PolicyCast

Elizabeth Linos is the Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor for Public Policy and Management, and Faculty Director of The People Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The majority of her research focuses on how to improve government by focusing on its people and the services they deliver. Specifically, she uses insights from behavioral science and evidence from public management to consider how to recruit, retain, and support the government workforce, how to improve resident-state interactions, and how to better integrate evidence-based policymaking into government. Her research has been published in numerous academic journals including Nature Human Behaviour, Econometrica, The Journal for Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART), The Journal of Political Economy, Public Administration Review, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Behavioural Public Policy, and others. Prior to joining the Harvard Kennedy School faculty, Linos has been an assistant professor at UC Berkeley; the VP and Head of Research and Evaluation at the Behavioral Insights Team in North America; and policy advisor to the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, focusing on social innovation and public sector reform. Linos has been named one of the top 10 influencers in local government by ELGL, and was the 2023 recipient of the prestigious David N. Kershaw Award and Prize "established to honor persons who, before the age of 40, have made distinguished contributions to the field of public policy analysis and management."Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in political science from UCLA and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University.Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast has been provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support has been provided by Laura King. Web design and social media promotion support has been provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner. Editorial support has been provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill.

Christiane Amanpour is chief international anchor of CNN’s flagship global affairs program “Amanpour,” which airs weekdays on CNN International and nightly on PBS in the United States. She is also host of “The Amanpour Hour,” and is based in the network’s London bureau. Beginning in 1983 as an entry-level assistant on the international assignment desk at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta, Amanpour rose through the organization becoming a reporter at the New York bureau, and later, the network’s leading international correspondent. On the ground during the siege of Sarajevo, Amanpour exposed the brutality of the Bosnian War, reporting on the daily tragedy of life for civilians in the city. She was outspoken, calling out the human rights abuses, massacres and genocide committed against the Bosnian Moslems, later saying “There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice.” Throughout her time at CNN, Amanpour has secured exclusive interviews with global power players. In the wake of the September 11 attacks she was the first international correspondent to interview British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. During the height of the Arab Spring she conducted an Emmy-winning interview with Libya’s former leader ‘Colonel’ Moammar Gadhafi, and she was also the last journalist to interview Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak just before he was deposed. In January 2014, Amanpour also exclusively broke the news of a dossier of testimony and photographs which alleged to show systematic torture of prisoners by government forces in Syria, evidence she used to confront Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev about his government’s support for the Assad regime. In addition to her work as an anchor and reporter, Amanpour is an active rights campaigner. A board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Centre for Public Integrity and the International Women’s Media Foundation, she has used her profile to raise awareness of key global issues and journalists’ rights. She has interviewed educational rights activist Malala Yousafzai for CNN on several occasions – bringing focus to her courage and international advocacy work. Amanpour has earned 16 News and Documentary Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards, three duPont-Columbia Awards and the IWMF’s Courage in Journalism Award. She has received nine honorary degrees, is an honorary citizen of Sarajevo, and a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Freedom of the Press and the Safety of Journalists. Amanpour holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Rhode Island.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in political science from UCLA and a master’s in journalism from Columbia

John Holdren is the Teresa and John Heinz Research Professor for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and co-director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is a former Professor of Environmental Science and Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Affiliated Professor in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science. He is also President Emeritus and Senior Advisor to the President at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, a pre-eminent, independent, environmental-research organization. From 2009 to 2017, Holdren was President Obama’s Science Advisor and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, becoming the longest-serving Science Advisor to the President in the history of the position. Before joining Harvard, was a professor of energy resources at the University of California, Berkeley, where he founded and led the interdisciplinary graduate-degree program in energy and resources. Prior to that he was a theoretical physicist in the Theory Group of the Magnetic Fusion Energy Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a Senior Research Fellow at Caltech. He has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the MacArthur Foundation and Chairman of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the National Academy of Sciences. During the Clinton Administration, he served for both terms on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, leading multiple studies on energy-technology innovation and nuclear arms control. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a foreign member of the Royal Society of London and the Indian National Academy of Engineering and a former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His many honors include one of the first MacArthur Prize Fellowships (1981) and the Moynihan Prize of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. In 1995, he gave the acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization of scientists and public figures. He holds SB and SM degrees from MIT in aeronautics and astronautics and a Ph.D. from Stanford in aeronautics and astronautics and theoretical plasma physics.Jennifer Spence is the Director of the Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, with expertise related to sustainable development, international governance, institutional effectiveness, and public policy. Spence currently co-chairs the Arctic Resea

Iris Bohnet is the Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government and the co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. She is a behavioral economist, combining insights from economics and psychology to improve decision-making in organizations and society, often with a gender or cross-cultural perspective. Her most recent research examines behavioral design to embed equity at work. She is the author of the award-winning book “What Works: Gender Equality by Design” and co-author of the book “Make Work Fair.” Professor Bohnet advises governments and companies around the world, including serving as Special Advisor on the Gender Equality Acceleration Plan to the UN Secretary-General/Deputy Secretary-General and as a member of the Gender Equality Advisory Council of the G7. She was named one of the Most Influential Academics in Government and one of the most Influential People in Gender Policy by apolitical. She served as academic dean of Harvard Kennedy School for six years and as the faculty chair of the executive program “Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century” for the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders for more than ten years. She presently serves as the faculty director of the social sciences at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and on a number of boards and advisory boards. Siri Chilazi is a senior researcher at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School whose life’s work is to advance gender equality in the workplace through research and research translation. She operates at the intersection of academia and practice, both conducting research on how organizations can become more inclusive and bringing those research insights to practitioners through speaking, training, and workshops. As an academic researcher, Siri specializes in identifying practical approaches to close gender gaps at work by de-biasing structures and designing fairer processes. As an advisor and speaker, Siri frequently collaborates with organizations ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies and leading professional service firms in order to close gender gaps. Shei is the coauthor, with Iris Bohnet, of “Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results.” She has earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, and a BA in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard College. Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in political science from UCLA and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University.Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Web design and social media pr

