Nation & World

All Nation & World

  • Mayor Bloomberg receives HSPH’s Richmond Award

    Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City has been named the 2007 recipient of the Julius B. Richmond Award, the highest honor given by the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).

  • Phyllis Schlafly speaks out on judicial activism

    The woman credited with defeating the Equal Rights Amendment was on the Radcliffe campus last week to discuss the current target in her crosshairs: judicial activism.

  • Nobel laureate Yunus gives Wiener Lecture

    On Oct. 13, economist and microfinancing pioneer Muhammad Yunus stood in front of a cheering capacity crowd at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. One year earlier, to the day, he had received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize — news that Yunus said “exploded with happiness all over Bangladesh.”

  • Upcoming Supreme Court cases examined

    What’s up this year at the U.S. Supreme Court?

  • Inequality and justice, why, where, when, who

    “Universities are inequality machines,” Christopher Jencks, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said. “Combating inequality works only by leveling up … which often takes…

  • The truths lost and gained in wartime

    The symposium “War and Truth” explored the modern resonance of an ancient sentiment: “In war, truth is the first casualty.” It’s attributed to the Greek tragedian Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) and…

  • How Sputnik changed U.S. education

    Education experts said Oct. 4 that the United States may be overdue for a science education overhaul like the one undertaken after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite 50 years ago, and predicted that a window for change may open as the Iraq war winds down.

  • JFK and the Cuban missile crisis — a new assessment

    The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 has been called the “single most serious moment in human history.” During the 40 years of the Cold War, it was the closest the United States and the Soviet Union ever came to nuclear war.

  • Treating workers like people: A history

    “The Human Relations Movement: The Harvard Business School and the Hawthorne Experiments (1924-1933),” the first in a series of exhibits to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Harvard Business School (HBS), is on view through Jan. 17 at the School’s Baker Library.

  • Labor and management, together at last

    Harvard University hosted “The Future of Labor Forum” last week (Oct. 2), a first-ever conference that brought together prominent voices from the sometimes adversarial worlds of management, unions, government, and the academy.

  • ‘Who is the human in human rights?’

    What does it mean to be human? Are all people the same, and if so, entitled to an identical set of rights and treatment? Or, in the age of globalization, do wide-ranging cultural, moral, religious, and political beliefs and behaviors make the definition of humans — and therefore human rights — contingent, that is dependent on circumstances? In that context, can human rights ever be truly universal?

  • Phillips Brooks House welcomes first fellow

    With its long tradition of service and community involvement, the Phillips Brooks House (PBH) — composed of the Phillips Brooks House Association, the student-run, public service organization, and the Harvard Public Service Network, which supports more than 45 student-led service groups — extended its scope last week as it welcomed the first Phillips Brooks House Fellow to campus.

  • Pre-emption: Preventive, coercive, or both?

    In the wake of 9/11, how to defend the country in a new age of terrorism has sparked an ongoing, often divisive debate. Some consider tactics like pre-emption, the right to use force to respond to an imminent threat, and preventive war, the use of force to prevent a serious threat from worsening over time, acceptable, even if it means occasionally turning a blind eye to the law to preserve national security. Others argue such methods are never warranted and violate the basic tenets of a free, democratic society.

  • Wade hails ‘African renaissance’

    His Excellency Abdoulaye Wade, president of the Republic of Senegal, visited Harvard last week (Sept. 27). Looking younger than his 81 years, he walked onto the stage at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum to the sound of a tama, a West African “talking drum” used to telegraph complex messages.

  • Conference celebrates tribal governance

    Imagine the map of the United States as it really is. Not 50 states, but 50 states plus 562 sovereign nations — the 562 federally recognized American Indian tribes and communities that exist within U.S. borders.

  • At Kennedy School, Iraqi foreign minister outlines recent progress

    “Iraq is back,” the country’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, told his audience at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Kennedy School of Government Oct 1. With the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein replaced by a “constitutional, democratically elected government,” Iraq is in the midst of “a truly historic transformation” as important as “any event in the Middle East” over the past hundred years.

