Tag: Politics

  • Nation & World

    A half-century of life at Harvard

    Simon: What drew you to Harvard as a young graduate student in the early 1950s?

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Celebrating the life and career of Stanley Hoffmann

    One could measure Stanley Hoffmann’s achievements in book publications (more than 18), academic titles (University Professor, chair, co-founder of the Center for European Studies) or honors (Commandeur in the French Legion of Honor, to name one). But the broad smiles and teary eyes at the Center for European Studies last Friday (Dec. 5) indicated the…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Is Afghanistan Lost?’

    At a panel discussion Monday at the Harvard Kennedy School, Maleeha Lodhi evoked Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat to describe the situation on the ground in Afghanistan.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Rolf Mowatt-Larssen named senior fellow at Belfer Center

    Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, director of the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy and former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and terrorism efforts, will join the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a senior fellow on Jan. 19.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Caroline Kennedy honors public service award winners

    Two young leaders, whose work on the front lines of public service has won national acclaim, were honored on Nov. 14 at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS).

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Doctor of Laws

    In one of the his last public speeches before succumbing to brain cancer in August 2009, Senator Ted Kennedy accepted an honorary Doctor or Laws degree from Harvard. President Drew Faust conferred the degree before a standing-room-only audience at Sanders Theatre on December 12, 2008.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Faust presents Kennedy with honorary degree

    President Drew G. Faust recalls decades of accomplishments in the life of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. In one of his final public appearances before his death in August 2009, Faust confers upon Kennedy the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Remarks of Stephen Breyer

    Stephen Breyer’s remarks at Harvard University’s Convocation, where Sen. Edward M. Kennedy received an honorary degree.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Remarks of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy

    Remarks by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy at Harvard University’s 2008 Convocation.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard awards Sen. Kennedy honorary degree

    Political dignitaries, family members, current and former colleagues, faculty, students, old friends, and admirers were all part of the capacity crowd that filled Harvard’s Sanders Theatre Dec. 1 to honor the life of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Appreciating Billie Jean King’s contribution to second-wave feminism

    In a stately room in the Barker Center, flanked by portraits of famous men, Billie Jean King holds court. Not physically. She’s the topic of discussion, the name on everyone’s lips. One would think this were the after party of her notorious 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match with Bobby Riggs, the match she…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HKS initiative includes new professorships, student support, and research

    The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University is announcing an ambitious new initiative linking innovative governance to the world’s major social challenges.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Tanner lecturer, peacemaker Nusseibeh in search of the improbable

    Prior to delivering the first of this year’s Tanner Lectures, political activist Sari Nusseibeh gave the audience a laugh — and a cheat sheet. “My normal attitude in lectures is to doze off when someone is reading them,” he quipped, “so if you do doze off I just want to tell you that my message…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HKS gives $10M boost to program

    The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University will allocate an additional $10 million to an innovative program that trains emerging leaders from developing nations with the help of funds from the Ford Foundation. The announcement was made at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Edward S. Mason Program, which was held at…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Post-election: What’s changed, what’s stayed the same

    Barack Obama will enter the White House in January with the strongest mandate of any Democratic president at least since Lyndon Johnson in 1965, and arguably since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. Signs of a generational alignment, like the ones that made “Roosevelt Democrat” or “Reagan Republicans” household words are apparent.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Redressing five centuries of injustice: A start

    On May 4, 1493 — less than a year after Columbus set foot in the New World — Pope Alexander VI issued “Inter Caetera,” a papal bull that still resonates more than five centuries later.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sen. Edward Kennedy to receive honorary degree at December convocation

    Sen. Edward Kennedy will receive an honorary degree from Harvard on Dec. 1 in a special convocation at Sanders Theatre. The honor is in recognition of Kennedy’s lifelong commitment to public service and his tireless efforts as a champion for a range of social issues including health care, civil rights, labor, employment, the environment, and…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Rights champion Goldstone speaks

    In human rights terms, Richard J. Goldstone, the 70-year-old veteran of South Africa’s highest courts and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, has walked the walk and talked the talk — chiefly by having a role in a number of this generation’s most important humanitarian events.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New president, new challenges

    In introducing the featured speaker at last week’s (Oct. 29) John F. Kennedy School Forum, Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said, “If there were a really serious national security problem and we could only consult one person, that person, in my view, is Brent Scowcroft.”

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Obama joins list of seven presidents with Harvard degrees

    When sworn in on Jan. 20, Barack Obama will join current President George W. Bush (M.B.A. ’75) and Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy as Harvard graduates chosen to serve as the nation’s chief executive.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Voter turnout approaches some records, breaks others

    Voter turnout in the 2008 presidential election was not record-breaking, but it appears that it will approach the roughly 67 percent of the eligible citizenry who voted in 1960.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Spirited discussion brings some clarity to Obama’s strategy on Middle East

    In the final days before the U.S. presidential election, the two leading candidates were too busy dashing from one rally to the next in a few battleground states to make it to the reliably blue Bay State in person.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    And into the night

    It was well after midnight, and America was more than an hour into the Obama era when 02138 erupted in a series of spontaneous, ravelike street parties. In Harvard Yard, revelers dressed up the sedate, seated bronze John Harvard in a cloud of red, white, and blue balloons, and propped on his still chest an…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    At the Harvard Kennedy School

    The interest in this contest on the Harvard campus was apparent early at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. Their election night gathering, featuring returns showing on the forum’s large screen, was ticketed for the first time. Forum officials said that 1,500 applied for the 1,000 tickets available.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A special night at the Queen’s Head pub

    At 7 p.m., with election results still the stuff of dreams, Matthew Clair pitched in to inflate balloons at the Cambridge Queen’s Head at Loker Commons. The Dunster House senior, whose Brentwood, Tenn., family, he said, was the only one in town with an Obama sign on the front lawn, is president of the Harvard…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    At Harvard Law School, and beyond

    One hundred and twenty seven years later, the Harvard Law School can claim it has another alumnus in the White House. On Nov. 4, Barack Obama became the second Law School grad to ascend to the nation’s highest office.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard students caught up in election excitement

    On this year’s election night, the Harvard News Office cast its staff of writers and photographers out over the University to serve as witnesses. From the Kennedy School to the Queen’s Head pub, they recorded on notebook and film the tension, the growing enthusiasm, and the final nearly ecstatic pandemonium that marked this historic occasion.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    IOP survey finds concerns over economy skyrocket

    A new national poll by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics (IOP), located at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), finds that 18- to 24-year-old likely voters continue to prefer U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (56 percent) over U.S. Sen. John McCain (30 percent) in the race for president. Economic issues are far and away the No. 1 national…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Health disparities in Boston focus of talk at HSPH Community Partnership Day

    Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and the city’s top health official, Barbara Ferrer, speaking at the Harvard School of Public Health’s (HSPH) 18th Annual Community Partnership Day, said efforts to end racial health disparities must go forward in the city even as the nation’s economy falters.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Obama voters much more likely to believe outcome will impact health care

    As part of the ongoing poll series “Debating Health: Election 2008,” the Harvard Public Opinion Research Program at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Harris Interactive conducted a new survey focused on whether voters believe the results of this presidential election will make “a great deal of difference” in the state of the…

    2 minutes