Timothy Massad is currently a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School and a consultant on financial regulatory and fintech issues. Massad served as Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2014-2017. Under his leadership, the agency implemented the Dodd Frank reforms of the over-the-counter swaps market and harmonized many aspects of cross-border regulation, including reaching a landmark agreement with the European Union on clearinghouse oversight. The agency also declared virtual currencies to be commodities, introduced reforms to address automated trading and strengthened cybersecurity protections. Previously, Mr. Massad served as the Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that capacity, he oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the principal U.S. governmental response to the 2008 financial crisis. Massad was a partner in the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, LLP. His practice included corporate finance, derivatives and advising boards of directors. Massad was also one of a small group of lawyers who drafted the original ISDA standard agreements for swaps.Howell Jackson is the James S. Reid, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. His research interests include financial regulation, consumer financial protection, securities regulation, and federal budget policy. He has served as a consultant to the United States Treasury Department, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. He frequently consults with government agencies and congressional committees on issues related to financial regulation. From 2023 to 2024, he was a Senior Adviser to the National Economic Council.   Since 2005, Professor Jackson has been a trustee of College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF).  He has also served as a director of Commonwealth, a non-profit dedicated to strengthening financial opportunities for low and moderate-income consumers. At Harvard University, Professor Jackson has served as Senior Adviser to the President and Acting Dean of Harvard Law School. Before joining the Harvard Law School faculty in 1989, Professor Jackson was a law clerk for Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall and practiced law in Washington, D.C. Professor Jackson received his J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Harvard University in 1982 and a B.A. from Brown University in 1976.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in political science from UCLA and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University.Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina</

Joseph S. Nye Jr. is a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus, and former Dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He has served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and as deputy undersecretary of state for security assistance, science and technology. In a recent survey of international relations scholars, he was ranked as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy, and in 2011, Foreign Policy named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers. His most recent book, published in 2024, is “A Life in the American Century.” His other books include “The Power to Lead,” “The Future of Power,” “Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era,” and "Is the American Century Over?” He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and the American Academy of Diplomacy. He received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Princeton University, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, and earned a PhD in political science from Harvard. Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in political science from UCLA and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University.Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill.

Ambassador Wendy Sherman, the 21st U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and the first woman in that position, has been a diplomat, businesswoman, professor, political strategist, author, and social worker. She served under three presidents and five secretaries of state, becoming known as a diplomat for hard conversations in hard places. As Deputy Secretary, she was the point person on China. While serving as Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Sherman led the U.S. negotiating team that reached an agreement on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the P5+1, the European Union and Iran.  And, as Counselor at the State Department, she led on North Korea and was engaged on Middle East negotiations. For her diplomatic accomplishments she was awarded the National Security Medal by President Barack Obama. At Harvard Kennedy School, she was a professor of the practice of public leadership, director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School (where she is now a Hauser Leadership Fellow), and a current and former Senior Fellow at the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. In 2002, along with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Sherman built a global consulting business, The Albright Group. Sherman previously served on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, chaired Oxfam America’s Board of Directors, served on the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Policy Board, and was Director of Child Welfare for the State of Maryland. She is the author of the book: “Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power and Persistence.” Sherman attended Smith College and received a B.A. cum laude from Boston University and a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Maryland. Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in political science from UCLA and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University.Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner of the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team.

With a Republican Congress apparently unwilling to check Trump’s power, many Americans fear a looming constitutional crisis and are looking to the federal courts to ride to the rescue. But political scientist and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Maya Sen, who studies the federal judiciary, says the cavalry probably isn’t coming. The Trump administration has seemingly defied judicial orders on deportations, withholding congressionally appropriated funds for federal programs, eliminating birthright citizenship, and other issues. Meanwhile, surrogates like Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire Elon Musk have stated in social media posts that Trump is simply not bound by judicial decisions and can do pretty much whatever he pleases. Trump has even joined with some of his political supporters calling for impeachment of judges who rule against him, prompting Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to respond and call Trump’s statement “inappropriate.” With the legislative branch of government sitting on the sidelines and without a credible threat of impeachment, Sen says the judiciary is no match for an authoritarian executive in terms of speed of action and political muscle—and was never intended to be. And even if it had been, structural issues with the way decisions are made and how judges are chosen give conservatives an advantage, and have resulted in a Supreme Court that is largely out of step with public opinion. Sen talks with PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli about what can be done to restore both the separation of powers and the balance of power in the U.S. government during this unprecedented pivotal moment in American history.Maya Sen’s Policy Recommendations:Pass a constitutional amendment to end lifetime appointments and limit terms for federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, to 18 years to help depoliticize the process of judicial selection.Exert public and electoral pressure on Congress and political leaders to defend the legislative branch’s constitutional prerogatives and to stop ceding power to the executive branch.Episode Notes:Maya Sen is a political scientist whose interests include law, political economy, race and ethnic politics, and statistical methods. She has testified before Congress and presidential commissions on issues pertaining to the federal courts, and her research has been published in numerous academic journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and The Journal of Politics. . Her writings also include the books “The Judicial Tug of War: How Lawyers, Politicians, and Ideological Incentives Shape the American Judiciary,” and “Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics,” which won the 2019 William H. Riker Book Award for best book published in political economy. She is currently working on a book on the relationship betwe

Danielle Allen and Mark Fagan say that when tested, thoughtfully deployed, and regulated AI actually can help governments serve citizens better. Sure, there is no shortage of horror stories these days about the intersection of AI and government—from a municipal chatbot that told restaurant owners it was OK to serve food that had been gnawed by rodents to artificial intelligence police tools that misidentify suspects through faulty facial recognition. And now the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE say they are fast-tracking the use of AI to root out government waste and fraud, while making public virtually no details about what tools they are using or how they’ll be deployed. But Allen and Fagan say that while careless deployment creates risks like opening security holes, exacerbating inefficiencies, and automating flawed decision-making, AI done the right way can help administrators and policymakers make better and smarter decisions, and can make governments more accessible and responsive to the citizens they serve. They also say we need to reorient our thinking from AI being a replacement for human judgement to a partnership model, where each brings its strengths to the table. Danielle Allen is an HKS professor and the founder of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation. Mark Fagan is a lecturer in public policy and faculty chair of the Delivering Public Services section of the Executive Education Program at HKS. They join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to explain the guidelines, guardrails, and principles that can help government get AI right. Policy Recommendations:Danielle Allen’s Policy Recommendations:* Federally license firms leading AI development in the same way other national high-risk labs are licensed, and require close reporting out of what they are discovering on an ongoing basis.* Support the "people's bid" for TikTok and generally promote an alternative, pro-social model for social media platforms.* Establish AI offices in state governments: Create offices that use AI to enhance openness, accountability, and transparency in government.Mark Fagan's Policy Recommendations:* Implement "sandbox" spaces for regulatory experimentation that allow organizations to test different policy ideas in a controlled environment to see what works.* Adopt a risk-based regulatory approach similar to the EU that categorize AI regulations based on risk levels, with clear guidelines on high-risk activities where AI use is prohibited versus those where experimentation is allowed. Danielle Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy and director of the Democratic Knowledge Project and of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation. She is

For market purists, any mention of the term industrial policy used to evoke visions of heavy-handed Soviet-style central planning, or the stifling state-centric protectionism employed by Latin American countries in the late 20th century. But that conversation turned dramatically over the last several years, as President Joe Biden’s signature legislative achievements like the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act showcased policies designed to influence and shape industries ranging from tech to pharma to green energy. My guest today, Harvard Kennedy School Professor Ricardo Hausmann, is the founder and director of the Growth Lab, which studies ways to unlock economic growth and collaborates with policymakers to promote inclusive prosperity around the world. Hausmann says he believes markets are useful, but have shown themselves inadequate to create public benefits at a time when public objectives like the clean energy transition and shared prosperity have become increasingly essential to human society. In a wide-ranging conversation, we’ll discuss why industrial policy is making a comeback, tools that the Growth Lab has developed to help poorer countries and regions develop and prosper, and the uncertainty being caused by President Trump’s pledge to raise tariffs and protectionist barriers.Ricardo Hausmann's policy recommendations:Encourage governments to track industries that are not yet developed but have the potential for growth and monitor technological advancements to identify how new technologies can impact existing industries or create new opportunities.Develop state organizations with a deep understanding of societal trends and industrial potential, similar to Israel’s office of the Chief Scientist or the U.S. Presidential Commission on Science and Technology.Encourage governments to develop a pre-approved set of tools—including training, educational programs, research programs, and infrastructure—that can be quickly mobilized for specific economic opportunities.Teach policy design in a way that mirrors medical education (e.g., learning by doing as in a teaching hospital), because successful policy design requires real-world experience, not just theoretical knowledge. Ricardo Hausmann is the founder and director of Harvard’s Growth Lab and the Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School. Under his leadership, the Growth Lab has grown into one of the most well regarded and influential hubs for research on economic growth and development around the world. His scholarly contributions include the development of the Growth Diagnostics and Economic Complexity methodologies, as well as several widely used economic concepts. Since launching the Growth Lab in 2006, Hausmann has served as principal investigator for more than 50 research initiatives in nearly 30 countries, inclu

Ten years ago, political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern took an extraordinary data set compiled by Gilens and a small army of researchers and set out to determine whether America could still credibly call itself a democracy. They used case studies 1,800 policy proposals over 30 years, tracking how they made their way through the political system and whose interests were served by outcomes. For small D democrats, the results were devastating. Political outcomes overwhelmingly favored very wealthy people, corporations, and business groups. The influence of ordinary citizens, meanwhile, was at a “non-significant, near-zero level.” America, they concluded, was not a democracy at all, but a functional oligarchy.  Fast forward to 2024 and a presidential campaign that saw record support by billionaires for both candidates, but most conspicuously for Republican candidate Donald Trump from Tesla and Starlink owner Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. That prompted outgoing President Joe Biden, in his farewell address, to warn Americans about impending oligarchy—something Gilens and Page said was already a fait accompli ten years before. And as if on cue, the new president put billionaire tech bro supporters like Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg front and center at his inauguration and has given Musk previously unimaginable power to dismantle and reshape the federal government through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. So what does it mean that American oligarchy is now so brazenly out in the open?  Joining host Ralph Ranalli are Harvard Kennedy School Professor Archon Fung and Harvard Law School Professor Larry Lessig, who say it could an inflection point that will force Americans to finally confront the country’s trend toward rule by the wealthy, but that it’s by no means certain that that direction can be changed anytime soon. Archon Fung is a democratic theorist and faculty director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at HKS. Larry Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School and a 2016 presidential candidate whose central campaign theme was ridding politics of the corrupting influence of money. Archon Fung’s Policy Recommendations:Involve the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in monitoring executive orders and changes to the federal government being made by President Trump, Elon Musk, and other Trump proxies.Demand transparency from Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency about their actions in federal agencies, what changes and modifications they are making to systems, and an accounting of what information they have access to.Lawrence Lessig’s Policy Recommendations:Build support for a test court case to overturn the legality of Super PACs, which are allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money from

Alexander De Croo  became Belgium’s prime minister in October of 2020. It’s a relatively small country, with about 12 million inhabitants—slightly less than the city of Los Angeles—but it’s very much the face of Europe with the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and NATO all calling Brussels home. Prime Minister De Croo, who saw the country through the COVID pandemic, says that the geopolitical and economic upheavals already being instigated by the “America first” ethos of President Donald Trump will present another stiff test for the leadership of not only his country but the EU. In this episode of HKS PolicyCast with host Ralph Ranalli, De Croo says the key to Europe not just surviving that challenge but also thriving will depend on its ability to raise its level of economic competitiveness significantly in the coming decades. While still a powerful trading bloc, the EU’s economic growth has been slowing since the year 2000 and it’s an also-ran to the US and China in the vital tech sector, with only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies being based in Europe. It’s also facing the challenge of long-term demographic trends—by 2040 the EU’s workforce is projected to shrink by 2 million workers a year. So, as the US retreats from global leadership on fronts ranging from the green energy transition to human rights, De Croo says Europe must make urgent economic policy changes to maintain both its values and its status a leader on the world stage. Programming note: As this discussion was being recorded, a coalition of five parties—led by the separatist New Flemish Alliance and not including Mr. De Croo’s center-right Open VLD party—agreed to form a new government, effectively ending his tenure as prime minister.Alexander De Croo’s Policy Recommendations:Eliminate excessive corporate reporting systems like CSRD (the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) that add bureaucratic burdens to businesses without improving corporate behavior.Implement a non-permanent migration system that allows young people to study in Europe and stay for a set period of time, after which they are required to return to their home countries.Maintain Europe's openness to the world while protecting core European interests, and act assertively in areas—trade, climate sustainability, development, diplomacy—where the EU is already a global leader.Episode Notes:Alexander De Croo is the outgoing Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Belgium, a post he held beginning in 2020. De Croo has had a long career in politics and business, including numerous ministerial posts. As Minister of Finance, he helped create a framework for a major European recovery package. As Minister of Pensions, he carried out Belgium's first pension reform package in recent history and was involved in setting up a Pension Reform Commission. As Minister of Development Coo

The warning lights are blinking for the world’s food supply. At least that’s what 150 Nobel Prize and World Food Prize laureates said in a recently-published open letter calling for a “moonshot” urgency effort to start the immediate ramping up of food production to meet the global demands of 9.7 billion people by 2050. Harvard Kennedy School economist Wolfram Schlenker, the new Ray A. Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System says doing that will require urgent policy changes and, in some cases, policy reversals to meet those goals against the headwinds of climate change. Even as crop yields are under stress due to rising temperatures and extreme weather events, Schlenker says spending on research and development of new, climate-resistant crops and other food technologies has declined. Countries are also starting to put up more protectionist barriers around their domestic agricultural sectors, undermining the global free trade in staple food commodities that is essential to preventing severe agricultural shocks that can result in civil upheaval, mass migration, and global instability. Schlenker is the co-author of a groundbreaking study in 2009 which found that crop yields fall precipitously after reaching a certain heat threshold. The study’s conclusions were validated just three years later when a heat wave over the U.S. corn belt saw yields drop by 25 percent. With 700 million people globally already classified as undernourished and the world having at least temporarily breached the crucial 1.5 degrees Celsius warming standard in 2024, it may be the most important problem nobody’s talking about. Schlenker joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about the ticking global food crisis clock and policy changes that could make a difference.Wolfram Schlenker’s Policy Recommendations:Limit beggar-thy-neighbor agricultural policies where countries impose export restrictions when food prices rise. Specifically, implement the Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture passed at COP-28 by ensuring that the World Trade Organization has an enforcement mechanism that limits trade restrictions in agricultural markets following climatic events.Reverse the current decline in public R&D funding for agricultural technologies. Private companies, which currently conduct most of the R&D, do not have the correct incentives to innovate when there are positive spillovers on others.Ensure that the Social Cost of Carbon — the cost of emitting an extra ton of CO2 — reflects its impact on all countries and not just the U.S., as climate change is a global problem.Episode Notes:Wolfram Schlenker is the Ray A. Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System at Harvard Kennedy School. An economist and engineer by training, he studies the intersection of climate, agriculture, and the global economy. His research interests include:The effect of weather and climate on agricul

Jeremy Weinstein became the newest dean in the 88-year history of the Harvard Kennedy School this past June, arriving from Stanford University, where he was an award-winning scholar and the founding faculty director of the Stanford Impact Labs. The pursuit of deep scholarly curiosity and roll-up-your-sleeves impact has been a theme in his life and career, as well as an approach he intends to accelerate schoolwide at HKS under his leadership. Growing up, Weinstein experienced a family run-in with government policy gone horribly wrong—one that could have inspired a deep cynicism about the role of government in people’s lives. He found inspiration instead and embarked on a career that has encompassed field research on the ground in post-conflict countries including Uganda, Mozambique, and Peru; wide-ranging scholarship in areas including political violence, the political economy of development, migration, and technology’s proper role in society; government service at the National Security Council and as Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration. He has also been an academic leader who has led major initiatives including the Stanford Impact Labs and the Immigration Policy Lab. His new job marks a return to HKS, where he earned both his master’s and PhD in political economy and government. He joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about his life experiences, how they shaped him as a scholar and leader, and what he believes the role of the Kennedy School should be in challenging times for academia, the United States, and the world.Policy Recommendations:Jeremy Weinstein’s recommendations for restoring trust in public institutions, expertise, and scholarship:Reclaim the civic purpose of higher education and prioritize its role in serving democratic institutions and solving societal problems.Reconnect to the real-world problems people are experiencing and ensure that the questions being asked and answered by scholars and researchers are ones that can help public institutions make progress.Leverage expertise and use science and innovation to tackle pressing challenges including economic insecurity, housing insecurity, food access, access to health care, and geographic disparities in economic development.Realign incentives and allocate resources to position higher education institutions as active problem-solving partners, particularly at the state and local level where governors, mayors, and county leaders design policies that directly impact people’s daily lives.Demonstrate the value of science, expertise, and policy innovation by producing results people can see and benefit from, and emphasize their value in ensuring that government dollars at all levels are spent efficiently.Episode Notes:Jeremy Weinstein is Dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He

Turbocharged by the internet and mobile technology, legalized gambling has exploded across the globe, leaving behind ruined lives, broken families and financial hardships, and should now be classified as a major public health concern. A four-year study by a public health commission on gambling convened by The Lancet, the respected British journal of medicine, found that net global losses by gamblers could exceed $700 billion by the year 2028, and that 80% of countries now allow some form of legal gambling. But HKS Professor Malcolm Sparrow, a leading scholar on regulating societal harms, says that in reality the percentage of countries where gambling is practiced is closer to 100% because internet- and mobile-based gambling—often using cryptocurrencies—can easily circumvent borders. Among the commission's more concerning findings is that a significant portion of virtual gamblers are teenagers, and that more than 1 in 4 teens are at risk of becoming compulsive or problem gamblers. Sparrow tells PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli that the harms are also widespread, since the suffering from each problem gambler also affects on average six to eight people around them—ranging from spouses to relatives to friends to employers and co-workers. Sparrow says the commission has identified a number of policy solutions to mitigate the growing fallout from gambling expansion, ranging from limiting the speed and intensity of virtual gambling products to prohibiting gambling with credit cards and banning gaming companies from offering loans. Policy Recommendations from The Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling:Push governments to define gambling as primarily a public health issue, and prioritize health and wellbeing over economic gains when crafting gambling policies.Adopt effective regulation in all countries—regardless of whether or not they have legalized gambling—including limiting promotion and marketing, providing accessible support for betting-related harms, and denormalizing gambling through public awareness campaigns.Create independent regulators in jurisdictions where gambling is legal to enforce protections including safeguards for young people, consumer protections, and mandatory limits on gambling activities.Shield development of gambling policies, research, and treatment from industry influence through a shift to independent funding sources.At the international level, require UN entities and intergovernmental organizations to address gambling harms as part of broader health and wellbeing strategies.Create an international alliance of stakeholders to lead advocacy, research, and collaboration on gambling-related issues.Adopt a resolution recognizing the public health impacts of gambling at the World Health Assembly.Episode Notes:Malcolm K. Sparrow is professor of the practice of p

The World Health Organization says smoking is the leading cause of global preventable death, killing up to 8 million people prematurely every year—far more than die in wars and conflicts. Yet the emotions evoked by national and international anti-smoking campaigns and the impact of those emotions has never been fully studied until now. HKS Professor Jennifer Lerner, a decision scientist who studies emotion, and Vaughan Rees, the director for the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, say their research involving actual smokers in the lab shows that sadness—the emotion most often evoked in anti-smoking ads—can actually induce people to smoke more. Lerner and Rees’ research also found that evoking gratitude, an emotion that appears to function in nearly the exact opposite manner to sadness, made people want to smoke less and made them more likely to join a smoking-cessation program. Lerner and Rees join host Ralph Ranalli on the latest episode of the HKS PolicyCast to discuss their research and to offer research-backed policy recommendations—including closer collaboration between researchers who study emotion science, which is also known as affective science, and agencies like the Centers for Disease Control.Policy Recommendations:Jennifer Lerner’s Policy Recommendations:Promote active collaboration between researchers and public health agencies (e.g., CDC, FDA) to develop health communications that leverage the most current, research-backed findings from affective and decision science.Rigorously assess not only the benefits of public service announcements but also potential harms.  Assessments often overlook the emotional distress these messages can cause, despite the potential of distress to undermine desired outcomes.Vaughan Rees’ Policy Recommendations:Expand research into integrating emotion-based strategies, such as gratitude exercises, into school-based prevention programs for adolescents to reduce the risk of tobacco and other substance use, as well as risky sexual behaviors.Introduce research-backed, emotion-based components in cessation counseling and support systems, helping individuals better manage high-risk situations and maintain abstinence after quitting.Dr. Jennifer Lerner is the Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy, Management and Decision Science at the Harvard Kennedy School.She is the first psychologist in the history of the Harvard Kennedy School to receive tenure.  Lerner, who also holds appointments in Harvard’s Department of Psychology and Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, conducts research that draws insights from psychology, economics, and neuroscience and aims to improve decision making in high-stakes contexts. Together with colleagues, Lerner developed a theoretical framework that successfully

Anti-LGBTQI+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex) discrimination is on the rise, both in the United States, where hate crime statistics are climbing, and globally, with the increase in right-wing populist governments weaponizing public sentiment against marginalized people. But there are also rights advocates around the world pushing back, despite threats of physical harm, prosecution, and even death. The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy’s Timothy McCarthy and Diego Garcia Blum, who are leading a new program to support those advocates, joined host Ralph Ranalli to on the most recent episode of PolicyCast to talk about the project and about policy responses to a growing threat. The Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program recently held a summit featuring 20 leading rights advocates from countries including Kenya, Russia, Brazil, Bangladesh, Morocco, and Pakistan to explore research-based methods to build social movements and to dismantle myths and stigmas harming their communities. McCarthy, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is the program’s faculty chair, Garcia Blum is program director and a member of the Carr Center staff. Together they also co-teach the course “Queer Nation: LGBTQI+ Protest, Politics, and Policy in the United States” at HKS.Policy Recommendations:Diego Garcia Blum’s Policy recommendations:Applying international pressure on countries enacting anti-LGBTQI+ laws is crucial, but it must be applied consistently across all nations to effectively curb such policies.Appoint LGBTQI+ individuals to public leadership roles and encourage them to run for public office to increase visibility, listen to their input, and show strong commitment to equality.Tim McCarthy’s Policy recommendations:Work with post-colonial nations to remove language from colonial-era statutes that continue to be used to discriminate against LGBTQI+ people.Revoke the tax-exempt status of U.S.-based religious and nonprofit organizations that fund and promote efforts to pass anti-LGBTQI+ statutes in other countries.Require U.S. embassies to work in collaboration with the State Department, and specifically the Office of the Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons, to grant access to LGBTQI+ people traveling to the United States and asylum to those fleeing persecution.Pass the Equality Act in the U.S. Congress to reaffirm America's commitment to LGBTQI+ freedom and equality at home and strengthen its moral standing as a global advocate for human rights.Contributors:Timothy Patrick McCarthy was the first openly gay faculty member at the Kennedy School and is faculty chair of the Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Curren