  • New index quantifies performance of governments

    “All citizens of all countries desire to be governed well.” That plain statement — universal and self-evident — is the first sentence of a Harvard-generated report released this week in London. According to its authors, it is the first attempt in the world to systematically and objectively quantify governance.

  • Kozol campaigns for educational reform

    At times as he spoke in the Memorial Church last Thursday (Sept. 20) Jonathan Kozol, educator, activist, and author, sounded more fervent than an impassioned man of God preaching eternal salvation.

  • Farmer, Magaziner: Get involved!

    Physician and medical anthropologist Paul Farmer and Ira Magaziner, a one-time policy adviser in the Clinton White House, brought humor, counsel, and cautions to a public conversation on student engagement Sept. 20.

  • Serbian foreign minister talks about Kosovo, other issues

    Today Vuk Jeremic´ of the Republic of Serbia is, at 32, one of the youngest foreign ministers on the planet. Last week he was back at his alma mater (M.P.A. ’03) to describe his own political odyssey and to face some tough questions about his country’s foreign policy agenda. He made his government’s case for keeping the ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo within Serbia, and warned that if the issue is not handled properly, it could bring back “division and strife and hatred” in the Balkans

  • Changes to system and self necessary for health reform

    Major changes, including personal and market-based reforms, are needed in order to bring health coverage to every American, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt told an audience at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on Tuesday (Sept. 25).

  • Panel discusses Petraeus report, future of Iraq

    The issue of Iraq continues to draw a crowd as another full house attended the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on Monday night (Sept. 17) to hear a panel of Kennedy School professors discuss the recently released report by General David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker concerning the military and political situation in the war-torn country.

  • Film and discussion follows thread of conflict in Iraq

    “So I guess some of you have issues with the way things are going in Iraq?” Samantha Power, Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, asked a packed house at the John. F. Kennedy Jr. Forum last Thursday (Sept. 13) as she introduced a screening and discussion of the documentary “No End in Sight: The American Occupation in Iraq.”

  • Great deals can be costly for country

    In the relentless pursuit of a good deal, shoppers are elbowing citizens out of the public arena, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich warned Thursday evening during the inaugural Kennedy School Forum of the academic year.

  • IFC, U.N. to cooperate on study of investment contracts and human rights

    The International Finance Corp. (IFC), which is a member of the World Bank Group, and Kennedy School of Government (KSG) Professor John Ruggie, who is the United Nations secretary-general’s special representative on business and human rights, recently launched a joint study on foreign direct investments and human rights.

  • Close call in Peru

    While protestors lobbed rocks through the windows of their hotel, Andrew Krumholz ’09 and his brother Richard ’07 waited apprehensively to see if the police would be able to quell the disturbance. But when they saw the nearby bus station burst into flames, they knew it was time to call for help.

  • Looking at war through a legal lens

    The debate over international humanitarian law wrapped up a weeklong executive session for 35 humanitarian workers from around the world, including Sudan, Chechnya, and Uganda. The weeklong program, “Advanced Training on International Humanitarian Law in Current Conflicts: New Challenges and Dilemmas,” was sponsored by the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

  • The business of law

    Harvard Law School (HLS) is the place to look for the arcana of legal scholarship and practice — and for the latest on evidence, procedure, contracts, property, crime, torts, and taxation.

  • At CGIS, attorney Amsterdam blasts Russian Federation, others

    “We’ve got to stop blaming Vladimir Putin,” Robert Amsterdam told his listeners at the Center for Government and International Studies Tuesday morning (May 15). “That does us no good.

  • Italian government provides $1.5M for Sustainability Science Program at CID

    The Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land, and Sea has made a $1.5 million gift to support the Fund for Sustainable Development at Harvard’s Center for International Development (CID), it was announced earlier this month. A document-signing ceremony was held May 9 at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG).