Tag: Government

  • Nation & World

    Justice for all

    Michael Sandel, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government, has authored a new book unpacking today’s most prevailing political and ethical quandaries.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Getting justice right

    The Institute of Politics hosts the first public discussion of Michael Sandel’s new book, “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” coming out later this month.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The Origins of Canadian and American Political Differences

    Guns, government, same-sex marriage — the U.S. and Canada couldn’t be more dissimilar. Kaufman explores the history and culture of the two lands and asks why Canada is so close, yet so far away.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Around the Schools: Harvard Kennedy School

    The Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations will convene a Consultative Conference on International Criminal Justice at United Nations headquarters in Manhattan Sept. 9-11.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Managing disasters

    The Kennedy School will offer a new course this fall on disaster recovery, largely focusing on New Orleans and the work the School has done there in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sorting Fact From Fiction on Health Care

    In recent town-hall meetings, President Barack Obama has called for a national debate on health-care reform based on facts.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Town halls, without the screaming or scripting

    The chaos at town-hall meetings this month was just a vivid symptom of an older and much larger problem. Even at the outset of American democracy, the framers and average citizens alike were concerned about communication between elected officials and their constituents.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Finding the founding ideas

    In 1788, Thomas Shippen of Philadelphia, a citizen of the world’s newest nation, visited the French royal court at Versailles. He was awed by its pomp, its riches, and – as he wrote – its “Oriental splendor.” But Shippen was also repulsed. He remarked on the arrogance and waste of royal life, and on the…

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    M-RCBG, HKS announce Dunlop awards

    The Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) has announced that Vivek Viswanathan and Anna Katherine Barnett-Hart are the 2009 recipients of The John T. Dunlop Thesis Prize in Business and Government, awarded to the graduating senior who writes the best thesis on a challenging public policy issue at…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Bhat and Holland named Fisher Prize winners

    The Committee of the Howard T. Fisher Prize in Geographical Information Science (GIS) has announced that Harvard College senior Shubha Lakshmi Bhat and Alisha Holland, a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government, are the 2008-09 recipients of the Howard T. Fisher Prize in Geographical Information Science.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    ‘Water guy’ John Briscoe stays in motion

    For someone who deep-sixed his BlackBerry (instant e-mail was taking over his life) and traded the local newspaper for a good book (“What do I need to know about Celtics’ scores?”), John Briscoe ’76 is as worldly a person as you are ever likely to meet.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    O’Connor marks women’s progress in legal profession

    Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, turns 80 years old next year. O’Connor — chipper, funny, and precise — spoke at a luncheon sponsored annually by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, which awarded the former justice its Radcliffe Medal.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Martha Minow named dean of Harvard Law School

    Martha Minow, the Jeremiah Smith Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, will become the dean of the Faculty of Law on July 1, President Drew Faust announced today (June 11).

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    O’Connor named Radcliffe Medalist

    The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University has announced that Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, will be awarded the 2009 Radcliffe Institute Medal at the annual Radcliffe Day luncheon on Friday (June 5). Barbara J. Grosz, dean of the Radcliffe Institute, will give opening remarks…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    At ROTC commissioning, Faust touts idea of ‘soldier-scholar’

    Barron, Bilotti, Bras, Chiappini, Doohovskoy, Kristol, Pellegrini, West. That’s roll call for eight 2009 Harvard graduates who were commissioned late Wednesday morning (June 3). Five are new officers in the U.S. Army and three in the U.S. Marine Corps.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Ten honorary degrees awarded at Commencement

    Harvard University has conferred today (June 4) honorary degrees on 10 outstanding individuals: Energy Secretary Steven Chu, filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, author Joan Didion, religious historian Wendy Doniger, legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin, immunologist Anthony S. Fauci, anthropologist Sarah Hrdy, engineer Robert Langer, musician Wynton Marsalis, and political scientist Sidney Verba.

    19 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Talking terror

    The two men sit close, knees almost touching, in a mud-walled hut in the Congolese village of Katokota.

    15 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Scholar makes robots that detect land mines

    On Oct. 10, 2005 — he remembers the date exactly — Thrishantha Nanayakkara was driving down a country road, headed for a science workshop at Jaffna Central College, a high school in the far north of Sri Lanka. The event was designed to distract potential child soldiers from the allure of war.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Ash Institute’s finalists for its Innovations award

    The Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS) has announced the finalists for the 2009 Innovations in American Government Awards.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Looking at ‘spoiled’ Americans through an energy lens

    In 1968, the United States was exporting oil. A decade later, given massive increases in domestic demand, it was importing half of this coveted fuel.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Religion key to foreign policy, says HKS speaker

    As President Obama and his new administration seek to redirect U.S. foreign policy back toward more emphasis on diplomacy and less on the use of force, they should not overlook Orthodox Christianity as a resource.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Enormous changes’ in thirty years

    In Chinese culture, the 60th birthday is an auspicious event. At that age, it is said that a person is at ease.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Obama and the art of the possible

    With the passing of Barack Obama’s 100th day in office, journalists and pundits are posing a simple but all-important question: How is the president doing? Robert Kuttner, author and political commentator, gave his own evaluation of the Obama presidency for the 2009 Lowell Lecture on April 30 in Emerson Hall.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Locke: More enlightened than we thought

    English political philosopher John Locke died nearly a century before the American Revolution, and in his time parliamentary democracy was in its infancy. But his Enlightenment ideas — including the right to life, liberty, and property — went on to inspire American revolutionaries.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Obama’s first 100 days

    On the occasion of President Obama’s 100th day in office, we asked several Harvard faculty members to consider the new administration’s early actions in their areas of expertise and offer some guidance about how the president could make a difference on issues ranging from the threat of nuclear terrorism to energy policy in the days…

    18 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Experts talk about reducing crime through a holistic approach

    Los Angeles is a city that many equate with violent gangs and an ineffectual and troubled police force. Yet recent years have seen a decline in gang homicides and violent crime due to a new approach in policing.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Samuel H. Beer, Harvard scholar, dies at 97

    Samuel Hutchison Beer, the distinguished Harvard political scientist, died in his sleep at the age of 97 on April 7. For years, Beer was the world’s leading expert in British politics, but he also studied the American political system, and was active in American politics as a lifelong Democrat and chairman of Americans for Democratic…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Mogae shifts stress to HIV prevention

    An African leader whose anti-AIDS programs resulted in one of the continent’s few HIV success stories said Monday (April 13) that he is shifting his efforts from treatment toward prevention in hopes of creating an “HIV-free” generation.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Energy policies: ‘Forty-year failure’

    In 1973, four weeks after the Arab oil embargo, President Richard Nixon went on national television to talk about an energy crisis that had been mounting for two years. He asked Americans to turn off their Christmas lights.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Frank calls for (re) regulation

    U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, came to the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Monday (April 6) to lay out a four-point program for re-regulating the nation’s financial system.

    4 minutes