By Dr. Yasmeen Abu Fraiha Ever since The Crimson Editorial Board came out with its endorsement of BDS and the Free Palestine movements, the negative responses to it have been frantic. Accusations are being made of antisemitism and rejection of the right of Israel to exist, and everyone has something to say about this.  That […]

By Harvard Kennedy School Israel Caucus & Harvard College Israel Caucus Earlier this month the Harvard Crimson published an editorial endorsing the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement against Israel. We, the Israel societies of Harvard College and the Harvard Kennedy School, would like to respond.  It is important to note that we welcome criticism of […]

By Sehr Taneja (MPP 2022) In 2019, I arrived at the Harvard Kennedy School after two years working in Indian politics, where I would often have to squint to see another woman around me. I was hopeful that here I would find ways to achieve equal representation. In my first year, however, I had only […]

By Yogesh Kumar (MC/MPA) I am a visiting professor at Dr. B.R Ambedkar University Delhi. I had given up hope that I would find a professor at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) whom I wanted to emulate in my own career. Then I took a class with Professor Jeffrey Seglin. DPI 830B: Column and Op Ed […]

By Saty Rao Sankurathripati (MPA 2022) “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart”. Writing about bureaucracy in 1904, little did German sociologist Max Weber know that his description could extend to the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) in 2022. Next month, hundreds of students will don regalia for their HKS graduations. They will leave Cambridge having been […]

By Adam Schneider (MPP/JD) Last week, Harvard Law School hosted the event Bearing Witness, during which participants of the Palestine Spring Break Trek (Pal-Trek) reflected on their experiences. The event provided a valuable opportunity to hear from my friends on the trek sharing stories about what they saw and learned. However, it became apparent that […]

By Nikita Taniparti (CID Growth Lab) To some, this question may seem absurd. The work of development is to improve quality of life and expand economic opportunity across diverse global communities, and graduate programs such as the MPA/ID program at HKS are enormously diverse in national origin, gender, and professional and lived experience. Yet, a […]

Fifty years ago, James Baldwin penned the following words in No Name in the Street: “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” This year, amidst the weight of continued injustice that the COVID-19 pandemic has both revealed and exacerbated, Baldwin’s words are as […]

By Ratna Gill (MPP 2022) India is engaged in a heated debate about whether to make marital rape illegal. Far from criminalizing the act, the section of India’s Penal Code on sexual offenses specifically calls out marital rape as “not rape.” It reads, “Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, […]

By Sumant Narain (MCMPA 2022) It was the start of the academic year at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) in August 2021.  Nikoli* – a civil servant from Croatia and a mid-career Master in Public Administration (MCMPA) candidate – was already finding it tough to acclimate to a new country amid the pandemic.  She had to […]

By Alvin Tian (MC/MPA) Offensive realism, developed by Professor John Mearsheimer at University of Chicago, is the idea that great powers fear each other, and are always looking for opportunities to gain power at the expense of others. They do this to maximize its share of world power, regardless of domestic policy, foreign policy, and […]

“I have killed many Arabs in my life, and there’s no problem with that.” “When you [Palestinians] were still climbing trees, we had a Jewish state here.” These are the words of current Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, who 282 of our HKS classmates met with last month as part of the HKS Israel Trek. […]