Nation & World

To most of us, negotiation is a way of getting happily to the end of a problem. As in: Who’s going to do the dishes tonight? Let’s talk.

As part of Harvard Business School’s International Week, an annual event to highlight the cultural diversity at the School, Srgjan Kerim, president of the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly, delivered the keynote address at the Spangler Auditorium on Oct. 25.

The intense media coverage of a small group of presidential hopefuls is prematurely narrowing the field of worthy nominees, many political experts claim.

Journalism, the saying goes, is the first draft of history.

Ever wonder about Vermont and New Hampshire?

China’s increasing influence in Africa is a double-edged sword that wields the potential for prosperity and despair.

Harvard and South Asia go way back.

At 60 years old, India is a young nation. It is also a country that is both rich and poor.

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).

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.

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.”

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

“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 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…

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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.