's silver lining—a trove of data on social protection programs

Ralph Ranalli, Rema Hanna — Thu, 5 May 2022 14:25:43 +0000

Rema Hanna is the Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South-East Asia Studies and Chair of the International Development Area at the Harvard Kennedy School. She also serves as the Faculty Director of Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) at Harvard University’s Center for International Development and is the co-Scientific Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) South East Asia Office in Indonesia. In addition, Professor Hanna is a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and an affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD).

Her research revolves around improving the provision of public services in developing and emerging nations, particularly for the very poor. She combines economic theory, qualitative field work, extensive data collection, and cutting-edge empirical analysis to offer insights into how governments function and how they can do better. Part of her work focuses on how to improve overall service delivery, as well as understanding the impacts of corruption, bureaucratic absenteeism, and discrimination against disadvantaged minority groups on delivery outcomes. She is particularly interested in how governments can improve and strengthen social protection, tax collection, and environmental safety.

Prior to joining the Harvard Kennedy School, Hanna was an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at New York University. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a B.S. from Cornell University with Honors and Distinction.

Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an A.B. in Political Science from UCLA and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University.

The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

How worldwide outrage over atrocities in Ukraine is fueling a new push for international justice

Kathryn Sikkink, Patrick Vinck, Ralph Ranalli — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 16:33:07 +0000

International outrage over Russia's war on Ukraine could be a watershed moment for the advance of international justice and accountability, say Harvard Kennedy School Professor Kathryn Sikkink and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Assistant Professor Patrick Vinck. With the eyes of the world focused on atrocities in places like Bucha and Mariupol, Sikkink and Vinck say it is time for countries to invest both their geopolitical and financial capital in the International Criminal Court or the ICC. Established 20 years ago in The Hague, Netherlands, the ICC was the world’s first permanent international criminal court tasked with pursuing prosecutions for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and illegal aggression—charges the ICC is now pursuing against Russia. Sikkink and Vinck say while there have been legitimate past criticisms of the ICC for being ineffective and for focusing too much on certain regions such as Africa, critics are missing the bigger picture—the remarkable story of how much traction the push for international humanitarian justice has gained since the end of World War II. And even if Russian President Vladimir Putin never sees the inside of a courtroom, they say, research shows that the act of identifying war crimes and pursuing prosecutions itself can lower the rate at which those crimes occur. Sikkink has been researching the nexus of human rights and international justice since she first witnessed the Trial of the Juntas in Argentina as a PhD student in the mid-1980s. Vinck is the Research Director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and a pioneer in the field of data collection from conflict and crisis zones.

O'Sullivan and Frankel: How the sanctions on Putin's Russia are reshaping the world economic order

Meghan O'Sullivan, Jeffrey Frankel, Ralph Ranalli, Susan Hughes — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 19:29:21 +0000

HKS professors Meghan O’Sullivan and Jeffrey Frankel say the draconian sanctions on Putin’s regime—which came together faster than almost anyone predicted—will have far-reaching and lasting effects well beyond Russia’s borders. In a nuclear-armed world where direct superpower conflict can have apocalyptic consequences, the proxy battlefield has become economics and finance. Instead of firing missiles, combatants lob sanctions to inflict pain and achieve strategic goals. Rather than cutting off supply routes, opponents cut off access to capital reserves and international financial systems. And during the first weeks of Russia’s war on Ukraine, developments on both the physical and economic battlefields have been swift and unpredictable. But now with an international sanctions regime against Vladimir Putin’s Russia taking shape with a depth and a breadth that took many analysts by surprise, it’s possible to widen the lens on the war in Ukraine to explore not only how it may shape the conflict, but also its potential to disrupt the world order and even create a new one. O’Sullivan is Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Program at HKS and a former Deputy National Security Advisor under President George W. Bush. Frankel is an international economist and a former member of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Bill Clinton. They join host Ralph Ranalli to discuss sanctions and what the world economic order could look like in a post-Ukraine War world.

Jeffrey A. Frankel is the James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served at the Council of Economic Advisers in 1983-84 and 1996-99; as CEA Member in the Clinton Administration, Frankel's responsibilities included international economics, macroeconomics, and the environment. Before coming to Harvard in 1999, he was Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. His research interests include currencies, commodities, crises, international finance, monetary policy, fiscal policy, regional trade blocs, and international environmental issues.

Meghan L. O’Sullivan is the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs and the Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. She is also the chair of the North American Group of the Trilateral Commission. Professor O’Sullivan has extensive experience in policy formulation and in negotiation. Between 2004 and 2007, she was special assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan during the last two years of her tenure. Dr. O’Sullivan spent two years from 2003-2008 in Iraq, most recently in the fall of 2008 to help negotiate and conclude the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and strategic framework agreement between the United States and Iraq. From July 2013 to December 2013, Professor O’Sullivan was the Vice Chair of the All Party Talks in Northern Ireland. She has has written several books on international affairs and has been awarded the Defense Department's highest honor for civilians, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, and three times been awarded the State Department's Superior Honor Award.

Ralph Ranalli is the Host, Producer, and Editor of HKS PolicyCast. He is also a senior writer at the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications, as well as former journalist, television news producer, and entrepreneur.

The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

Keyssar and Fung: America’s flawed democracy is in deep—and possibly fatal—trouble

Ralph Ranalli, Alex Keyssar, Archon Fung, Susan Hughes — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 19:46:39 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Professors Alex Keyssar and Archon Fung say the U.S. political system, stripped of a consensus belief in democratic principles, is racing down a dangerous road toward political and social upheaval and possible minority rule. American democracy, they tell PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli, is in trouble to an extent not seen in many decades, possibly since the Civil War, or perhaps ever. If you believe in democracy as essentially one-person, one-vote, and as a system where every voter has a roughly equal say in how our country is governed, then frankly, you would never design a system of elections and governance like the one in the United States. But the U.S. system wasn’t built for that. It was built, compromise piled upon compromise, to somehow accommodate people with very different views—about what the country should be and who should have the power to decide—inside one system that, at a minimum, everyone could at least live with. But now, stripped of a consensus acceptance of underlying democratic principles by a Republican Party pursuing power at any cost, they say the same compromises that were designed to protect minority opinions are being exposed as mortal flaws that can allow for what would effectively be minority rule. And there seems to be little in the way of systemic failsafes to stop it. Alex Keyssar is a renowned historian and scholar on the American political system. Archon Fung is a leading political scientist and heads the democratic governance programs of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. They’re here to talk about what they call a dynamic, disturbing, and potentially very dangerous time for American democracy.

The U.S. pays reparations every day—just not to Black America

Cornell William Brooks, Linda Bilmes, Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli — Thu, 3 Feb 2022 17:09:28 +0000

HKS faculty members Cornell William Brooks and Linda Bilmes explore the vexing disconnect between the vast US system of restorative justice and the deep-rooted, intergenerational harms suffered by Black Americans.

Every day, someone somewhere in America is being compensated under what is known as restorative justice, a type of justice that instead of meting out punishment to a wrongdoer, seeks to make the victims or their families whole—or at least repair them as much as possible. Restorative justice is also known as reparative justice, or, in the context of the experience of Black Americans from the first slave ships in the 1600s through to today, simply reparations.

But unlike those other, everyday reparations, Black reparations are seen by many as a highly-charged political third rail, so last year Harvard Kennedy School faculty members Cornell William Brooks and Linda Bilmes launched a research project to see if they could change the conversation. Cataloging the harms suffered by Black Americans through the centuries from slavery itself through segregation, disenfranchisement, economic and educational discrimination, wealth inequality, and more, they found that no group was perhaps more deserving of being made whole. They also studied and cataloged a huge system of American restorative compensation that works every day to make people whole for harms they have suffered. What they didn’t find, however, was a connection between the two.

Cornell William Brooks is a professor of the practice of nonprofit management, a former civil rights attorney for the U.S. Justice Department, and the former national president of the NAACP.

Linda Bilmes is a senior lecturer in public policy, the U.S. representative to the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration, and has made a career of re-examining assumptions about the costs, values, and priorities of public programs. They joined host Ralph Ranalli to discuss their research, which is due out in a paper to be published in the coming weeks.

Graham Allison on how China’s rising global power could lead to superpower conflict—or something else.

Ralph Ranalli, Graham Allison — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 16:28:05 +0000

It takes a lot to impress Professor Graham Allison when it comes to geopolitics. He is, after all, the Cold Warrior’s Cold Warrior—as one of America’s most influential defense policy analysts and advisors, he was twice awarded the Defense Department’s highest civilian honor for his work on nuclear disarmament with Russia. He’s a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, former director of the Council on Foreign Relations, a founding member of the Trilateral Commission, and a renowned political scientist who has served as dean of the Kennedy School and head of the school’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Yet even Allison says he marvels at the rapid transformation of China, the world's rising economic, technological, and military superpower, and he says it’s well past time for the United States and the rest of the world to hear some hard truths about China’s power and potential dominance of world affairs during the 21st Century.

To explain how China has not only caught up with, but in numerous cases surpassed, the United States, Allison and a group of colleagues are writing a series of five research papers on the key areas of economics, technological advancement, military power, diplomatic influence, and ideology. The third paper, on China’s extraordinary rise as an economic superpower, states that while some may be tempted to still see China as a developing country, the truth is that it has been adding the equivalent of the entire economy of India to its GDP every four years and that the number of people in the Chinese middle class—some 400 million—now far outnumber the entire population of the United States.

Meanwhile, China is either catching up or leading in foundational technologies of the 21st century like AI, quantum computing, and green tech, while recent war games predict that China’s modernized, expanded military would likely win a military conflict over Taiwan. Graham Allison talks about China’s rise and what could be the next great superpower rivalry—but also about the possibilities for a new paradigm for the US-China relationship that goes beyond Cold War thinking.

About the Guest:

Graham Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University where he has taught for five decades. Allison is a leading analyst of national security with special interests in nuclear weapons, Russia, China, and decision-making. Allison was the “Founding Dean” of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and until 2017, served as Director of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. As Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Clinton Administration, Dr. Allison received the Defense Department's highest civilian award, the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, for "reshaping relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to reduce the former Soviet nuclear arsenal." This resulted in the safe return of more than 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons from the former Soviet republics and the complete elimination of more than 4,000 strategic nuclear warheads previously targeted at the United States and left in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus when the Soviet Union disappeared.

Professor Allison is the author of numerous books, including: “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” (2017), “Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States and the World” (2013), “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe” (2004) and “Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971).

As "Founding Dean" of the modern Kennedy School, under his leadership, from 1977 to 1989, a small, undefined program grew twenty-fold to become a major professional school of public policy and government.

Professor Allison was the organizer of the Commission on America's National Interests (1996 and 2000), a founding member of the Trilateral Commission, a Director of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was educated at Davidson College; Harvard College (B.A., magna cum laude, in History); Oxford University (B.A. and M.A., First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics); and Harvard University (Ph.D. in Political Science).

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph Ranalli

PolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.

For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa on how social media is pushing journalism—and democracy—to the brink

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 16:22:07 +0000

The Nobel Committee has awarded its 2021 Peace Prize to Maria Ressa for being a fearless defender of independent journalism and freedom of expression in the Philippines, and particularly for her work exposing the human rights abuses of authoritarian President Rodrigo Duterte. But the prize is also a de facto acknowledgement that Ressa has become something of a one-woman personification of the struggles, perils, and promise of journalism in the age of social media.

A longtime investigative reporter and bureau chief for CNN, she began thinking about how social networks could be used for both good and evil while covering terrorism and seeing how it was used to drive both radicalism and build movements for positive change. She originally founded Rappler, her Manila-based online news organization, as a Facebook page, but now she says that one-time Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg’s dominance as a worldwide distributor of news has become a boon to repressive regimes and a threat to democracy worldwide.

Rappler’s mission statement is to speak truth to power and build communities of action for a better world—but for Ressa, speaking truth to power has come at a high personal cost. She has been subjected to harassment, criminal and civil legal action, and even arrest, even as she has refused to back off even an inch. When we spoke for this interview, Ressa was just finishing a visiting fellowship at the Kennedy School, where she was affiliated with both the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy and the Center for Public Leadership.

About our Guest:

Maria Ressa has been a journalist in Asia for 35 years and co-founded Rappler, the top digital only news site that is leading the fight for press freedom in the Philippines. For her courage and work on disinformation, Ressa was named Time Magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year, was among its 100 Most Influential People of 2019, and has also been named one of Time’s Most Influential Women of the Century. She was also part of BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2019 and Prospect magazine’s world’s top 50 thinkers. In 2020, she received the Journalist of the Year award, the John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award, the Most Resilient Journalist Award, the Tucholsky Prize, the Truth to Power Award, and the Four Freedoms Award.

Before founding Rappler, Maria focused on investigating terrorism in Southeast Asia. She opened and ran CNN’s Manila Bureau for nearly a decade before opening the network’s Jakarta Bureau, which she ran from 1995 to 2005. She wrote Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia and From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism.

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph Ranalli

PolicyCast is edited by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes. Natalie Montaner is our webmaster and social media strategist. Our designers are Lydia Rosenberg and Delane Meadows.

For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

How our flawed debates about cost prevent us from spending public money wisely

Ralph Ranalli, Susan Hughes — Thu, 2 Dec 2021 12:15:12 +0000

Barely a news cycle goes by these days without someone in public office saying ‘We can’t afford that,’ while at the same time defending their favorite budget priorities and tossing around mind-numbingly large cost figures in the billions and trillions of dollars. Those debates can seem very cynical, and of course Oscar Wilde famously defined a cynic as a person who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. But Harvard Kennedy School Senior Lecturer Linda Bilmes says things are even worse than that—not only are we not having discussions based on value, our understanding of what projects and policies actually cost is fundamentally flawed.

A former CFO of the US Commerce Department and an internationally known expert in public budgeting and finance, Professor Bilmes has made it her mission to change the conversation about cost in the public sphere, and she’s helped identify the true costs of everything from America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to our National Parks to the automobile economy in Massachusetts. She joins us to talk about her efforts to improve both the discussions and the decisions that are made about public money.

About our guest:

Linda J. Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, is a leading expert on budgetary and public financial issues. Her research focuses on budgeting and public administration in the public, private and non-profit sectors. She is interested in how resources are allocated, particularly defense budgets, costs of war, veterans, sub-national budgeting and public lands. She is a full-time Harvard faculty member, teaching budgeting, cost accounting and public finance, and teaching workshops for newly-elected Mayors and Members of Congress. Since 2005, she has led the Greater Boston Applied Field Lab, an advanced academic program in which teams of student volunteers assist local communities in public finance and operations. She also leads field projects for the Bloomberg Cities program. Dr. Bilmes served as the Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary and Chief Financial Officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce under President Bill Clinton. She currently serves as the sole United States member of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA), and as Vice-chair of Economists for Peace and Security. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University. She was a member of the National Parks Second Century Commission and served on the U.S. National Parks Service Advisory Board for eight years. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. She holds a BA and MBA from Harvard University and a D.Phil from Oxford University.

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph Ranalli

PolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.

For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Systems Failure: With the climate crisis hitting poor people hardest, David Keith says now is the time to explore solar geoengineering

Ralph Ranalli, David Keith, Susan Hughes — Tue, 2 Nov 2021 14:00:00 +0000

Leaders from around the globe are meeting in Scotland today for the COP26 summit, talking about ways to speed up efforts to fight global warming. Yet even the optimists in Glasgow admit that the scientific consensus is that it’s already too late to cut emissions fast enough to avoid a dangerous rise in the earth’s temperature by 2 degrees Celsius, which is expected to lead to severe droughts, blistering heat waves, deadly flooding, and rising seas.

Despite these dire predictions, there has been one potential weapon in humanity’s anti-warming arsenal that, in terms of practical research, has been a taboo subject: solar geoengineering. Now Professor David Keith says it’s time for that to change. Keith is an award-winning physicist who holds professorships at both Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Working at the intersection of physics and policy, Keith is a pioneer in the field, which involves making man-made changes to the atmosphere that would cool the planet by either preventing some of the sun’s energy from getting through, or making it easier for heat already in the atmosphere to escape.

Critics have had a tough time wrapping their heads around solar geoengineering. They call it the stuff of science fiction, say it could be used as an excuse not to further cut emissions, and even suggest that governments might someday use it as a weapon. But Keith says that it’s now time to explore it as one of major strategies to fight warming, which include cutting emissions, capturing the carbon that’s already in the atmosphere, and helping people and societies adapt to the effects already being felt. One of his primary arguments for starting serious research on solar geoengineering is inequality. After all, he says, planetary warming doesn’t play fair. It is mostly people in the world’s poorest countries who will suffer the worst harm from a warming climate, yet they are the least responsible for it in terms of per capita emissions. And amid all the recent talk of climate adaptation, there is comparatively little mention that it is much easier for a rich country in a colder latitude to adapt than it is for a developing one in a hotter region.

Keith is also known for his work on carbon capture and founded a company working on technology to pull carbon from the air — although he says that is at best a long-term strategy that could take decades to have any beneficial effect.

About the “Systems Failure” series:

To kick off the fall 2021 season, we’re launching a mini-series of episodes built around a theme we’re calling “Systems Failure.” Our conversations will focus on how the economic, technological, and other systems that play a vital role in determining how we live our lives can not only treat individuals and groups of people unequally, but can also exacerbate inequality more generally in society. We’ll also talk about strategies to change those systems to make them more equitable.

About our guest:

David Keith has worked near the interface between climate science, energy technology, and public policy for twenty five years. He took first prize in Canada's national physics prize exam, won MIT's prize for excellence in experimental physics, and was one of TIME magazine's Heroes of the Environment. Best known for work on solar geoengineering, David’s analytical work has ranged from the climatic impacts of large-scale wind power to an early critique of the prospects for hydrogen fuel. David is Professor of Applied Physics in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Public Policy in the Harvard Kennedy School. He spends about a third of his time in Calgary, Canada where he helps lead Carbon Engineering, a company developing technology to capture CO2 from ambient air.

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph Ranalli

PolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.

For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Systems Failure: Economist Jason Furman says economic inequality costs everyone

Susan Hughes, Jason Furman, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 17:43:44 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Jason Furman recently testified before the House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth and called growing inequality the fundamental challenge for the U.S. economy. He says that slow income growth, coupled with growing disparities in how the overall economic pie is divided, have contributed to inequality that is now pervasive by race, ethnicity, gender, income, and education. That inequality hurts everyone, he says, limiting growth and depriving society of productive contributors to the economy.

About our guest:

Jason Furman is the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He served for eight years as a top economic adviser to President Obama, including as the 28th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017, acting as both President Obama’s chief economist and a member of the cabinet. Furman has conducted research in a wide range of areas, including fiscal policy, tax policy, health economics, Social Security, technology policy, and domestic and international macroeconomics. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University.

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph Ranalli

PolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.

For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Systems Failure: How to respond when our algorithms are biased and our privacy is in peril

Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli, Latanya Sweeney — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 17:09:18 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Latanya Sweeney is a pioneer in the fields of algorithmic fairness and data privacy and the founding director of the new Public Interest Tech Lab at Harvard University. The former chief technology officer for the US Trade Commission, she’s been awarded 3 patents and her work is cited in two key US privacy regulations, including the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). She was also the first black woman to earn a PhD in Computer Science from MIT, and she says her experiences being the only woman of color in white male-dominated classrooms and labs may have contributed to her uncanny ability to spot racial and gender bias, privacy vulnerabilities, and other key flaws in data and technology systems.

About the “Systems Failure” Series:

To kick off the fall 2021 season, we’re launching a mini-series of episodes built around a theme we’re calling “Systems Failure.” Our conversations will focus on how economic, technological, and other types of systems that play a huge role in determining how we live our lives can not only treat individuals and groups of people unequally, but can also exacerbate inequality more generally in society. We’ll also talk about strategies to change those systems to make them more equitable.

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph Ranalli

PolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.

For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Happiness in an age of fear and grievance

Arthur Brooks, Ralph Ranalli, Susan Hughes — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 17:45:00 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School Professor Arthur Brooks studies happiness: Where it comes from, how to achieve it, and how it affects our lives, our decision-making, and the world around us. But how do we define happiness? Is it how we feel? Is it an approach to life? And how much control over it do we really have? What percentage of our happiness comes from, say, our environment, or from genetics? Can government make us happier? Should it? In a time of stress and division when the world is seemingly desperate for more happiness, Brooks joins host Ralph Ranalli to explore some of those questions.

About our guest:

Arthur Brooks is the William Henry Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and a Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School. Brooks is also the former president of the American Enterprise Institute and a former member of the City Orchestra of Barcelona. He is the author of 11 books, including “Love Your Enemies” (2019), “The Conservative Heart” (2015), and “The Road to Freedom” (2012). He is a columnist for The Atlantic, and host of the podcast The Art of Happiness with Arthur Brooks.

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph Ranalli

PolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.

For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Staying Power: Tony Saich on 100 Years of the Chinese Communist Party

Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli, Antony Saich — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 18:38:36 +0000

The Chinese Communist Party rules a country that is already an economic superpower and is poised to become a military and geopolitical one as the 21st Century unfolds. But Harvard Kennedy School Professor Tony Saich says the party’s 100th birthday next month is also a time to remember the party’s struggles and humble beginnings. From it’s early days as Soviet-supported client and its existential struggles with the Chinese Nationalists; to the tragic excesses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; to its economic transformation and growing middle class, the party has made disastrous errors as well as successes.

But through it all, Saich says, the party has shown a remarkable ability to survive, adapt, and maintain control of 1.4 billion people. That’s why understanding China’s politics is crucial for the future of everything from the world economy to the climate crisis to international human rights. Professor Saich, the director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, has written a new book due out next month called “From Rebel to Ruler: One Hundred Years of the Chinese Communist Party.” He talks to host Ralph Ranalli about the party’s past and why understanding it is important for the future.

About our guest:

Professor Anthony Saich is the Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Daewoo Professor of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Ralph Ranalli, Senior Staff Writer and Producer at the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs.

PolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.

For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Between blind faith and denial: Finding a productive approach to merging policy, science, and technology

Ralph Ranalli, Thoko Moyo, Susan Hughes, Sheila Jasanoff — Wed, 5 May 2021 12:00:00 +0000

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Associate Dean for Communications and Public Affairs Thoko Moyo.

Our guest for this episode, Sheila Jasanoff, is the Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School and the founder and director of the Program on Science, Technology and Society.

PolicyCast is produced and engineered by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes.

For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Democracy’s uncertain prospects 10 years after the Arab Spring

Tarek Masoud, Ralph Ranalli, Susan Hughes, Thoko Moyo — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:30:00 +0000

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Associate Dean for Communications and Public Affairs Thoko Moyo.

PolicyCast is produced and engineered by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes.

For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Joe Aldy on how Joe Biden can jumpstart the global climate effort

Joseph Aldy, Thoko Moyo, Ralph Ranalli, Susan Hughes — Tue, 8 Dec 2020 14:00:00 +0000

Joseph Aldy, an economist and professor of the practice of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, has seen this all before. A climate in crisis. A big economic downturn. A transition from a Republican administration to a new Democratic president looking to drastically change the country’s direction.

Twelve years ago, Aldy was a member of then-President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team as it took over from the George W. Bush administration. He says the challenges today are much the same—figuring out how to push aggressive measures to stave off the worst effects of climate change while bringing back lost jobs and jump-starting a stalled economy. Some of those Obama policies worked, he says, particularly investments in wind and solar subsidies that have now made clean energy sources competitive on price with dirty ones like coal.

But comparisons only go so far. Aldy says in many ways President-elect Joe Biden faces problems that are even more formidable and acute: a much shorter window to transform the energy foundation of our economy, a struggling economy made even worse by a raging pandemic, and a country even more polarized and in ideological conflict with itself — including a US Senate that’s still up for grabs and an outgoing president who is refusing to acknowledge that he’s even lost.

Professor Aldy and host Thoko Moyo explore those challenges and discuss how the new administration can respond—and maybe even succeed.

Joseph Aldy is a Harvard Kennedy School professor of the practice of public policy, a university fellow at Resources for the Future, a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also the faculty fhair for the Regulatory Policy Program at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. His research focuses on climate change policy, energy policy, and regulatory policy.

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Associate Dean for Communications and Public Affairs Thoko Moyo.

PolicyCast is produced and engineered by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes.

For more information please visit our website.

Young voters ascendant: How a generational shift won the 2020 election and could remake American politics

Marshall Ganz, Mark Gearan, Thoko Moyo — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 15:21:10 +0000

In 2019, the 72-million strong Millennial generation (23-to-38-year-olds) quietly surpassed the Baby Boomers as America’s largest living generational cohort. In the 2020 election, they made their voices heard with a roar.

Not only did younger voters—and particularly younger voters of color—turn out to vote and organize for candidates in record numbers, they also provided the margin of victory for Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in key states like Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.

Mark Gearan is director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. He was also director of the Peace Corps under President Bill Clinton, as well as White House deputy chief of staff, communications director, and Vice Presidential Campaign Manager for the Clinton/Gore ticket in 1992. He is also the former president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Marshall Ganz is the Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at HKS. He teaches political organizing and trains young activists from groups like March for Our Lives and the Sunrise Movement, and was himself a member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Ganz was also director of organizing for the United Farm Workers under Cesar Chavez, and was a consultant on organizing and voter turnout for the political campaigns of Nancy Pelosi, Alan Cranston, Jerry Brown, and others.

PolicyCast is hosted by Harvard Kennedy School Associate Dean of Communications and Public Affairs Thoko Moyo.

The podcast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School. It is produced and engineered by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes.

For more information and past episodes, please visit: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/more/policycast

If you have comment or a suggestion, please email us: policycastatharvarddotHKSdotEdu

Garbage in, garbage out: Dissecting the disinformation that clouds our decisions

Matthew Baum, Joan Donovan, Thoko Moyo — Tue, 3 Nov 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Some choices are easy. Some are hard. Some are momentous, which is how many people are describing today’s US national election. Yet all of the choices we make have one thing in common: Our decisions are only as good as the information we have to base them on. And with the rise of disinformation, misinformation, media manipulation, and social media bubbles, we’re finding it increasingly hard to know what information to trust and to feel confident in the decisions we make.

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Matthew Baum and Joan Donovan, the research director for the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, have been studying disinformation and the people who create it since the 2016 election and the time when the term “fake news” first entered the political conversation. Baum and Donovan have been building a community of researchers and creating tools to help understand disinformation, where it comes from, and — hopefully — how to make it less of a threat in the future.

Baum, the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications, held one of Harvard’s first major conferences on fake news and misinformation in early 2017 on the heels of the last presidential election, when accusations flew that Republican Donald Trump’s electoral college victory was aided by disinformation campaigns and foreign interference. Donovan came to the Harvard Kennedy School in 2019 and is now director of the Technology and Social Change Project at Shorenstein. They launched the nation’s first scholarly journal on fake news, the HKS Misinformation Review, earlier this year.

PolicyCast is hosted by Thoko Moyo, the Associate Dean for Communications and Public Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.

The podcast is produced and edited by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes.

The end of Us versus Them policing: The tough road ahead for reform

Thoko Moyo, Yanilda González, Sandra Susan Smith — Mon, 5 Oct 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Recent polls show a majority of Americans say we need major changes to how police enforce the law and provide public safety. Policymakers and political leaders—under pressure from the Defund and Black Lives Matter movements after high police killings of Black people like Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and numerous others—are now considering a variety of measures to curb police brutality. But Harvard Kennedy School faculty members Sandra Susan Smith, the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice, and Assistant Professor of Public Policy Yanilda González say history has shown that reforming the police is much easier said than done.

In her studies of policing in Latin America, González says authoritarian police forces have been able to block or roll back reforms even in otherwise democratic countries. In countries with high levels of polarization and inequality, including the U.S., she says, police are often given the role of protecting “us”—the dominant group—from “them.”

Smith, the new director of the Kennedy School’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, says studies show that many widely-proposed reforms simply have not been effective in reducing police brutality. Measures like anti-bias training, body cameras, and diversity hiring fail, she says, because they put the pressure on individual officers to change deeply-entrenched systemic behavior.

So if those things won’t work, what will?

If the Electoral College is a racist relic, why has it endured?

Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli, Thoko Moyo, Alexander Keyssar — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 15:34:31 +0000

This is the first episode of PolicyCast's 2020-2021 season.

Alexander Keyssar is the Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. An historian by training, he specializes in the exploration of historical problems that have contemporary policy implications.

In this episode, Professor Keyssar discusses his new book: "Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?" (Harvard University Press, 2020) He is also the author of the widely-read book: "The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States" (Basic Books, 2000), for which he was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

PolicyCast is hosted by Thoko Moyo, the associate dean for communications at Harvard Kennedy School.

The podcast is produced and engineered by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes.

Championing human rights amid disease and discrimination

Thoko Moyo, Jacqueline Bhabha, Ralph Ranalli, Susan Hughes, Mathias Risse — Wed, 1 Jul 2020 11:00:07 +0000

Joining PolicyCast and host Thoko Moyo for this episode are Kennedy School Professors Mathias Risse and Jacqueline Bhabha of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Professor Risse is faculty director of the Carr Center and his work focuses on global justice and the intersections of human rights, the climate crisis, inequality, and technology. He is also the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Administration at Harvard Kennedy School.

Professor Bhabha is an expert in public health — particularly involving children and vulnerable populations — as well as an internationally-known human rights lawyer. She is FXB Director of Research, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health and the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School.

To read more about the Carr Center’s work, please visit their website.

PolicyCast is hosted by Harvard Kennedy School Associate Dean of Communications Thoko Moyo. The show is produced by Ralph Ranalli and Susan Hughes.

A historic crossroads for systemic racism and policing in America

Khalil Muhammad, Thoko Moyo, Erica Chenoweth — Mon, 8 Jun 2020 18:00:17 +0000

For more information, please visit:

The Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability Project at the Shorenstein Center.

The Nonviolent Action Lab at the Carr Center.

No quick or easy answers for the pandemic's toll on developing economies

Thoko Moyo, Ralph Ranalli, Susan Hughes — Mon, 11 May 2020 19:00:22 +0000

Ricardo Hausmann, the founder and director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Growth Lab, is helping developing countries around the globe create capacity to model the coronavirus pandemic and develop economic and epidemiological responses.

The Growth Lab COVID-19 Task Force explores the macroeconomic and fiscal implications of the pandemic and offers strategic guidance on policy decisions for collaborating nations including Albania, Ethiopia, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Namibia, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia.

For more about this effort, Growth Lab COVID-19 Task Force, please visit the Growth Lab COVID-19 Task Force home page.

Under Hausmann’s leadership, the Growth Lab, which is based in the Center for International Development, has grown into one of the world’s most well regarded and influential hubs for research on international development. Hausmann has served as principal investigator for more than 50 research initiatives in nearly 30 countries and is the Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School.

When discrimination and a pandemic collide

Cornell Brooks, Susan Hughes, Thoko Moyo, Ralph Ranalli — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 11:00:31 +0000

First there was the shock of realizing that the COVID-19 pandemic would be widespread and lengthy. Now issues of race, equity, and the coronavirus are quickly coming to the fore, as data pours in showing how the virus is hitting minority communities the hardest.

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Cornell Brooks says historic systemic discrimination, lack of access to healthcare and healthy food, housing and employment disparities, and other issues have left communities of color uniquely vulnerable.

Discrimination means people in communities of color can’t follow many recommended individual actions for the pandemic including staying at home, working from home, stocking up on groceries, drive-through testing, and social distancing. Low-income “essential” workers, he says, have effectively become human buffers against the coronavirus for people with higher incomes.

There are also moral implications to unequal distribution of risk, including the spread of COVID-19 in prisons and in jails where people accused of crimes are waiting to be tried. A pandemic spreading in these “petri dish” situations means exposing potentially-innocent people to what amounts to a death sentence, he says, not to mention the exposure facing correctional officers and staff.

Brooks also says the pandemic is also causing widespread disruption in the current election season, and that it has the potential to exacerbate the current trend toward minority disenfranchisement, both purposeful and unanticipated. He says the recent election debacle in Wisconsin, where more than 90% of polling places in some cities were closed and voters were forced to break social distancing in order to participate in the democratic process, was a warning to the country about how the pandemic endangers both democracy and lives.

“We are ill-prepared for November,” he says. “It's not enough for us to say we are in the midst of a pandemic and we can only concern ourselves with face masks and ventilators. We also have to be concerned about ballot boxes and polling places.”

After the pandemic is over and life starts returning to normal, Brooks says American will need to learn from the experience and make long-overdue societal shifts to keep the impact of events like this from being so severe and unevenly distributed the next time.

Cornell Brooks is the Hauser Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit Organizations and Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice. is also Director of the William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at the School’s Center for Public Leadership

PolicyCast is hosted by Harvard Kennedy School Associate Dean for Communications and Public Affairs Thoko Moyo. It is produced by Ralph Ranalli and Susan Hughes.

Managing crisis without resources: Developing nations brace for Coronavirus

Thoko Moyo, Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli — Wed, 1 Apr 2020 13:00:09 +0000

Visit the Building State Capability program's “Public Leadership Through Crisis” blog.

All PolicyCast episodes are now being recorded remotely.

This episode was recorded on March 27, 2020 using SquadCast.

When bad things happen to everybody: Crisis management in a chaotic world

Susan Hughes, Ralph Ranalli — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 12:00:10 +0000

Responding to a threatening virus is nothing new to HKS Senior Lecturer Juliette Kayyem, who played a major role in managing the US response to the H1N1 virus pandemic in 2009 as an official in the Obama administration.

But now as the COVID-19 coronavirus has spread from Asia to Europe and the Middle East and threatens to reach pandemic status, Kayyem says globalization and other factors have changed the nature of crises humanity is facing—and that governments and crisis managers need to adapt.

“The nature of the crises we’re facing on a global scale is that they are very hard to limit,” she says. “They're very hard to contain and their impact is going to be felt across borders, across geographies, and across chain of commands.”

Kayyem tells PolicyCast host Thoko Moyo that there is already a well-established playbook for responding to a local, regional, or even a global crisis. But planning ahead for a so-called “black swan” event—the kind of low-probability, high-consequence crisis that has the potential to change the course of history—is often complicated by wildcards such as irrational fears, misinformation and disinformation, and politics.

In the world of disaster preparedness and response, she says, measuring success sometimes means being happy that things could have been worse.

“It's not rainbows and unicorns,” she says. “In my world, you're already at the bad thing happening. And if you're lucky, maybe you can stop it.”

Juliette Kayyem is the Belfer Senior Lecturer in International Security at Harvard Kennedy School, a security consultant, entrepreneur, and the author of the book “Security Mom: My Life Protecting the Home and Homeland.”

Post-expert democracy: Why nobody trusts elites anymore

Ralph Ranalli, Susan Hughes — Mon, 3 Feb 2020 12:00:03 +0000

Democratic governance expert Archon Fung says that since 2016 we have entered a political dramatically different from the previous 35 years. He calls it a period of “wide aperture, low deference Democracy.”

In simplest terms, it’s an era when a much wider range of ideas and potential policies are being debated and when traditional leaders in politics, media, academia, and culture are increasingly being questioned, pushed aside, and ignored by a distrustful public.

And he says the fate of those leaders and elites is significantly of their own making, because they have supported self-interested policies that have resulted in the largest levels of economic inequality since the Gilded Age and a government that is responsive to the wealthy but not to ordinary citizens.

“The growing of the pie has not been even at all,” Professor Fung tells PolicyCast host Thoko Moyo. “And that causes some significant dissatisfaction in the institutions that are supposed to govern.”

