Featured series 
Tag: Government
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Arts & Culture
Harvey Mansfield on politics, the humanities, and science
Harvey Mansfield wants to reintroduce the concept of thumos into political science. As employed by Plato and Aristotle, thumos refers to the “part of the soul that makes us want to insist on our own importance.” Mansfield believes that modern political science has excluded thumos, and as a result has narrowed its understanding of what…
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Campus & Community
Initiative is designed to underscore importance of republicanism
Daniel Carpenter’s new educational initiative will reaffirm the significance of the history of republicanism and its influence on the American political system. Carpenter is supported by an $875,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to launch a program at Harvard regarding American political history and political thought.
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Nation & World
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.
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Nation & World
‘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…
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Nation & World
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…
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Campus & Community
Kennedy School launches Initiative on Religion with Luce Foundation grant
Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government has announced a new academic research program, the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs. The interdisciplinary initiative, based at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, will be directed by Monica Duffy Toft, associate professor of public policy, and J. Bryan Hehir, Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of…
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Nation & World
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,…
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Nation & World
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.
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Nation & World
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.
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Nation & World
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…
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Campus & Community
Weatherhead Center names 2007-08 associates
The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs is supporting 24 doctoral candidates as Graduate Student Associates for 2007-08. The associates represent a multidisciplinary group of advanced-degree candidates from Harvard’s departments of Anthropology, Government, History, Religion, and Sociology; the Kennedy School’s Public Policy Program; and the Law School’s S.J.D. program. All of the students are working on…
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Campus & Community
Weatherhead Center selects a dozen new international fellows
The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA) recently announced its 2007-08 class of fellows.
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Nation & World
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.
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Campus & Community
Scholar addresses question, ‘Who won World War II in Europe?’
There’s no easy answer, said Norman Davies, an Oxford-educated British historian and Poland specialist who has written widely on the 1939-1945 conflict.
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Campus & Community
Seven outstanding programs honored as innovations in U.S. government
The Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government on Sept. 25 announced seven state, city, and local government programs as winners of the 2007 Innovations in American Government Awards. The winners were honored at the Innovations in American Government Awards 20th anniversary reception at the U.S.…
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Nation & World
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…
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Campus & Community
Former Congressman Leach named director of Institute of Politics
David T. Ellwood, dean of the Kennedy School of Government, recently announced that former U.S. Congressman James A. Leach (R-IA) has been named the new director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics (IOP). Leach will serve for this academic year, beginning immediately and succeeding outgoing director Jeanne Shaheen.
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Nation & World
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.
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Campus & Community
Feldman lecture to mark Constitution Day in Lowell Lecture Hall
Noah Feldman, professor of law, will present a lecture open to all students and staff titled “The Constitution and the International Order” at 1 p.m. on Sept. 17 in Lowell Lecture Hall.
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Nation & World
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.
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Campus & Community
Honorary degrees awarded at Commencement’s Morning Exercises
Six men and three women received honorary degrees at this morning’s 356th Commencement Exercises. Biographical sketches of the honorands appear below.
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Campus & Community
S. Allen Counter, Deval Patrick to receive leadership award
Concerned Black Men of Massachusetts (CBMM) will recognize Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Harvard University’s S. Allen Counter with the Paul Robeson Leadership Award for their “leadership and community service” at CBMM’s 2007 Andrew J. Davis Jr. Unity Breakfast.
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Nation & World
Government holds seeds to its own reform
The seeds of a new, more efficient government able to nimbly handle the challenges of a new century are sprouting in the corridors of today’s slow-moving bureaucracy, according to Elaine Kamarck, a lecturer in public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
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Nation & World
Thompson, Huckabee, Gingrich play waiting game
While a handful of presidential front-runners dominate the headlines and airwaves, less prominent hopefuls for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination are playing a waiting game, staying alive and watching for an opportunity like an early primary victory or a stumble by a front-running candidate.
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Campus & Community
Harvey Mansfield named 2007 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities
Political scientist Harvey Mansfield, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard, will travel to Washington, D.C., in May to deliver the 2007 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
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Nation & World
Forum panelists dissect ‘America’s leadership deficit’
How to address “America’s leadership deficit” was the focus of discussion Wednesday night (March 21) at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. Describing the deficit as a “canyon, not a gap,” David Gergen, director of the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership (CPL), argued that the challenges facing the country are growing more complex and…
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Campus & Community
HBS, KSG announce new joint degree program
Harvard Business School (HBS) and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) announced Tuesday (April 3) the creation of a fully integrated joint degree program in business and government that represents an innovative approach to preparing leaders for a growing area of practice of critical importance to global society.
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Campus & Community
President Clinton to deliver 2007 Class Day address
Former President Bill Clinton will deliver the Class Day address to the Harvard Class of 2007, the Senior Class Committee announced today (March 29).
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Nation & World
Former child soldier gives stirring talk
Call him Ishmael. But don’t call him part of a “lost generation.” It’s a phrase that “I absolutely detest,” Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier in the civil war in Sierra Leone, told his audience at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government March 14 at an event co-sponsored by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
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Nation & World
French PM: Cooperation is the key
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the world now stands at a major crossroads, but that acting together the United States and Europe could lead the way in solving economic imbalances, ethnic and religious tensions, and the threat to the planet’s natural resources.