BY IVAN RAHMAN The cover of the most recent Nation magazine portrays a student about to cross a crosswalk, perhaps to a school in a different neighborhood than his own. The accompanying story examines the secession movement in education, a movement in white communities that effectively excludes black and Hispanic youth from majority-white schools. Against […]

Thirteen days ago, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics offered a visiting fellowship to Chelsea Manning. Two days later, Doug Elmendorf, Dean of the Kennedy School, rightfully withdrew the fellowship. But the invitation should never have been extended in the first place. In 2013, Manning was convicted of espionage for leaking 750,000 sensitive military […]

BY GRANT TUDOR AND JUSTIN WARNER Last year, Human Rights Watch shared a story about Michelle, a 57 year-old Zimbabwean who had recently lost her husband. Soon after, she lost her harvest, her farm, and, finally, her home. Michelle’s in-laws had carried out the confiscations, physically restraining her while they ransacked her property. The event […]

BY ROBERT REYNOLDS In 1840, Abraham Lincoln authored a plan for the Whig party to win the upcoming election: “watch on the doubtful voters, and from time to time have them talked to by those in whom they have the most confidence.” Democrats need a similar plan today. If liberals and conservatives voted at the […]

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement that President Trump has decided to rescind DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, came as a shock to some and is disappointing to us. Although DACA recipients come from places as wide-ranging as Jamaica and the Philippines, the vast majority of them are from Latinx communities. (Latinx is […]

BY NATALIA COTE-MUÑOZ, MEREDITH DAVIS, AND KRISTELL MILLÁN This piece was written by the Co-Chairs of the Harvard Kennedy School Latinx Caucus and can also be found on the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy blog here. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement that President Trump has decided to rescind DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, came […]

Agile, iterative, pilot, scrum—these phrases may be common in the world of software development, but one would hardly expect to hear them tossed around the austere marble corridors of state government.  Yet they are common parlance in the Massachusetts Governor’s Office, where a nimble squad of problem-solvers is using every cutting-edge tool in the toolbox […]

BY LAURA WHITE Workforce development had been a frequent news topic in the months preceding my summer at the Governor’s Office in Pennsylvania—from announcements about an executive order on apprenticeships, to predictions about the automation of large swaths of the workforce. Yet I rarely saw in the media the one place where I would find […]

BY MICHELLE LIU The placards are subtle. I missed the first small signs with dates on the Exit Glacier Trail. I was rushing to hike the Harding Ice Field and I was preoccupied anticipating Alaska’s unpredictable weather and my next eight miles. However, even I noticed placards with random numbers 1891, 1899, 1917…along the rainforest […]

BY ANDREW SUGRUE More than most states, Nevada suffered greatly during the recent recession. Unemployment peaked at 14 percent in 2010, housing prices had fallen 60 percent by 2011, and as of last year, GDP per capita remained at 20 percent below its pre-recession high. The state’s economy relies heavily on gaming, tourism, entertainment, hospitality […]

BY CHUCK ARRSAUYAQ HERMAN Montana is home to the world’s first national park and also home to a toxic man-made lake, a mile-long and 1,800 feet deep, created by a now defunct copper mine. The state is well-acquainted with the traditional clash between resource-extraction and conservation. But that may be changing. I spent the summer […]

Paul LePage (R-ME) is America’s most conservative governor, and a reliable headline. For ten weeks this summer, he was also my boss. After years of talking the bipartisan talk, I was ready to walk the bipartisan walk as Maine’s inaugural Dukakis Fellow. Beyond building a résumé that joins Michael Dukakis (D-MA) and Paul LePage in […]