Professor Fung says it’s too early to say whether this era marks our democracy’s demise in favor of authoritarianism, its rebirth as something better, or a state of purgatory where things stay in this “crazy, anxious state for a while.” Some first steps toward avoiding that fate and creating what he calls a “deeper democracy,” he says, include popular mobilization and steps to “create experts and leaders we can really believe in and find trustworthy.”

Professor Fung is based at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and his research explores policies, practices, and institutions that help make democracy work better.

PolicyCast is produced by Ralph Ranalli and Susan Hughes

The climate crisis was caused by economics, can economics be part of the solution?

Ralph Ranalli, Thoko Moyo, Robert Stavins, Susan Hughes — Mon, 6 Jan 2020 12:00:02 +0000

The New York Times called it one of the worst outcomes in a quarter-century of climate negotiations. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said the international community "lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis” at the recent UN Climate Summit in Madrid.

But Harvard Kennedy School Professor Robert Stavins says global climate negotiators still accomplished something important last month at the COP25 conference—because of what they didn't do. Instead of approving lax rules full of loopholes that big polluting countries like Brazil and Australia were, negotiators held the line and pushed off a decision until next year's meeting in Scotland.

Stavins, the A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy & Economic Development and director of both the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements and the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, tells host Thoko Moyo that getting workable economic solutions in place to combat the climate crisis is essential, because fundamentally the crisis was caused by economic activity. Stavins says his latest research shows that both carbon tax and cap-and-trade schemes can work, as long as they are well-designed.

For more on Professor Stavins' thoughts on the COP25 summit and his research, check out his blog: An Economic View of the Environment.

PolicyCast is produced by Ralph Ranalli and Susan Hughes.

Redistricting and democracy: Can we draw the line on gerrymandering?

Harvard Kennedy School — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 12:00:00 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor of Public Policy Benjamin Schneer says the drawing of electoral districts is a complex and partisan process that often results in politicians picking their voters instead of the other way around. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Schneer's work explores political representation, elections, and ways to mitigate forces that distort the ability of citizens to communicate their desires to government. His recent research has focused on redistricting, the political process of redrawing state legislative and Congressional districts every 10 years following a Census (the next one will take place in 2020).

Schneer says the recent work by an independent redistricting commission in Arizona has shown that it is possible to make fair and competitive legislative districts without the Gerrymandering that can distort legislative democracy. But the fact that the Arizona process ended up being litigated in from of the US Supreme Court—twice—shows that the debate is heated and ongoing.

Schneer says his current project is working on systems that will allow for fairer results even in states where independent redistricting commissions aren’t politically feasible.

The precarious fate of the African Century

Harvard Kennedy School — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 12:00:00 +0000

A short decade from now, Africa will have the youngest workforce in an aging world and the potential to become a spectacular economic success story. Or it could become home to the overwhelming majority of the world’s poor.

“By 2030 or so, we'll probably need to create about 11 million jobs a year,” says Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, one of the world's leading development economists. “That’s a tall order.”

But not an impossible one, says Okonjo-Iweala, a former managing director of the World Bank and Finance Minister of Nigeria. While the window for Africa to become a job-creating manufacturing powerhouse like the so-called “Asian Tiger” countries, she says there is still the potential that “smokestack-less” industries such as services and technology that are booming in countries like Rwanda could help create an economic African Lion.

Okonjo-Iweala says African policymakers must learn the lessons of the continent’s most recent boom in order to ensure a prosperous future. For the first 15 years of the 21st century, African economies as a group grew annually by four to six percent, at times outpacing the average global growth rate. African policymakers helped through better macroeconomic management of things like exchange rates, inflation, and negotiating down the continents huge debt burden.

But falling commodity prices over the past several years expose a weakness in that success, stalling growth, and now African policymakers must push further to support entrepreneurs by investing in infrastructure and education and cutting the bureaucratic red tape that can stifle innovation.

Okonjo-Iweala spoke with PolicyCast host Thoko Moyo after a recent visit to Harvard Kennedy School to deliver the Robert S. McNamara Lecture on War and Peace.

For more on this topic, check out Okonjo-Iweala’s lecture, which sponsored by the Institute of Politics and titled “The Changing Face of Povery: Can Africa Surprise the World?”

Mightier than the sword: The unexpected effectiveness of nonviolent resistance

Harvard Kennedy School — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 12:00:00 +0000

Activists from around the world reach out to Harvard Kennedy School Professor Erica Chenoweth on an almost daily basis. And they mostly ask the same question: How can we fight authoritarianism — and the often-brutal repression that comes with it — without resorting to violence ourselves? They turn to her because her groundbreaking research has shown that, when done the right way, nonviolent civil resistance is actually more effective at driving political change than taking up arms.

Chenoweth is the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the author of the forthcoming book: “Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

To read more about Professor Chenoweth and her work, check out the latest issue of Harvard Kennedy School Magazine.

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/advocacy-social-movements/paths-resistance-erica-chenoweths-research

David Deming on why free college is a good investment

Harvard Kennedy School — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 11:00:00 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Professor David Deming, whose research focuses on the economics of education, recently wrote a New York Times op-ed titled “Tuition-free College Could Cost Less Than You Think.” Making college education widely affordable in the U.S. is vital, Deming says, because a degree will likely be a prerequisite for the labor market of the not-too-distant future.

Professor Deming recently sat down with PolicyCast host Thoko Moyo to discuss not just how to lower college costs, but also how to improve educational quality and what that could mean for students across the socioeconomic spectrum. In addition to being a professor at HKS and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Deming is also the new faculty director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at HKS and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He recently won the David Kershaw Prize, which is given to scholars under the age of 40 who have made distinguished contribution to the field of public policy and management.

To learn more about the Malcolm Wiener Center, please visit: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/wiener

PolicyCast is hosted by Harvard Kennedy School Associate Dean of Communications Thoko Moyo. The show is produced by Ralph Ranalli and Susan Hughes.

Fixing ourselves is hard: Iris Bohnet on solving bias in the workplace

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 11:00:00 +0000

Iris Bohnet is a behavioral economist, a leading researcher into gender bias, and Harvard Kennedy School's academic dean. She’s got some tough advice for the world’s biggest governments, corporations, and organizations: Stop wasting money on traditional diversity training programs, because they don’t work. But Dean Bohnet tells host Thoko Moyo that there's also good news: By focusing on fixing processes rather than people, we can create workarounds that solve for our stubborn biases.

Bohnet is also co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program at HKS and her research combines insights from economics and psychology to improve decision-making in organizations and society, primarily with a gender or cross-cultural perspective. She is the author of the award-winning book What Works: Gender Equality by Design, and was named one of the "Most Influential People in Gender Policy" by apolitical in 2018 and 2019.

For more about the Women and Policy Policy Program (WAPPP), please visit: https://wappp.hks.harvard.edu/.

PolicyCast is hosted by Harvard Kennedy School Associate Dean of Communications Thoko Moyo. The show is produced by Ralph Ranalli and Susan Hughes.

Ambassador Wendy Sherman on high-stakes negotiation and authentic leadership

Harvard Kennedy School — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 11:00:00 +0000

Ambassador Wendy Sherman has been at the table for some of the most challenging negotiations in recent history. She’s held talks with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and sparred with Iranian officials to hammer out the 2015 nuclear weapons deal.

Now she’s brought what she’s learned about authentic leadership, diplomacy, and succeeding as a woman in a male-dominated field to a new book, which is titled “Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power and Persistence”

Ambassador Sherman is a professor of the practice of public leadership, director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She is also a senior counselor at Albright Stonebridge Group and former U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs.

For more about the Center for Public Leadership, please visit https://cpl.hks.harvard.edu/.

PolicyCast is hosted by Harvard Kennedy School Associate Dean of Communications Thoko Moyo. The show is produced by Ralph Ranalli and Susan Hughes.

Robot car revolution: Using policy to manage the autonomous vehicle future

Harvard Kennedy School — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 11:00:00 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School Lecturer Mark Fagan is spearheading the Autonomous Vehicles Policy Initiative at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, helping to ensure government officials can successfully navigate the impending robot car revolution. Mark talks with host Thoko Moyo about how AVs could have disruptive impacts on traffic safety and congestion, public transit, jobs, and even data privacy.

The Autonomous Vehicles Policy Initiative consults with stakeholders both inside and outside of the United States. Through research, teaching, and work with decision makers in administrations, with technologists and business leaders from AV companies and startups, and with other practicing professionals from the autonomous vehicles space, the initiative seeks to improve policymakers’ capacity to deal with this fast-emerging technology. They find actionable policy and strategy options to help create infrastructure that is livable for humans and AVs, and that helps mitigate the social consequences of the AV revolution.

For more on the initiative, please visit: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/taubman/programs-research/autonomous-vehicles-policy-initiative

PolicyCast is hosted by Harvard Kennedy School Associate Dean of Communications Thoko Moyo. The show is produced by Ralph Ranalli and Susan Hughes.

PolicyCast is back!

Harvard Kennedy School — Sat, 14 Sep 2019 11:30:00 +0000

Harvard Kennedy School's PolicyCast is back! Enjoy this preview of our relaunch with host Thoko Moyo of upcoming episodes featuring autonomous vehicles expert Mark Fagan, Center for Public Leadership Director Ambassador Wendy Sherman, and Professor Erica Chenoweth, who has conducted groundbreaking research on the effectiveness of nonviolent civil movements.

Our relaunch starts Monday with Harvard Kennedy School Lecturer in Public Policy Mark Fagan, who is leading the Autonomous Vehicles Policy Initiative at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government. The initiative is working to help local governments prepare for the impacts of driverless cars, which are already being field-tested across the U.S. and which will could have major impacts on traffic congestion, public transit ridership, public safety, and even data privacy.

Future episodes will feature conversations with HKS professors, researchers, and other experts about public policy, public leadership, politics, media, international relations, and more.

PolicyCast is hosted by Harvard Kennedy School Associate Dean of Communications Thoko Moyo. The show is produced by Ralph Ranalli and Susan Hughes.

201 Predicting the Future Through Know-How

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 30 May 2018 04:00:00 +0000

Professor Ricardo Hausmann, director of the Kennedy School’s Center for International Development, and Tim Cheston, a research fellow with the center’s Growth Lab, explain how they leveraged data from the Atlas of Economic Complexity to assess the knowhow of more than 130 countries and predict their economic growth over the next eight years.

Learn more about CID's new growth predictions: http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/rankings/growth-projections/

200 Securing Elections Against Cyber Threats

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 23 May 2018 04:00:00 +0000

Robby Mook, co-director of the Defending Digital Democracy Initiative and former campaign manager to Hillary Clinton, explains why he and fellow co-directors Matt Rhoades (Romney 2012) and Eric Rosenbach (Belfer Center) came together to create a series of “playbooks” for political campaigns and election officials to help secure against cyber security threats.

Read more about D3P at https://www.belfercenter.org/D3P

199 How History Shapes Our Political Beliefs

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 16 May 2018 04:01:00 +0000

HKS Professor Maya Sen, co-author of the new book “Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics,” explains how she and her colleagues were able to pinpoint the extent to which slavery continues to affect political beliefs to this day.

198 Negotiating with the North: The Political Stakes

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 9 May 2018 04:00:00 +0000

Lecturer John Park, director of the Kennedy School’s Korea Working Group, lays out the stakes for both North and South Korea, as well as China and the United States, as they enter into negotiations over denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

197 Negotiating with the North: Talks and Tactics

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 2 May 2018 04:00:00 +0000

In the first part of an ongoing series on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Dr. Gary Samore, the Belfer Center’s executive director for research, describes the history of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development and subsequent international efforts to dismantle it, including a landmark 1994 agreement which he helped negotiate. He details the negotiating tactics employed by North Korea in the past, expresses skepticism over the possibility of a complete denuclearization, and weighs in on the Trump Administration’s negotiating strategy.