America is in the grip of a severe housing crisis. Tenants have seen rents rise 26 percent while home prices have soared by 47 percent since early 2020. Before the pandemic, there were 20 US states considered affordable for housing. Now there are none. And 21 million households—including half of all renters—pay more than one-third of their income on housing. Harvard Kennedy School Associate Professor Justin de Benedictis-Kessner and former Burlington, Vermont Mayor Miro Weinberger say that’s because homebuilding hasn’t kept up with demand. They say housing production is mired in a thicket of restrictive zoning regulations and local politics, a “veto-cracy” that allows established homeowners—sometimes even a single disgruntled neighbor—to block and stall new housing projects for years. Weinberger, a research fellow at the Taubman Institute for State and Local Politics, and de Benedictis-Kessner, whose research focuses on urban policy, say even well-intentioned ideas like so-called “inclusionary zoning” laws that encourage mixed-income housing development may also be contributing to the problem. They join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to discuss how housing became a affordability nightmare for millions of people. During this episode, they offer policy ideas on how streamline the inefficient and often subjective ways home building projects are regulated and how to level the democratic playing field between established homeowners and people who need the housing that has yet to be built.Miro Weinberger’s policy pecommendations:Remove subjective standards such as “neighborhood character” from housing approval processes in favor of objective, measurable ones.Loosen zoning restrictions that enforce suburban-style housing development in favor of creating denser, more urban environments that historically provided more housing and are popular today.Encourage leaders of municipal governments to take an active role in housing development, seeing themselves as developers taking an active role in more housing being built.Justin de Benedictis-Kessner’s policy recommendations:Integrate housing policy with other related policies including transportation and economic development in a holistic way that drives across-the-board progress.Transfer approval power currently exercised by appointed boards and elected city councils to municipal housing and planning staff experts and empower them with objective standards. Justin de Benedictis-Kessner is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His current research focuses on some of the most important policy areas that concern local governments, such as housing, transportation, policing, and economic development. His research also examines how citizens hold elected officials accountable, how representation translates

As Vice President Kamala Harris making a strong bid for the U.S. presidency, HKS Women and Public Policy Program Co-Director Hannah Riley Bowles says Harris is just one of many “path breakers” who have dramatically increased leadership opportunities for women. But she also says the reaction to Harris’ campaign in the media and the public conversation shows how the popular narrative about the efficacy of female leaders still lags behind the reality of what successful women are achieving. And she says that narrative also isn’t supported by research, including multiple studies showing that on average women are actually rated higher than men for a number of important leadership qualities associated with performance.  Bowles is the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the HKS, she chairs the HKS Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences (MLD) Area, and she is currently wrapping up her tenure as co-director of the Center for Public Leadership. She’s a recognized expert in the study of negotiation and gender. She joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about how studies say women in leadership roles are really performing, the ways women can successfully attain positions of responsibility and power despite traditional obstacles, and some forward-looking policy recommendations that could make things better. Hannah Riley Bowles’ Policy Recommendations:- Adopt family-friendly workplace policies that engage men equally in unpaid family and caregiving work.- Adopt more transparency in salary standards and more equity in making both women and men aware of the resources available to help them achieve higher-paying positions and positions of authority.- Require organizations to report their gender pay gaps to help them determine whether women are underpaid compared to men in the same job or if they are underrepresented in higher-level positions.Hannah Riley Bowles is the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). Hannah chairs the HKS Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences (MLD) Area and co-directs the HKS Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP) and the Center for Public Leadership. A leading expert on gender in negotiation, Hannah’s research focuses on women’s leadership advancement and the role of negotiation in educational and career advancement, including the management of work-family conflict. Her work has been featured in Harvard Business Review’s “Definitive Management Ideas of the Year” and she is the faculty director of Women and Power and Women Leading Change, the HKS executive programs for women in senior leadership from the public, private and non-profit sectors. She won the HKS Manuel Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003. She holds a doctorate in business administration degree from the Harvard Business School, a master’s in Public Poli

The attempted assassination of former President and candidate Donald Trump has catalyzed an important discussion about both actual violence and threats of violence against political candidates, office-holders, policymakers, election officials, and others whose efforts help make our democracy work. Harvard Kennedy School professors Erica Chenoweth and Archon Fung join host Ralph Ranalli to talk about political violence, what it is, what it isn’t, why it has grown, and—most importantly—strategies for mitigating it to ensure the health of democratic governance in the United States and beyond. The motivations and political leanings of the 20-year-old Pennsylvania man who shot and wounded Trump with an AR-15-style assault rifle, Thomas Crooks, remain murky, making it difficult to make sense of why it happened. In one sense it was a continuation of an unfortunate 189-year-old tradition of assassinations and attempted assassinations of U.S. presidents. But for many scholars, researchers, and political analysts, it also appeared to be a culmination of a more recent uptick in the willingness of some people to use violence to achieve their political aims in today’s highly polarized society.  Fung is director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at HKS and has talked to numerous local officials about their first-hand accounts of being on the receiving end of violent threats. Chenoweth is director of the Nonviolence Action Lab and is a longtime scholar of both political violence and nonviolent alternatives.Please also see: The Ash Center's webinar on Political Violence and the 2024 ElectionErica Chenoweth is the Academic Dean for Faculty Engagement and the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School. Chenoweth studies political violence and its alternatives. They have authored or edited nine other books and dozens of articles on mass movements, nonviolent resistance, terrorism, political violence, revolutions, and state repression, including the recent “Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know” (2021) and “On Revolutions” (2022). Along with Zoe Marks, Chenoweth is also the author of the forthcoming book “Bread and Roses: Women on the Frontlines of Revolution,” which explores how women's participation impacts mass movements. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that uses social science tools and evidence to support movement-led political transformation. Foreign Policy ranked Chenoweth among the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013. They hold a Ph.D. and an M.A. in political science from the University of Colorado and a B.A. in political science and German from the University of DaytonArchon Fung is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government and director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovatio

Populism—the political term that describes a group of self-described common people who oppose elite—has turned up in what for many is an unexpected place: the push for a worldwide transition to clean energy. Even though they’re vital to preventing the most catastrophic consequences of the manmade global climate crisis, clean energy measures are encountering pushback from multiple sources ranging from local citizens groups, to cost-conscious consumers, to self-styled conservationists, to right-wing politicians, and to corporate boardrooms. Harvard Kennedy School Professor Robert Z. Lawrence and Professor Dustin Tingley from Harvard’s Department of Government say a number of forces are shaping the new clean energy pushback, including genuine popular resentment in some communities left over from economic transitions like the loss of manufacturing jobs due to globalization. Robert Lawrence is a former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and an economist affiliated with the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government who studies trade policy. Dustin Tingley of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences is a political scientist researching the politics of the climate crisis and co-author of the new book “Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse.” With time running out for the world to make significant reductions in fossil fuel use, they join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to discuss strategies and policy ideas to keep the momentum going toward a sustainable energy future.Policy Recommendations:Robert Z. Lawrence’s Policy recommendations:Move away from protectionism and use international open trade to create opportunities for developing countries to contribute to the energy transition and grow economically.Accelerate investment in clean energy technology development to ensure that green energy solutions are significantly more cost-effective than fossil fuel alternatives.Replace current incentive-based government programs to encourage clean energy development with a carbon tax to bring in increased revenue and fund clean energy research and infrastructure changeover.Exempt imported steel from current U.S. tariffs when it is used in making clean energy infrastructure such as wind turbines.Dustin Tingley’s policy recommendationsAt the federal level, systematically analyze the public finance challenge that states and communities are going to face from the clean energy transition and plan supportPrioritize transparency when making green investments in communities, to ensure they are effective and that companies are playing by the rules.Pass legislation to share revenue from wind and solar project leases on federal lands with state and region

