Dunlop Undergraduate Thesis Prize in Business and Government established

The Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) at the Kennedy School of Government has established a thesis prize for a graduating Harvard College senior. The deadline to apply is May 24.

The John T. Dunlop Thesis Prize in Business and Government will be awarded to the graduating senior who writes the best thesis on a challenging public policy issue at the interface of business and government.

“The business-government relationship affects daily life: from the regulation of pension and health systems to public-private partnerships in energy generation and information-technology systems,” said John Ruggie, the Frank and Denie Weil Director of M-RCBG. “The John T. Dunlop Thesis Prize allows us to encourage a new generation of thinkers and doers to delve deeply on these issues and explore ways of maximizing public value in the complex interplay of the public and private sectors.”

The prize will be awarded to the best paper that examines the business-government interface with respect to regulation, corporate responsibility, energy, the environment, health care, education, technology, and human rights, among others. A $500 award will be provided to the winning entry.

The prize is named after John T. Dunlop, the Lamont University Professor Emeritus, a widely respected labor economist who served as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1969 to 1973. An adviser to several U.S. presidents beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dunlop was secretary of labor under Gerald Ford, serving from March 1975 to January 1976.

In addition to serving as secretary of labor, Dunlop held many other government posts, including director of the Cost of Living Council (1973-74), chairman of the Construction Industry Stabilization Committee (1993-95), chair of the Massachusetts Joint Labor-Management Committee for Municipal Police and Firefighters (1977-2003), and chair of the Commission on Migratory Farm Labor (1984-2003).

Dunlop served as the second director of the Center for Business and Government from 1987 to 1991. The center, renamed the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government in 2005, focuses on policy issues at the intersection of business and government. Dunlop died in 2003.