196 Europe's Evolving Stance on Russia

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 04:00:00 +0000

Cathryn Clüver-Ashbrook, executive director of both the Future of Diplomacy Project and the Project on Trans-Atlantic and European Relations out of the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, describes the changing nature of relations between Europe and Russia, providing historical context, examining contemporary factors such as the Syrian civil war and Russian election meddling, and describing how the new Project on Trans-Atlantic and European Relations, chaired by HKS Professor Nicholas Burns, seeks to find solutions to the emerging challenges.

195 Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Megaphone from the Diaspora

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 04:01:00 +0000

Hamilton Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, on campus to kick off the America Adelante Conference hosted by the Center for Public Leadership, discusses his advocacy for Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, how he thinks about using his celebrity to effect change, and the falling barriers to minority representation in film and television.

194 Piketty’s Prescription for Wealth Inequality

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 4 Apr 2018 04:01:00 +0000

Economist Thomas Piketty details the policies he believes will be key to overcoming the wealth inequality illustrated in his seminal 2013 book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” He also discusses the 2018 World Inequality Report, which builds on and updates the data sets first featured in “Capital,” except on a global scale thanks to the involvement of more than one hundred economists around the world. Piketty was on campus to deliver the Wiener Center’s inaugural Stone Lecture on Economic Inequality.

193 Data Dystopia: Online Ads and Elections

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 17:36:00 +0000

Shorenstein Fellow Dipayan Ghosh joins us again for part two of our extended interview on data privacy, digital advertising, and their effect on our democracies. In this episode, Ghosh moves beyond the Cambridge Analytica scandal to focus on publically available, data-driven advertising tools and how they can be leveraged by politicians and nefarious agents alike to manipulate voters.

192 Data Dystopia: Privacy and Regulation

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 17:35:00 +0000

As the Cambridge Analytica scandal continues to unfold, Joan Shorenstein Fellow Dipayan Ghosh, who recently left Facebook's Privacy and Public Policy team, joins us for a double-header on data privacy, digital advertising, and their effect on our democracies. In this episode, Ghosh walks through the myriad ways companies like Facebook and Google collect and leverage data to target users, increase engagement, and ultimately sell advertising. He then discusses the challenges inherent in any effort to regulate the industry.

191 The Equal Rights Amendment

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 21 Mar 2018 04:00:00 +0000

Professor Jane Mansbridge explains why efforts to pass an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution have failed in the past, but could now have a real shot at ratification.

190 How Cities are Thriving in a Populist Era

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 04:00:00 +0000

Bruce Katz explains what makes cities different from state and national governments, and why that difference has allowed them to thrive while populism and partisanship grip state and national governments. Using Boston, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and Copenhagen as examples, Katz illustrates how the unique network effects of cities lead to innovative solutions to public problems. Katz was on campus as a guest of both the Center for Public Leadership and Ash Center.

189 Bringing Economics to the People

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 7 Mar 2018 05:00:00 +0000

Tufts Professor Michael Klein explains how he’s using http://www.econofact.org to better inform the broader public about economics. The non-partisan publication features easily-digestible briefs on topical economic issues authored by a network of economists around the country, including HKS Professors David Deming, Jeffrey Frankel, and Mark Shepard.

188 New Orleans' Confederate Monuments

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 05:01:00 +0000

Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans, a Hauser Visiting Leader at the Center for Public Leadership, describes the years-long process involved with removing four confederate monuments in New Orleans, including statues of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.

187 Reinventing City Government

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 05:00:00 +0000

HKS Prof. Stephen Goldsmith says technology is enabling cities to radically change the way they operate, and both city workers and citizens stand to benefit. He describes how governments will shed the strict bureaucracies of the 20th century in favor of a distributed model where the city acts as a platform and service providers can be evaluated by outcomes. Goldsmith is the director of the Innovations in American Government Program out of the Kennedy School’s Ash Center, and recently co-authored, alongside Neil Kleiman, the book “A New City O/S - The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Governance.”

186 Is Social Media Good For Democracy?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 05:00:00 +0000

Adam Conner, a spring 2018 fellow at the Institute of Politics, digs into the nuance behind the question many are asking about platforms like Facebook and Twitter, namely: are they good for democracy?

185 Turning a Personal Loss into Policy Action on Opioids

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 7 Feb 2018 16:01:00 +0000

Admiral James “Sandy” Winnefeld, a non-resident senior fellow at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, knows firsthand the damage inflicted by the ongoing opioid crisis. After losing his son to addiction in late 2017, he has committed himself to finding solutions to the seemingly intractable public health dilemma. He discusses his recently-launched foundation Stop the Addiction Fatality Epidemic (SAFE) and the six strategies they are pursuing from awareness to prevention to treatment.

184 Lessons Learned as a Political Prisoner in Venezuela

Harvard Kennedy School — Thu, 1 Feb 2018 05:01:00 +0000

Francisco Marquez Lara MPP 2012 describes his experience as a political prisoner in his home country of Venezuela. He describes what drove him to pursue his political advocacy despite the inherent risks, what his experience was like in captivity, what he learned from the ordeal, and what motivates him to continue his advocacy in exile. Marquez is the Executive Director of Vision Democratica Foundation and a fellow at the Ash Center’s Democracy in Hard Places Initiative.

183 Stop Calling It Fake News

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 05:01:00 +0000

The Shorenstein Center’s Claire Wardle and journalist Hossein Derakhshan explain how information disorder has taken the world by storm, breaking down how it’s created, produced, and distributed, paying particular attention to the ways in which social media has exacerbated the problem, and making the case that the term F*** News isn’t just inaccurate, but actively harmful to democratic institutions.

Wardle, the research director for the Shorenstein Center’s First Draft News project, and Derakhshan are co-authors of Information Disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policymaking.

182 The Mueller Investigation

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 05:01:00 +0000

HKS Lecturer Juliette Kayyem provides context to the endless stream of news regarding Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. In addition to giving a brief on what we now know, Kayyem also discusses the potential ramifications if President Trump were to attempt to fire Mueller in a move reminiscent of Nixon’s infamous Saturday Night Massacre.

181 Another Round on Tax Reform

Harvard Kennedy School — Thu, 7 Dec 2017 08:20:00 +0000

With tax reform legislation now in conference committee having cleared both the U.S. House and Senate, HKS Professor Jason Furman returns with an update on where things stand. He addresses the economic growth the bill’s proponents have claimed; why provisions dealing with “pass-through corporations” have raised questions from economists on both sides of the aisle; how the elimination of the State And Local Tax (SALT) deduction might impact state government finances; why taxing university endowments could hurt U.S. competitiveness; the impact of both bills’ large corporate tax rate cuts; and the parts of the bill that he sees as positive steps.

180 A State Department in Crisis

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 05:00:00 +0000

HKS Professor Nicholas Burns sounds the alarm about what he sees as a deliberate attempt to dismantle the US State Department and Foreign Service.

179 Talking Politics over Turkey

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 22 Nov 2017 05:01:00 +0000

HKS Senior Lecturer Jeff Seglin offers advice and strategies on how to handle conversations about politics with family and friends who you may not see eye to eye with. And as an added bonus, he shares his family recipe for turkey stuffing.

178 Kansas City’s Embrace of Innovation

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 15:00:00 +0000

Kansas City Mayor Sly James explains why city governments have become models for policy innovation and good governance while federal and state governments continue to be mired in partisan gridlock. He speaks to the value of data-driven decision making, as well as his experience enticing Google to pilot their high speed internet service in Kansas City, and the ongoing attempts to attract Amazon’s 2nd headquarters. James is a Fall 2017 Visiting Fellow at both the Institute of Politics and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

177 Exploring the Atlas of Economic Complexity

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 8 Nov 2017 05:01:00 +0000

HKS Professor Ricardo Hausmann, the director of the Kennedy School’s Center for International Development, explains the concept of economic complexity and why it has become a reliable predictor of future economic growth. He also discusses the Atlas of Economic Complexity, an interactive website that could help entrepreneurs and policymakers see where a particular country’s economy is heading.

This interview was originally recorded in 2013.

176 Reason for Doubt on Tax Reform

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 1 Nov 2017 04:04:00 +0000

HKS Professor Jason Furman speaks with host Matt Cadwallader about the Trump administration’s tax reform proposal, expressing serious doubts about some of the claims made by the Council of Economic Advisors, a White House agency he previously presided over as chairman from 2013 to early 2017. Among the issues he digs into are simplifying the tax code; increasing the standard deduction for the middle class; how cutting the corporate tax would affect workers’ wages; repatriation of money held by foreign subsidiaries of US corporations; why it’s important that tax cuts be revenue neutral; and where he and House Speaker Paul Ryan would agree on tax reform.

175 CEO to Interior Secretary

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 04:03:00 +0000

Former US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, currently a Fall 2017 Fellow at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, recounts her experiences as a private sector executive and how they shaped her attitude towards environmental stewardship, and ultimately prepared her for her role in President Obama’s cabinet.

174 Stress: A Surgeon General's Warning

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 07:30:00 +0000

Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and former Doctors for America CEO Alice Chen dive into the state of healthcare in the United States, from the Trump administration’s recent moves to end cost-sharing subsidies, to finding ways to cut costs by focusing efforts on prevention. They also discuss the oft-neglected impact of loneliness and stress on health. Dr. Chen and Vice Admiral Murthy were on campus as guests of the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership.

173 Xi Jinping’s Dreams for China

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 04:01:00 +0000

Professor Tony Saich, director of the Kennedy School's Ash Center, lays out the challenges and tensions China faces just before the Communist Party gathers to choose its leadership at the 19th Party Congress, and how President Xi Jinping hopes to overcome them.

171 Neutering Net Neutrality

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 04:00:00 +0000

As Chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler reclassified broadband as a public utility, to ensure that internet service providers would continue to treat all data equally. Now, his successor is trying to undo those efforts, and he’s not happy about it. Wheeler is currently a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, as well as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School.

170 The Public Protector

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 04:02:00 +0000

As South Africa’s Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela investigated and exposed corruption at the highest levels of government. Now she’s a fellow at the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative and is sharing her experience and insights on what it takes to hold powerful public officials accountable.

169 Race and Hate

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 07:00:00 +0000

The bloody events that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia this summer shocked the national conscience, leaving many to wonder how such a thing could take place in modern America. In this week’s roundtable discussion, Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Lecturer Robert Livingston, and IOP Fall 2017 Fellow Karen Finney put Charlottesville into a broader historical, psychological, and economic context.

168 North Korea's Strategy

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 6 Sep 2017 06:50:00 +0000

Dr. John Park, the director of the Korea Working Group at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, digs into the political and economic forces driving Kim Jong-un’s continued provocations; the difficulty China faces in pressuring their longtime ally to give up its nuclear ambitions; and how the calculus has changed for officials in Washington.

167 Ban Ki-moon on Global Leadership

Harvard Kennedy School — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 04:31:00 +0000

For the last few months, former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been working with students and faculty at HKS on the deeply complex problems he grappled with during his decade-long tenure as the world's top diplomat.

In this episode, Ban discusses the experiences that drove him to pursue public service as a young man - including a high school encounter with John F. Kennedy; the skillset that sets effective world leaders apart; the oft-overlooked connection between climate change and an increase in violent conflict; his reaction to the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement; and his advice for young people who are eager to make the world better and more prosperous.

Ban is currently at HKS as an Angelopolous Global Public Leaders Fellow.

166 Where Economists Go Wrong

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 7 Jun 2017 09:43:00 +0000

Prof. Dani Rodrik has never been shy about bucking conventional wisdom, and many of his insights, often deemed unorthodox at their inception, now seem prescient. Nowhere is that more clear than in his warning, twenty years ago, that unrestricted globalization could have a backlash effect, straining the fundamental ideals that support democratic governance. In this episode, Rodrik explains some of his more notable insights, and discusses his new book, which takes aim at both economists and their detractors, seeking a middle ground where academic rigor can be effectively applied in the real world.

