Nation & World

All Nation & World

  • Forces beyond nations

    Most people would say they live in a globalized world, but a sociology professor favors the model of a denationalized world in which regional organizations increasingly predominate.

  • Lessons from a Kenyan slum

    A sprawling urban pocket of poverty offers a timeless lesson: talent is universal, but opportunity is not.

  • Frank look at marijuana laws

    Prohibitions on marijuana use do more harm than good, and it’s time the federal government stepped away from the issue altogether, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., told a crowd at Harvard Law School Oct. 18.

  • Beyond the kitchen, to the B-School

    Renowned chef Ferran Adrià visited Harvard Business School Oct. 13 to announce a challenge to business students: a competition to design the new venture that will expand his creative and culinary empire.

  • Wanted: Ways to battle corruption

    The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics is offering $8,000 in prizes for novel ideas on how to monitor and undercut institutional corruption.

  • 7 billion, and climbing

    U.N. official Babatunde Osotimehin says that educating women and girls worldwide is a critical step in slowing population growth.

  • The 99 percent solution

    Occupy Wall Street, the inspiration for hundreds of similar economic protests, is “an angry work in progress” that drew experts’ attention during two programs at Harvard.

  • Teaching the teachers

    Charged with enhancing undergraduate education in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning annually assists scores of faculty members and teaching fellows.

  • Widening national security concerns

    A new collaboration between Harvard Law School and the Brookings Institution hopes to help define the widening, post-9/11 reality of what constitutes a threat to society.

  • Designated Drivers

    Barry R. Bloom Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson Professor of Public Health, Harvard School of Public Health

  • Alumni win Nobel Prize for economics

    Two alumni of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who received their Ph.D.s from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, won the Nobel Prize for economics Oct. 10, 2011 for their work on change and the macroeconomy.

  • Sirleaf wins Nobel Peace Prize

    Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard Kennedy School alumna, is one of three recipients of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote peace, democracy, and women’s rights.

  • Roundtable airs immigration, research funding issues

    A small group of business and higher education leaders met in Washington to discuss the importance of attracting the world’s best students, the economic stimulus provided by government-funded research, and the safeguards of intellectual property protection.

  • Cantor: University research a key for jobs

    House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says that universities and businesses are key contributors to the innovation that drives economic growth in this country but that congressional attention to research funding will have to wait until broader budget talks are completed.

  • Untold war stories

    Women’s voices have long been absent from stories of war — and from the process of peacemaking. A group of women scholars and filmmakers gathered at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Oct. 4 to explore those untold stories in conjunction with the new PBS series “Women, War, and Peace.”

  • Travel, by design

    Students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design mix reality and research during travel as Community Service Fellows, doing everything from helping tsunami victims to studying activist art.

  • Sorting immigration facts, fiction

    A conference on “The Futures of Immigration: Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue” brought together academics and working reporters to hash out immigration topics such as the law, economics, and the future impact of the new arrivals’ children on U.S. labor markets and culture.

  • What makes a thinker

    In a lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, retiring Professor David Perkins explored the evolution of the teaching of thinking, including its history, obstacles, advances, and likely future.

  • Exploring Islam in Nigeria

    A panel of scholars explored the topic of Islam in Nigeria in preparation for the visit to Harvard by Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, the Sultan of Sokoto.

  • Chile’s president pushes progress

    Chilean President Sebastián Piñera said during a Harvard Kennedy School speech on Sept. 23 that he hopes to lead Chile into the ranks of fully developed nations by the end of the decade.

  • Improving South African schooling

    Groups of educators and administrators from South Africa took part in a series of Harvard-sponsored programs, aimed at transforming leadership in that nation’s public schools.

  • Recording a horrific history

    Through its Nuremberg Trials Project, the Harvard Law School Library is digitizing parts of a massive trove of records from the postwar trials of high-ranking Nazi political and military leaders.

  • Mau Mau at peace

    With a lawsuit against the British making its way through the courts, elderly Kenyan fighters share tales of battling the colonial regime.

  • Uncertainty remains factor in Japan

    Uncertainty about the long-term effects of low-level radiation and despair over the bleak employment picture in Japan are contributing to alarming rates of suicide among those affected by the cascading disasters of the March 11 earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown of a nuclear reactor, Harvard experts found on recent visits.

  • Campus leaders

    U.S. Navy Captain Curtis R. Stevens, Midshipman 1st class Evan Roth ’12, and Midshipman 3rd class Catherine Philbin ’14 discuss the demands and rewards of life in the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps at Harvard University.

  • Ugly America

    American politicians no longer politely agree to disagree. On that, participants in a panel talk Sept. 16 at the John F. Kennedy Forum all concurred. On whether there was any chance this would change, there was dispute. Politely, if passionately, expressed.

  • The law before and after 9/11

    Michael Chertoff, former U.S. secretary of Homeland Security, outlines the security paradigm shift in the run-up to 9/11 and the factors to consider when creating a new legal architecture to fight terrorism.

  • The ‘vast wasteland,’ reconsidered

    Fifty years ago, FCC Chairman Newton Minow famously shocked the nascent television industry out of complacency, calling American television a “vast wasteland.” On Sept. 12, he joined an all-star lineup at Harvard Law School to discuss the problems and potential of the vaster wasteland that now includes elements of the Internet.

  • ‘The Constitution and the Question of Power’

    Noah Feldman, Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School, will deliver a lecture titled “The Constitution and the Question of Power” at 1 p.m. Sept. 19 in Emerson Hall, Room 101. The event is free and open to the public.

  • Honoring a tireless advocate

    Scholars and professionals involved with the labor movement, workplace law, and social policy gathered at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study to honor the life of alumna Clara Schiffer on behalf of working women, and to explore the legacy and prospects of working women.