Tag: Politics

  • Nation & World

    Weatherhead Center selects a dozen new international fellows

    The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA) recently announced its 2007-08 class of fellows.

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    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.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    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.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    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).

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard Foundation set to honor DR president

    The Harvard Foundation will host Dominican Republic President Leonel Antonio Fernández Reyna on Sept. 24. Fernández will receive the Harvard Foundation Medal for his creation of the Foundation for Global Democracy and Development. His visit is co-sponsored by the Harvard Foundation, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and the Weatherhead Center for International…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Little Rock Central: 50 years later

    It’s been half a century, but it feels like just yesterday for at least one member of the “Little Rock Nine.” “I can’t feel this so strong, it doesn’t make sense … you are supposed to be over it,” says an emotional Minnijean Brown Trickey in the opening of the film “Little Rock Central High:…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    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…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    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…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    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.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Pair of music professors to collaborate on improvisation project

    Headed by University of Guelph English professor Ajay Heble, the international “Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice” project recently secured a $2.5 million grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Harvard affiliates Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African-American Music, and Jason Stanyek, visiting associate professor of music, are among the project’s…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Shorenstein Center names fall fellows and visiting faculty

    The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, located at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), recently announced its fall fellows.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    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.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    El Saadawi explores notion of creativity

    Activist, author, psychiatrist, and playwright Nawal El Saadawi delivered the Harvard Committee on African Studies’ annual Distinguished African Studies Lecture on Oct. 9 in the Tsai Auditorium at the Center for Government and International Studies.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    West Bank youths, with cameras, visit CGIS

    Four teenage participants from the Picture Balata workshop made a stop at Harvard this past Wednesday evening (April 11) as part of their two-week tour of the United States. The teenagers, Palestinians from Balata Refugee Camp outside of Nablus, West Bank, visited the Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS), where they displayed their work…

    1 minute
  • 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.

    4 minutes
  • 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…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Legal, ethical limits to bioengineering debated

    It is a truism that “politics makes strange bedfellows,” but late Tuesday afternoon (March 20), in the Ames Courtroom of Harvard Law School’s (HLS) Austin Hall, bioethics made two sets of philosophical bedfellows as strange as any Washington has seen.

    4 minutes
  • 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.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Strategists tangle at KSG

    Top campaign strategists for Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama brought the early intensity of the 2008 presidential race to Harvard Monday night (March 19), scrabbling for position on a key campaign issue: the Iraq War.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A message of hope…from Newark

    Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Cory Booker brought his message of hope and revitalization to the John F. Kennedy School of Government Monday (March 12), describing his own painful odyssey to the mayor’s office and his plans to take Newark from its blighted past to a promising future.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Is democracy merry?

    An enlarged news photo, flaunting its rough pattern of halftone dots, shows a man in jeans, a military overcoat, and a fedora striding toward the camera. Judging by his wide grin he seems to be enjoying himself hugely, but his downcast eyes convey that it is a private enjoyment, not shared by the uniformed police…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Three Republican campaign strategists say the battle’s just begun

    Iraq, Mormonism, and health care topped the agenda Monday night (March 5) in a 2008 presidential campaign preview featuring top aides to three Republican hopefuls in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. Campaign strategists for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, U.S. Sen. John McCain, and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said that the Iraq…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Kuwait Program accepting grant proposals

    The Kennedy School of Government (KSG) has announced the 12th funding cycle for the Kuwait Program Research Fund. With the support of the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences, a Kennedy School faculty committee will consider applications for one-year grants (up to $30,000) and larger grants for more extensive proposals to support advanced research…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Friendly wave hits Asia

    Six years after sweeping across Asia, the Korean wave hit Cambridge with a crash on Friday (Feb. 16) during a panel at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “Korean wave” – or Hallyu – refers to the sizzling popularity of South Korean popular culture throughout Asia. From the Philippines and Malaysia, to Singapore, Japan, and China,…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Democrats need unified message

    In 1967, Charles E. Schumer, a middle-class teenager from Brooklyn, N.Y., arrived at Harvard College with two goals in mind: to play freshman basketball and to study organic chemistry. At the basketball tryout, the would-be power forward – now New York’s senior senator – never got on court, after admitting to the coach that his…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Power sees U.S. foreign policy on steep downhill slide

    On Aug. 19, 2003, the first suicide bomb to hit Iraq went off with a roar at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, where the United Nations had been encamped for a dozen years. Among the dead was a Brazilian diplomat, Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the UN high commissioner for Human Rights.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Powerful documentary on genocide screened at Kennedy School

    Those who loudly refused to let the world turn a blind eye or feign helplessness as genocides ravaged millions of lives this century and last are sometimes dubbed “screamers.” The Harvard community got an earful Monday evening (Feb. 5) from an unlikely quartet of modern screamers – the chart-topping, earsplitting heavy metal band System of…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Current U.S. renewable energy goal too low, says head of national lab

    The head of the U.S. government’s renewable energy lab said Monday (Feb. 5) that the federal government is doing “embarrassingly few things” to foster renewable energy, leaving leadership to the states at a time of opportunity to change the nation’s energy future.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    KSG’s Shorenstein Center chooses six Goldsmith Prize finalists

    Six entries have been chosen as finalists for the 2007 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting awarded each year by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG).

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Richardson explores what motivates ‘targeting of noncombatants’

    What do terrorists want? The question has reverberated in the consciousness of the West ever since the dreadful and unexpected events of 9/11. Were these appalling acts of violence perpetrated because “They hate our freedoms,” as President Bush asserted? Are terrorists simply insane, barbaric, nihilistic, as others have theorized?

    5 minutes