165 The Clean Power Plan

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 24 May 2017 17:11:00 +0000

Former EPA Chief Gina McCarthy explains how she was able to get utility companies, the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, on board with regulations to fight global climate change. The resulting Clean Power Plan has helped bring emissions from US electricity production to their lowest level since 1993. She also discusses the EPA’s future under Scott Pruitt, her successor in the Trump administration, and the risks of disregarding science as a means for formulating policy.

164 The Causes and Consequences of Inequality

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 17 May 2017 02:00:00 +0000

HKS and HGSE Professor David Deming delves into the complicated causes and consequences of inequality, discusses why jobs lost from traditional sectors like manufacturing aren’t likely to return, and explains his belief in education as an important piece of the solution.

163 Diversity in the Newsroom

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 10 May 2017 01:00:00 +0000

Farai Chideya has covered every presidential election since 1996, but after last year’s raucous campaign, she wondered how how political campaign coverage is influenced by the gender and racial makeup of our political press. This spring she joined the Shorenstein Center as a Joan Shorenstein Fellow to take a closer look at the question, but was surprised by the number of newsrooms that were deeply reluctant to engage on the subject.

162 The French Presidential Election

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 3 May 2017 14:07:00 +0000

After a series of upset victories for right-wing populist movements around the globe, the French presidential election has been subject to close international scrutiny. But the narratives that animate that scrutiny often reflect international uncertainty over the stability of the post-war liberal world order, rather than the complicated politics that have driven France over the last few years. As Tip O’Neill famously said, all politics is local.

In this episode, our three experts discuss the shifting political landscape in France and Europe, and give context to anyone watching from abroad. The roundtable features HKS Adjunct Professor Muriel Rouyer, Ash Center Senior Visiting Fellow Yves Sintomer, and Future of Diplomacy Project Executive Director Cathryn Cluver.

161 Confirming Gorsuch

Harvard Kennedy School — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 13:53:00 +0000

Former New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, a visiting fellow at both the Kennedy School's Belfer Center and Institute of Politics, takes us behind the scenes of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, reflects on the value of the U.S. Senate and its infamous filibuster, and discusses the challenges facing Republicans as they try to turn their control of Congress and the White House into meaningful legislative victories.

160 How Narrative Drives Movements

Harvard Kennedy School — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 04:12:00 +0000

Senior Lecturer Marshall Ganz describes the essential role of storytelling in leadership and organizing. He explains how skilled campaigners leverage the public narrative to their advantage by appealing first to the heart, and then the mind, and cites recent examples from both sides of the aisle.

159 Geo-Engineering a Cooler Climate

Harvard Kennedy School — Tue, 4 Apr 2017 21:41:00 +0000

HKS Professor David Keith describes both the promise and peril involved with using geo-engineering to mitigate the effects of climate change. Solar radiation management (SRM) could conceivably cool the earth by placing particles in the upper atmosphere that reflect sunlight away. It's an idea that goes back as far as the Johnson administration, but has long been seen as too risky to be worth serious study. But Professor Keith says that's now changing.

The study of SRM evokes a tremendous number of questions - scientific, moral, and even psychological - all of which we touch on in this episode.

158 Public Diplomacy and the Post-Truth World

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 03:36:00 +0000

Former Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel, who recently stepped down as U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, emphasizes the value of the State Department’s public diplomacy efforts, despite signs that the Trump Administration could soon curtail them. He also discusses how journalism needs to adapt to a crowded marketplace of ideas where facts aren't always regarded as necessary.

Stengel is currently the Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center.

157 Behind the White House Podium

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 03:52:00 +0000

Josh Earnest, former White House Press Secretary during the Obama administration, offers his assessment of the Trump administration’s handling of the press, and gives a behind the scenes look at several key moments in Obama’s second term, including when ISIS overtook the Iraqi city of Mosul, the accidental killing of an American hostage in a US counterterrorism operation, and Hillary Clinton’s surprise loss on election night in 2016.

Earnest was on campus for a JFK Jr. Forum event cosponsored by the Center for Public Leadership.

156 Turning the Women’s March into a Women's Movement

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 8 Mar 2017 16:05:00 +0000

How do you turn protest into policy? Three HKS experts discuss the aftermath of the historic Women’s March on Washington this past January, and explain what needs to happen next in order to translate that activism into real policy changes. Featuring HKS Assistant Professor Leah Wright Rigueur, Women and Public Policy Program Executive Director Victoria Budson, and HKS Adjunct Lecturer Tim McCarthy.

155 Presidential Secrecy

Harvard Kennedy School — Thu, 2 Mar 2017 00:48:00 +0000

Mary Graham, Co-Director of the Transparency Policy Project at the Kennedy School’s Ash Center, discusses her book Presidents’ Secrets: The Use and Abuse of Hidden Power, which traces the evolution of secrecy in the executive branch, beginning with George Washington’s remarkably open administration, through the communist scares of the 20th century, all the way to the current president, Donald Trump.

154 The Failures of the Travel Ban

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 01:00:00 +0000

Gil Kerlikowske, the recently retired commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and current Institute of Politics fellow, discusses the breakdowns in the rollout of the Trump administration’s executive order limiting travel by citizens of seven Middle Eastern nations into the United States. Kerlikowske details the complexity involved in implementing a major policy across the country’s largest law enforcement agency, and how a lack of planning and communication ended up creating chaos after the executive order was signed.

153 Steering Clear of Nuclear Fears

Harvard Kennedy School — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 02:07:00 +0000

HKS Professor Matthew Bunn, co-principal investigator for the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom, explains how the US nuclear arsenal is managed, what the outgoing Obama administration’s $1 trillion commitment to modernization will entail, and what, if any, changes can be expected under President Trump. He also discusses the state of non-proliferation and the greatest nuclear threats the world faces today.

152 Reason for Hope

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 1 Feb 2017 08:35:00 +0000

HKS Professor Kathryn Sikkink shows how human rights efforts over the last century have largely succeeded in improving the living conditions for the vast majority of the world, and that even though the work is far from over and setbacks are inevitable, there is reason to have hope for things to continue to improve.

151 Donald Trump and Leadership

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 01:39:00 +0000

Three faculty members discuss the history of presidential leadership, how Donald Trump’s business experience will translate to the federal government, and how his relationship with a republican congress could play out. Guests include Senior Lecturer David King, chair of the Kennedy School’s Masters of Public Administration programs, Lecturer Barbara Kellerman, Founding Executive Director of the School’s Center for Public Leadership, and Professor Roger Porter, who served for more than a decade in senior economic policy positions in the White House.

150 Donald Trump and the Economy

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 02:31:00 +0000

Three HKS faculty members discuss the broad economic challenges facing President Donald Trump as he takes office, including the cumulative effects of decades of wage stagnation, rising healthcare costs, and declining economic mobility, as well as the growing challenges posed by automation and the gig economy. Featuring Dean Douglas Elmendorf, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, Professor Brigitte Madrian, a behavioral economist focused on household savings and investment behavior, and Professor David Ellwood, director of the Wiener Center for Social Policy, where he is currently focused on inequality and mobility.

This is the second in a three-part series of roundtable discussions, produced in collaboration with HKS Magazine, on the challenges facing President-elect Trump in foreign policy, economics, and leadership.

149 Donald Trump and Foreign Policy

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 4 Jan 2017 07:09:00 +0000

As Donald Trump prepares to take office, three HKS faculty members discuss the challenges he’ll face in pursuing his unique brand of politics on the world stage. Featuring former US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, former Department of Homeland Security Official Juliette Kayyem and Foreign Policy Columnist Stephen Walt.

The Challenges Faced by Human Rights Organizations

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 02:00:00 +0000

Sushma Raman, executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights and adjunct lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School, digs into the challenges facing human rights organizations on both the international and local levels and how they are rising up to meet the challenge.

How Technology Governs Us

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 05:48:14 +0000

HKS Professor Sheila Jasanoff urges us to closely consider the ways technologies have come to govern our lives, and question if unbridled technological innovation is inherently a good thing, or if it’s worth taking a step back before we make the next giant leap.

The Very Model of a Modern Surgeon General

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 7 Dec 2016 15:22:25 +0000

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy discusses the challenges posed by the growing crisis of opioid addiction in the United States, how to combat the over-prescription of painkillers, and the importance of eliminating the stigma that often surrounds addiction. He also discusses how his advocacy on public health issues will continue during the Trump administration.

Murthy was on campus thanks to the Center for Public Leadership, the Wiener Center, and the HKS Healthcare Policy Program to deliver the Seymour E. and Ruth B. Harris Lecture at the JFK Jr. Forum.

Peace Through Pragmatism

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 07:21:34 +0000

Nancy Lindborg, President of the U.S. Institute of Peace, discusses the development of practical tools that empower communities around the world to avoid violent conflict before it starts, and de-escalate where violence has already erupted.

Let's Talk Turkey

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 02:00:00 +0000

Dr. Amanda Sloat, former US State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Southern Europe and Eastern Mediterranean Affairs, explains the situation in Turkey, just a few months removed from a military coup attempt, as it grapples with stark internal political divisions, violent conflicts in neighboring Syria and Iraq, an influx of millions of refugees and increasingly tense alliances with the United States and European Union.

Veterans in the United States

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 03:00:00 +0000

Chuck Hagel, former US secretary of defense, discusses what motivated him to pursue military and public service, and examines how military service is regarded in modern American society. Secretary Hagel is at the Kennedy School as a joint visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics and Belfer Center.

The Pain is Real: The Emotional Toll of Losing an Election

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 9 Nov 2016 07:55:25 +0000

HKS Associate Professor Todd Rogers demonstrates the drastic emotional impact electoral wins and losses have on political partisans, influencing their overall happiness even more than national tragedies. He also discusses our tendency to believe in a favorable future and introduces the concept of paltering, which describes the active use of truthful statements to mislead.

Can US Elections Be Rigged?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 2 Nov 2016 01:30:00 +0000

HKS Professor Alex Keyssar offers an historical perspective to modern worries about rigged elections and weighs the prevention of voter fraud against the risk of voter suppression.

Interconnected Challenges in Latin America

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 06:02:20 +0000

Peter Quilter, a non-resident fellow at the Kennedy School’s Ash Center, details the internal state of affairs in Colombia, Venezuela, and Cuba, revealing that despite the unique nature of each country’s problems, their futures are all interconnected.

Race in America: Looking to the Past to Understand the Present

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 11:37:49 +0000

HKS Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad makes the case that modern hot-button issues surrounding race, policing and mass incarceration are fundamentally rooted in a widespread failure to educate Americans about their country’s racial history.

2016 Nobelist on Pursuing Peace in Colombia

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 21:47:29 +0000

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, recipient of the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, discusses his desire to pursue peace despite the concessions it might entail in a 2013 interview on PolicyCast. Santos had been on campus to deliver an address at the JFK Jr. Forum, sponsored by the Institute of Politics.

Telling the True Story of Human Trafficking

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 5 Oct 2016 07:00:00 +0000

HKS Lecturer Siddharth Kara of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy explains how his research into the tens of millions of girls around the world who have been forced into sexual slavery led him to Hollywood, where he wrote and produced the new feature film “Trafficked.” The film, based on true stories, follows three enslaved teens who end up in a Texas brothel after being trafficked across the globe.

Female Journalists in the Middle East

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 28 Sep 2016 08:23:56 +0000

Iranian journalist Yeganeh Rezaian, a Fall 2016 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Center, discusses the challenges she faced as a reporter in her home country, and describes the common thread that joins her experience with that of journalists, especially women, across the Middle East. She then offers advice to young reporters interested in reporting from the region.

How the Press Covers the Election

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 09:00:35 +0000

HKS Professor Thomas Patterson, author of an ongoing series of reports out of the Shorenstein Center on the media's coverage of the 2016 election cycle, discusses what he sees as troubling consequences of how the press approaches reporting on the campaign.

Madeleine Albright on Immigration, the Refugee Crisis, and Youth Activism

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 1 Jun 2016 04:30:00 +0000

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright encourages young activists to join established systems in order to learn how to drive change from within; discusses the emerging relevance of non-state actors in the international system; offers her take on a proposed wall along the US/Mexico border; and expresses her hope that Americans will welcome in more Syrian refugees.