Public policy has great power, both to improve people’s lives if it is planned and executed well and to cause significant suffering if it is not, says Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf, who will step back from his post this summer to rejoin the faculty. He joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli in this episode to discuss the crucial role policy plays in everyday life, the often-imperfect ways it gets made, and the factors that shape it, including politics, values, education, and communication. He also addresses the issue of public distrust in policy advice and the vital role that values play in policy making and educating public leaders, even when those values—including economic justice and diversity and inclusion—are under attack by some in the political sphere. “Our job is to enunciate our values, and to explain how those values can help us serve the world,” he says. Elmendorf became dean of HKS in 2015 after a career steeped in policy research and formulation, mostly involving his chosen field of economics. He has worked as the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a deputy assistant director of the U.S. Treasury, an assistant director of research at the Federal Reserve Board, and a senior economist at the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers. As dean, he’s seen the school through a campus expansion, the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing polarization and attacks on government and higher education in the public sphere, and the current domestic political fallout from the conflict between Gaza and Israel—all while diversifying the school’s community of students and scholars and affirming the important role of training public leaders and developing workable policy solutions to big public challenges.Doug Elmendorf’s Policy Recommendations:Experts should be humble, admit the limitations of their knowledge, and make sure that the policies they propose benefit all members of society.Policymakers should talk with experts in an appropriately constructive, critical manner, ask questions designed to get at the truth most effectively, and use that truth in what they do.Members of the public should prioritize interacting with other people in their societies and their communities who are different from them.The publish should have empathy for leaders given the difficulty of making good policy, but they should also be appropriately demanding and expect their leaders to be straight with them and to work hard on policies that can help improve people's lives.Douglas Elmendorf has been dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School since 2016. He had been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution after serving as the director of the Congressional Budget Office from January 2009 through March 2015. He had previously been a senior

HKS Senior Lecturer Linda Bilmes, an expert on public finance who has studied post-9/11 war costs for the past 20 years, says their staggering $5 trillion cost was enabled by what she calls “The Ghost Budget.” Using an unprecedented combination of borrowing, accounting tricks, and outsourcing, presidential administrations, Congress, and the Pentagon were able to circumvent traditional military budget processes in a way that kept war costs out of the public debate and resulted in trillions being spent with minimal oversight. The result: corporations and wealthy investors raking in huge profits, massive waste and fraud, and—combined with the Bush and Trump tax cuts—a shifting of the burden of the costs of war away from the wealthy and onto middle- and lower-income people and future generations. Of course by any metric, the United States-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were costly. Human life? At least 430,000 Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistani civilians dead, along with more than 7,000 U.S. military personnel and thousands of civilian contractors. Democratic progress? Afghanistan is once again an authoritarian theocracy under the Taliban, and instead of transforming Iraq and the region, the U.S. invasion and occupation undermined popular sentiment toward democracy, unleashed sectarian violence, and strengthened autocratic regimes. But the budgetary problems are something we can address now, Bilmes says, with congressional reforms and planning prudently for the long-term costs of the wars, including caring for veterans. “The Ghost Budget” is also the title of Bilmes’ next book, which will be published next year.Linda Bilmes’ Policy RecommendationsCreate a veterans trust fund with an oversight board to pay for the long-term costs of caring for military personnel who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, costs which will not peak for as much as 50 years.Amend existing laws to automatically cover Iraq and Afghanistan veterans for toxic exposure to burn pits.Pass legislation requiring a set aside of a certain amount of funding long-term veterans care for every dollar appropriated for war spending.Restrict the ability of the White House and Congress to use the emergency and OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) funding mechanisms to spend money on conflicts and to move war spending back into the main defense budget process.Address budgetary dysfunction in Congress by strengthening and empowering the House and Senate budget committees and streamlining their complicated and confusing budget subcommittee structures. Episode Contributors:Linda J. Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, is a leading expert on budgetary and public financial issues. Her research focuses on budgeting and public administration in the public, private and non-profit sectors. She is intere

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Rana Mitter and Harvard Business School Associate Professor Meg Rithmire say that after decades of tremendous growth, an economically slowing China is the new normal. With a growing debt-to-GDP ratio, an aging population, a devastating real estate bubble, and a loss of confidence among both foreign investors and domestic consumers, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party face a daunting array of thorny problems—including ones of their own making resulting from the One Child law policy and other home-grown policies. So how should the United States and other Western countries respond? Is it a moment China's rivals can use to their advantage, or one where great power rivalry can give way to great power cooperation? And how will an economic slowdown affect China’s geopolitical ambitions, and is an annexation of Taiwan now more or less likely? Rana Mitter is a historian and the S.T. Lee Chair in U.S.-Asia relations at the Kennedy School and the former director of the China Center at Oxford University. Harvard Business School Associate Professor Meg Rithmire is a political scientist who studies the comparative political economy of development in Asia and China’s economic relations with the rest of the world, particularly the United States. They join host Ralph Ranalli to explore some of the underlying reasons behind for the country’s current malaise, and to offer some policy ideas to help create a positive outcome with relations with China moving forward. Rana Mitter’s Policy Recommendations: Liberal nations should take a realistic view of security issues involved in engagement with China, while preserving cultural interaction and scientific knowledge exchanges with the long-term benefits to both sides. The United States should focus on deepening free trade agreements and opening up new markets and in the Asia Pacific region to counter-balance China's influence.  Meg Rithmire’s Policy Recommendations: U.S. and Western officials should reassure China they that they want to see its economy succeed as long as it isn’t weaponizing trade and is moderating its geopolitical ambitions to reduce conflict. Continue pursuing “de-risking” policies instead of decoupling policies that would lead to a hard economic break with China. Avoid framing the situation as a choice between bringing jobs back to the United States or keeping them in China, while also addressing the fallouts of global trade and compensating those who are negatively affected.  Episode Notes: Rana Mitter is the ST Lee Chair in U.S.-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and a member of the board of directors of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. A historian who fo