Homeland Security’s Goldilocks Problem

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 25 May 2016 04:30:00 +0000

HKS Lecturer Juliette Kayyem, a national security expert and author of “Security Mom,” digs into the “Goldilocks” problem of security in the United States, analyzing whether the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) is worth the cost and hassle to air travellers; providing historical context to US approaches to safety and security; and explaining why national security is shaping up to become the central theme in the 2016 presidential general election, and what that means for the candidates.

The Air Force of the Future

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 18 May 2016 06:08:56 +0000

US Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James discusses the return of the Air Force's Reserve Officer Training Corps to Harvard; how remotely piloted drones have affected the United States' modern approach to warfare; whether serious issues regarding the command and control of US nuclear weapons have been adequately addressed; why the modernization of the nuclear arsenal is worth the $1 trillion it is expected to cost; and how the Air Force can foster more diversity in its ranks.

Leadership in Diplomacy

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 11 May 2016 04:30:00 +0000

Ambassador Kristie Kenney, counselor of the US State Department, gives her perspective on leadership in diplomacy, drawing on her experience as US ambassador to Ecuador, Thailand and the Philippines. She discusses what traits are most important, how she assembles her staff, why she became an avid social media user, and how technology will continue to change how the diplomatic corps operates.

One Billion Preventable Deaths

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 4 May 2016 04:30:00 +0000

Dr. Howard Koh, former Assistant Secretary for Health at the US Department of Health and Human Services and professor at both the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and the Kennedy School, counters the popular perception that the fight against tobacco has been won, stressing that every day in the United States, thousands more teenagers pick up the habit. He discusses the new frontier opened up by e-cigarettes, recent efforts across the country to raise the smoking age to 21, and new regulations that have banned smokeless tobacco in several major league baseball stadiums.

Billionaires and their Newspapers

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 04:30:00 +0000

Northeastern Professor Dan Kennedy, a spring 2016 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, describes the fates of three newspapers, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and the Orange County Register, that were bought in recent years by individuals with significant financial means but little background in journalism. He explains the differing approaches each paper has taken to find a sustainable business model, discusses how the models have impacted the quality of reporting, and interprets what other news organizations might learn from their examples.

Bridging the Chinese American Cultural Gap

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 04:30:00 +0000

Ambassador Gary Locke, the first Chinese-American to serve as US ambassador to China, reflects on how his personal and family history influenced his approach to diplomacy, both with China and with his own constituents.

Trumped Up Media Coverage

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 04:30:00 +0000

Jill Abramson, former executive editor of the New York Times and current Harvard lecturer, discusses media coverage of both sides of the 2016 presidential campaign, relating her experiences reporting on presidential races since 1976.

Does All Reporting on Sexual Violence Influence Culture in a Positive Way?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 6 Apr 2016 04:30:00 +0000

BBC Reporter Joanna Jolly, currently a Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Center, discusses her research into the aftermath of the infamous Delhi gang rape in 2012. She describes the various ways in which news outlets covered the story and how they influenced the Indian society’s response. *Warning: this episode includes graphic language and violent subjects.*

Sustainability or Prosperity? Why Not Both?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 04:30:00 +0000

HKS Professor Bill Clark describes the rapidly growing field of sustainability science, which combines a variety of disciplines in both the hard and social sciences to find paths towards a sustainable future.

How “Pay for Success” Allows Governments to Experiment Without Risk

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 23 Mar 2016 04:30:00 +0000

HKS Professor Jeffrey Liebman, Director of the Kennedy School’s Government Performance Lab, explains how Pay For Success, also known as Social Impact Bonds, allow governments to test out new social programs without risking taxpayer funds if they fail.

Balancing Cyber Security

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 04:30:00 +0000

Michael Sulmeyer, Director of the Belfer Center’s Cyber Security Project, discusses the US government’s efforts to defend against cyber threats in the context of the legal battle between the FBI and Apple over its encryption methods.

A Primer on the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 9 Mar 2016 05:30:00 +0000

HKS Professor Robert Lawrence explains what the Trans-Pacific Partnership is, how it could transform the global economy, what makes it controversial, and why its ratification has sparked a heated political discussion within both parties.

Changing Your Environment to Overcome Your Biased Mind

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 2 Mar 2016 05:30:00 +0000

HKS Professor Iris Bohnet, Director of the Women and Public Policy Program at HKS, discusses some of the lessons in her new book, “What Works: Gender Equality By Design.” Through both academic studies and anecdotes, she explains how gender equality is often prevented by unconscious biases that can’t be unlearned, but that can be diminished significantly by even small changes in the way we do things. She also details the business case for gender equality, which isn’t as straightforward as you might think.

What Do You Do When War Comes to Town?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 05:30:00 +0000

Vera Mironova, a research fellow at the Belfer Center’s International Security Program and the Woman and Public Policy Program, explains the cascading series of choices people face when war descends on their communities. Her surveys of frontline fighters in Syria and Ukraine help paint a picture of not just why they choose to fight, but also whom they fight for.

Is Art a Call to Action, or a Distraction?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 05:30:00 +0000

Eve Ensler, the Tony Award-winning author of the Vagina Monologues and a veteran activist, explains how she believes art is always political, and it’s incumbent on everyone to recognize this and stand for causes they support. She discusses her efforts to create and rally the V-Day and One Billion Rising movements, which seek to improve the lives of women around the world. Ensler was on campus for the 2015 Gleitsman International Activist Award ceremony, put on by the Center for Public Leadership.

Is Punishment the Only Response to Violence and Poverty?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 05:30:00 +0000

HKS Professor Bruce Western, Chair of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, explains how the prison population in the United States has quintupled since the 1970s and advocates for changes to the penal code to better deal with deep-rooted social problems.

1,000 Hits to the Head: Is Football a Public Health Issue?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 3 Feb 2016 05:30:00 +0000

Chris Nowinski of the Concussion Legacy Foundation makes the case that head trauma in contact sports, and football in particular, is a serious public health issue that requires action by policymakers and parents alike.

Edward Snowden: Hero or Traitor?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 05:30:00 +0000

HKS Lecturer Chris Robichaud takes us through a new case study (coauthored with Laura Winig) exploring the question of whether NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was justified in leaking classified materials exposing the breadth of the US government’s surveillance activities.

Originally published in May 2014.

Is Transparency Bad for Politics?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 05:30:00 +0000

Professor Michael Ignatieff of the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy makes the case that increased transparency in government makes it harder for politicians to find compromise by relating his experience as the leader of the opposition in the Canadian Parliament. He also laments the tendency to argue over the standing of those who make arguments on various issues, as opposed to the substance of the issues themselves.

This episode originally published in December 2014.

Somalia’s First Female President?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 13 Jan 2016 05:30:00 +0000

HKS Alumna Fadumo Dayib recounts her story growing up as a Somali refugee and explains how her life’s experience has pushed her to mount a 2016 run for president in her homeland.

This episode originally posted in March 2015.

Ensuring Electoral Integrity around the Globe

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 6 Jan 2016 05:30:00 +0000

HKS Lecturer Pippa Norris discusses her work on the Electoral Integrity Project, which assesses the veracity of elections around the globe and gives policy recommendations on how to ensure free and fair voting.

This episode was originally published on December 3, 2014.

The Criminal Injustice System

Harvard Kennedy School — Tue, 29 Dec 2015 05:30:00 +0000

HKS Alumnus Bryan Stevenson spent his career working to address issues of racial and wealth inequality in the United States’ justice system. He believes this inequality stems from a failure of the nation to reconcile its dark history with regard to slavery and Jim Crow. His work as Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative focuses on defending those without the means to properly defend themselves.

This episode was originally published on November 19, 2014.

A Nuanced Approach to Leaning In

Harvard Kennedy School — Tue, 22 Dec 2015 05:30:00 +0000

Senior Lecturer Hannah Riley Bowles explains her research on gender in negotiations and offers advice to women trying to negotiate higher pay. She also discusses the importance of open information and why the Obama administration’s moves to address the gender wage gap are a positive development.

PolicyCast is on winter hiatus and will be back with new episodes in February. This episode was originally published on April 16, 2014.

Public Affairs as Part of the Mix, or Icing on the Cake?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 05:30:00 +0000

Brent Colburn, a Fall 2015 Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics, discusses the differences between campaigning and governing, drawing on his experiences at both the US Department of Defense and on President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign to compare and contrast. He goes on to explain how the Department of Defense integrates public affairs into its decision making, how government agencies can adopt some of the more entrepreneurial aspects of campaigns, and how agencies can change to attract the talent required to tackle challenges like cyber threats.

VOA: Exporting the First Amendment

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 9 Dec 2015 05:30:00 +0000

David Ensor, former director of Voice of America and current Fall 2015 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Center, explains why Voice Of America is a key instrument in the projection of US soft power and how the organization’s commitment to objective journalism, as opposed to being an advocate for US policies, is vital to its success.

Finding Agreement on Climate Policy in Paris

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 2 Dec 2015 05:30:00 +0000

Professor Robert Stavins, Director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements out of the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, explains why the COP21 in Paris is a critical step in addressing anthropogenic global climate change. He discusses the history of past climate summits and lays out both his markers for success and potential impediments to a deal.

More from Professor Stavins and other Kennedy School scholars can be found at http://hkscop21paris.tumblr.com.

The Cuba Moment

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 05:00:00 +0000

Marie Sanz, former bureau chief for the AFP in Lima, Peru and a Fall 2015 Joan Shorenstein fellow at the Shorenstein Center, describes how the announcement of normalized relations between the US and Cuba took the world – and the press, in particular – by surprise. She explains how talks between the two countries unfolded with help from Pope Francis, and discusses both the possibilities and obstacles ahead, especially regarding free speech and human rights issues.

Compassion or Caution? The Migrant Crisis After Paris

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 05:30:00 +0000

Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, Research Director at the Harvard FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, discusses the ongoing migrant crisis in Europe and how the recent terrorist attacks in Paris might reshape policy regarding the resettlement of Syrian refugees in both Europe and the United States.

The Smartest Time on TV

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 05:00:00 +0000

Bob Schieffer, former host of CBS News’s Face the Nation and current Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at the Shorenstein Center, explains the enduring popularity of the Sunday morning political talk show, offers his take on what he calls “the most different” presidential campaign in his long memory, and recounts some of his favorite stories from the campaign trail.

The Development of Agency

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 4 Nov 2015 05:30:00 +0000

HKS Adjunct Lecturer Ronald Ferguson emphasizes the importance of looking beyond standardized test results and measuring students’ sense of agency - the belief that they have the capacity to succeed - in order to address lingering achievement gaps.

The Power of Protests, Propaganda and Religion

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 07:00:00 +0000

HKS Associate Professor David Yanagizawa-Drott’s quantitative analysis of three seemingly disparate topics shows the power of protests to change policy, the power of propaganda to induce violence and the power of religion to create happiness despite reducing GDP.

You can read more on Professor Yanagizawa-Drott’s research on the HKS Faculty Research Connection website: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/faculty_name.aspx?PersonId=256

From Selma to Harvard: Supporting the notion of public service

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust discusses what drew her to the study of history; her role as a student activist in the civil rights movement in Selma; how her experience as an activist shapes her leadership now; her advice to young people who are trying to balance public service and career goals; and how universities can help students make those choices.

How the UN set the standard for human rights in the corporate world

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 06:00:00 +0000

HKS Professor John Ruggie, who has twice served in senior roles at the United Nations, describes how the UN was able to leverage its convening power to create an unprecedented set of "Guiding Principles" for corporate responsibility on human rights issues. He also speaks to the growing role international sporting organizations like FIFA and the Olympics will need to play in bolstering human rights.

Don't Panic: China's Just Switching Gears

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 7 Oct 2015 07:17:16 +0000

Peiran Wei, a 2015 China and Globalization Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and former Bloomberg reporter, describes his country as "switching gears" – in its economy, its politics, and its culture. Wei discusses attitudes towards the rising billionaire class in China, the impact of China’s capital outflow around the globe, and the importance of social stability to the Communist Party.

Why Hasn't Homeownership Recovered?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 06:50:47 +0000

Christopher Herbert, managing director of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, explains whether there’s reason for concern about the state of the US housing market, which has been beset by falling homeownership rates, rising rents, stalling incomes and demographic shifts that threaten to exacerbate trends towards inequality.

If you’d like to learn more, you can read the 2015 State of the Nation’s Housing Report at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies website.

How to Fix a Sovereign Debt Crisis

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 07:00:00 +0000

HKS Professor Carmen Reinhart details the lessons we can learn from two centuries of data on how countries have historically dealt with debt problems. She discusses the long menu of debt relief options that are often overlooked, criticizes the disparity between how debt problems are addressed in emerging markets and advanced economies, and applies her findings to the situations in Greece and Puerto Rico.

America: The Next Great Emerging Market?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 11:54:37 +0000

Retired US Army Gen. David Petraeus, a non-resident senior fellow at the Belfer Center, explains why he believes a combination of four technological revolutions will lead to a renewed era of American power. Not just for the United States, but for Canada and Mexico, too. He details the steps he believes the United States must take to take advantage of its position at the head of each technological advancement.

Gen. Petraeus also offers his perspective on the aftermath of the Iran nuclear deal, whether the United States can work with Iran regarding ISIS and the Syrian civil war, why the US should be wary of Iran’s increasingly cozy relationship with Russia, and how US strategy needs to adapt in the fight against ISIS.

You can read the general’s report, co-authored with Paras D. Bhayani, titled “The Next Great Emerging Market? Capitalizing on North America’s Four Interlocking Revolutions” on the Belfer Center’s website: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/The%20Next%20Great%20Emerging%20Market%20FINAL.pdf

Hear the interview mentioned in the show’s intro featuring Prof. Joseph Nye: https://soundcloud.com/harvard/joe-nye-on-presidential?in=harvard/sets/policycast

The Iran Nuclear Accord: What Happens Next?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 9 Sep 2015 07:00:00 +0000

Gary Samore, President Obama’s former principal advisor on arms control and nuclear proliferation who currently serves as the Director for Research at the Belfer Center, gives his take on the agreement struck between Iran and a group of world powers referred to as the P5+1 to restrict and monitor Iran’s nuclear research and development program. He explains why he supports the pact, what concessions he’s most worried about, why he doesn’t believe Iran will be able to cheat, why Iran’s enhanced economic power won’t destabilize the region, and why United States allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia should have less reason to worry.

You can read more about the nuclear agreement in “The Iran Nuclear Deal: A Definitive Guide [PDF],” published by the Belfer Center and edited by Dr. Samore.

Better Policy Through A.R.T.

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 27 May 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Tony Award-winning director Diane Paulus, Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) and professor of the practice of theatre at Harvard, explains why the arts are critical to the shaping of public policy. Paulus offers examples of how artistic works have engaged audiences to pursue change, and explores the responsibility artists have to account for the results of their works.

A Wholesale and Retail Approach to Digital Government

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 20 May 2015 06:30:00 +0000

Nick Sinai, formerly a U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer at the White House and currently a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy fellow at the Shorenstein Center, describes in detail the effort the Obama administration has put into modernizing the federal government’s digital services, both by opening up data to public and private groups, as well as to individual citizens by creating comprehensive online portals to access government services.

Tunisia and the Arab Spring

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 13 May 2015 06:30:00 +0000

Former Tunisian Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa and the Middle East Institute’s Dr. Paul Salem discuss Tunisia’s relative success in establishing a stable democracy in the wake of the Arab Spring. Jomaa, who recently delivered an address at the JFK Jr. Forum, and Salem, who lead a seminar at the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative, go into detail about how Tunisia’s strong national identity, existing civil service society and commitment to a secular government have set it apart.

Cursed with Clarity

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 6 May 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a spring 2015 fellow at the Institute of Politics, recounts how she became interested in a career in politics and speaks about issues of sexism and LGBT rights both in New York and across the United States.

Why Afghanistan Still Matters

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Former NPR Kabul Correspondent and HKS alumnus Sean Carberry, here at HKS to lead a seminar at the Belfer Center's Future of Diplomacy Project as part of its South Asia Week, lays out the political situation in Afghanistan months after the official end of the war. He explains why Americans should still care about Afghanistan's stability, what difficulties the country’s new President Ashraf Ghani has encountered, and whether the conflict between the Taliban and ISIS could be a good thing for American interests.

How Presidential Campaigns Influence Governance

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Republican strategist Matt Lira, a spring 2015 fellow at the Institute of Politics, discusses the early days of a presidential campaign, the importance of primaries, how campaign management eventually influences governance and what technologies will likely emerge as critical to 2016.

Cracks in the Glass Ceiling: Lessons From Finland's Former President

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Former Finnish President Tarja Halonen, currently in residence at the Kennedy School as an Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Fellow, recounts the challenges she faced as a woman ascending the Finnish ranks of power. She also explains some of the factors behind Finland’s consistently high rankings in many quality of life metrics.

Taking Down DOMA

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 8 Apr 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Former Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, a spring 2015 fellow at the Institute of Politics, recounts the legal journey that ultimately led to the US Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to strike down a key section of the Defense of Marriage Act - a major victory for the LGBT rights movement.

A Political Crossroads in Indonesia

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 1 Apr 2015 06:00:00 +0000

HKS Adjunct Lecturer Jay Rosengard, faculty chair of the Ash Center’s HKS Indonesia Program, breaks down the political climate in Indonesia, just months after the election of a new, potentially transformational president. He explains how Indonesia’s still-young democracy will be put to the test as the new president seeks to work with a parliament controlled by the opposition.

Behind the Steady Recovery in Cyprus

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 06:30:00 +0000

Cyprus’ Minister of Energy, Commerce, Industry and Tourism Yiorgos Lakkotrypis describes his country’s slow emergence from a deep economic recession following a 2013 EU bail-in that came with significant austerity measures attached. He points out bright spots in the country’s traditional industries as well as the promise of building a new energy industry through offshore gas exploration. He also speaks about negotiations with Turkey over reunification of the island of Cyprus and how Turkish exploration has, at least temporarily, scuttled progress in those talks.

Somalia’s First Female President?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 06:00:00 +0000

HKS Mid-Career MPA Mason Fellow Fadumo Dayib recounts her story growing up as a Somali refugee and explains how her life’s experience has pushed her to mount a 2016 run for president in her homeland.

The End of the American Dream?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 06:00:00 +0000

HKS Professor Robert Putnam explains how the United States has become a class-segregated society with a growing stratification between the educated and uneducated. He describes how upward mobility has nearly vanished over the last few decades and what can be done to turn things around.

Startup Government

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 4 Mar 2015 07:00:00 +0000

Aneesh Chopra, a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at the Shorenstein Center who served as the United States' first Chief Technology Officer, describes how the federal government, historically a leader in new technologies, fell behind in embracing innovation. He details the challenges government agencies have historically faced and how a combination of new policies and tech-savvy leadership have the potential to set things back on course.

How Partisan is the US Judiciary?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 07:00:00 +0000

HKS Assistant Professor Maya Sen describes new research breaking down political leanings within the United States judiciary. The analyses exposes a partisan divide between lawyers and judges and finds a link between certain political leanings and specific law schools.

An Ethical Perspective on the Brian Williams Scandal

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 07:00:00 +0000

HKS Lecturer Jeffrey Seglin of the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy discusses the ethical hot water Brian Williams has recently found himself in. He breaks down the reputational harm that has been done to both Williams and NBC, the steps NBC needs to take to restore its viewers’ faith and whether journalism and celebrity can coexist effectively.

The Other Effects of Torture

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 14:52:55 +0000

HKS Lecturer Doug Johnson, Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, goes beyond the debate over the efficacy of torture to look at the consequences of its use in legal, military and international relations contexts.

Big Data; Better Cities

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 4 Feb 2015 08:00:00 +0000

HKS Professor Stephen Goldsmith, Director of the Data-Smart City Solutions Project at the Kennedy School’s Ash Center, describes how city and state governments can improve service to citizens by harnessing new technologies.

Measuring Human Ability

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 15:25:22 +0000

Ron Suskind’s world was shaken when his son Owen was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. Now, more than 20 years later, his experience has helped kick off new research into how we as a society can better integrate those with developmental disabilities. In this episode, Ron advocates for the establishment of new benchmarks for human ability and achievement and explains how policy can help or hinder that effort.

Designing Smarter Policy

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 08:00:00 +0000

HKS Professor Asim Khwaja, Co-Director of the Evidence for Policy Design program, explains the benefits of bringing academics into the field to develop policy in collaboration with practitioners.

Is Transparency Bad for Politics?

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Professor Michael Ignatieff of the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy makes the case that increased transparency in government makes it harder for politicians to find compromise by relating his experience as the Leader of the Opposition in the Canadian parliament. He also laments the tendency to argue over the standing of those who make arguments on various issues, as opposed to the substance of the issues themselves.

Professor Ignatieff discussed “Tensions in Transparency” with Professor David King at IDEASpHERE.

Ensuring Electoral Integrity around the Globe

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 3 Dec 2014 06:00:00 +0000

Is it Civil Rights or Human Rights?

Harvard Kennedy School — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 09:00:00 +0000

HKS Associate Professor Moshik Temkin argues that the debate over civil rights in the United States, sparked by the unrest in Ferguson, MO, is actually a debate about human rights and the difference is not just semantic.

The Criminal Injustice System

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 06:00:00 +0000

HKS Alumnus Bryan Stevenson has spent his career working to address issues of racial and wealth inequality in the United States’ justice system. He believes this inequality stems from a failure of the nation to reconcile its dark history with regard to slavery and Jim Crow. His work as Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative focuses on defending those without the means to properly defend themselves.

The Midterms, the Youth Vote and GOP Strategy

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 06:00:00 +0000

IOP Fall 2014 Fellow Kristen Soltis Anderson gives her take on the gains the GOP made in the midterm elections, how the party can better target the youth vote and what we can expect from congress over the next two years.

The Accidental Fall of the Berlin Wall

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 5 Nov 2014 05:00:00 +0000

Professor Mary Elise Sarotte, a visiting professor at the Harvard Center for European Studies and author of “Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall,” explains how the opening of the border between East and West Germany came down to a decision by a single border guard.

Ending Veteran Homelessness

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 05:00:00 +0000

Andrew McCawley, president and CEO of the New England Center for Homeless Veterans, describes the steps the organization is taking to combat homelessness among US veterans and how likely it is that the nation will see the complete eradication of veteran homelessness by 2016.

Steve Jarding on the 2014 Midterms

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 07:00:00 +0000

HKS Lecturer Steve Jarding, a longtime political operative who’s currently advising the Democratic candidate for US Senate in South Dakota, gives his take on how the upcoming midterm elections are shaping up. He explains the bipartisan lack of enthusiasm in this race, gives advice for struggling Democratic candidates and laments the increased role of money in the process.

How Uber Wrangles Regulations

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 07:00:00 +0000

Brian Worth, the Public Policy Lead for ridesharing service Uber, discusses how the company works with governments at all levels to tackle hackney regulations it sees as outdated. Worth participated in the Harvard Institute of Politics' 2014 Internet Policy Conference.

045 Feeding the World Through Science

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 12:09:00 +0000

HKS Professor Calestous Juma, Director of the Science, Technology, and Globalization project, believes that science and technology are critical to the future of food security. He talks about meeting the needs of a growing human population, using science to improve agricultural productivity, the controversy over genetically-modified crops, the need for more science advisors in emerging countries and what the future holds for agriculture.

015 Why Gun Violence is a Public Health Issue

Harvard Kennedy School — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 05:01:00 +0000

In an interview conducted just a month after the horrific shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary, Harvard Chan School of Public Health Professor David Hemenway makes an emphatic case for why gun violence needs to be researched through the lens of public health.