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Ed Djerejian says Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin once told him “There is no military solution to this conflict, only a political one.” Rabin was assassinated a few years later and today bullets are flying, bombs are falling, and 1,200 Israelis are dead after the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 and nearly 30,000 Gazans have been killed in the Israeli response. Yet Djerejain still believes that a breakthrough is possible even in the current moment, as horrible as it is. Djerejian, a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Relations, says the crisis has shaken the regional status quo to the point where—if the United States pursues diplomacy that includes principled pragmatism, coalition-building, and good old- fashioned backbone—a breakthrough may finally be possible. But in a recent paper he argues that any breakthrough will have to be built around a two-state solution, which he says is the only path to peace and stability not only in Israel and Palestine, but the wider Middle East. Djerejian’s career as a diplomat spanned eight U.S. presidential administrations beginning with John F. Kennedy’s, and he also served as U.S. Ambassador to Syria and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. Ed Djerejian's Policy Recommendations:The U.S. should stake out a strong, principled position on a two-state solution based on land for peace.The U.S. should build a broad multinational coalition around its diplomacy in the region.U.S. leaders and diplomats should make American national security interests clear, both globally and in the region.Ambassador (Ret.) Edward P. Djerejian is a residential Senior Fellow at the Middle East Initiative in Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Relations. Djerejian joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1962 and his 32-year diplomatic career spanned eight presidential administrations from John F. Kennedy to William J. Clinton. Djerejian is a leading expert on national security, foreign policy, public diplomacy, and the complex political, security, economic, religious, and ethnic issues of the broader Middle East. He is the author of “Danger and Opportunity: An American Ambassador's Journey Through the Middle East.” He recently completed a nearly 30-year tenure as founding director of Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. Ambassador Djerejian graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1960. He received an Honorary Doctorate in the Humanities from his alma mater in 1992 and a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, from Middlebury College. He speaks Arabic, Russian, French, and Armenian. His many awards and honors include

As our discourse and our politics have become both more polarized and paralyzed, Harvard Kennedy School faculty members Erica Chenoweth and Julia Minson say we need to refocus on listening to understand, instead of talking to win. In mid-2022, the School launched the Candid and Constructive Conversations initiative, based on the idea that frank yet productive discussions over differences are not only vital to democracy and a functioning society, but that the ability to have them was also an essential skill for students, staff, and faculty in the Harvard community and beyond to learn. The effort—which uses techniques and principles based on surveys and decision science—took on even greater urgency after the recent events in Israel and Gaza and their fallout in the U.S., including at Harvard and other universities. Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment and the academic dean for faculty Engagement at HKS, as well as one of the world’s leading authorities on conflict and alternatives to political violence. Associate Professor of Public Policy Julia Minson is a decision scientist who studies the psychology of disagreement, and has developed research-based, practical methods that nearly anyone can use to make difficult conversations into productive ones.Policy Recommendations:Erica Chenoweth’s Policy Recommendations:Have local governments invest more in creating opportunities for bridging divides in civil societyMaking election day a national holiday and supporting activities that are about participating in the political process and so it feels like something we all do togetherUse the Chatham House Rule and other tools to create conversational spaces that encourage open and inclusive dialogue.Julia Minson’s Policy Recommendations:Create a curriculum for teenagers to learn the skills of constructive conversation across differencesTeach HEAR and other easy-to-understand conversational receptiveness training methods widely to enable candid and constructive conversations between individuals.Erica Chenoweth is the Academic Dean for Faculty Engagement and the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School, Faculty Dean at Pforzheimer House at Harvard College, and Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. They study political violence and its alternatives. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that provides empirical evidence in support of movement-led political transformation. Chenoweth has authored or edited nine books on mass movements, nonviolent resistance, terrorism, political violence, revolutions, and state repression. Their recent book, “Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know,” explores

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Kathryn Sikkink and former longtime Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth have spent years both studying the transformational effects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and have worked on the ground to make its vision of a more just, equal world a reality. On December 10th, the world celebrated not only the annual Human Rights Day, but also the 75th anniversary of the UDHR, which some historians and social scientists consider to be the greatest achievement in the history of humankind. It was the first time representatives of the world community declared that every human person on earth was entitled to the same rights as every other, without discrimination, and no matter the circumstances. It was an achievement that was both historically radical—legal slavery in the United States had ended just 80 years earlier—and yet one which made perfect, urgent sense in the post-World-War-II context of a humanity whose collective conscience was still reeling at the horrors and inhumanity of conflict. Appalled by the dehumanization and mass slaughter of human beings in the Holocaust, where 6 million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis along with Poles, Roma, homosexuals and other groups, by Japanese atrocities including 2.7 million people murdered in Northern China alone, by the first use of atomic weapons, and by other acts of mass civilian killing, the world’s nations gathered to write a new definition of what it means to be human. The result was the UDHR, which was drafted by a committee led by former U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. It was radical not just because it was so universal, but also because it was remarkably comprehensive—going far beyond basics like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to enumerating human rights to privacy, health, adequate housing, freedom from torture and slavery, the right to nationality, to take part in government, to work for equal pay, to have protection against unemployment, to unionize, to a decent standard of living, to rest and leisure, to enjoy culture, art, and science, and finally to a social and international order where the rights in the Declaration could be fully realized. ikkink is a faculty affiliate of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at HKS, where Roth just finished a senior fellowship. They join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to explain how the UDHR has forever changed the way we think about our fellow human beings, and to suggest policies that will keep pushing the global community toward a more just, fair, and compassionate world.Policy Recommendations:Kathryn Sikkink’s Policy Recommendations:Make teaching about the global origins and transformative impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a core component of studying civics and human rights.Renew the global campaign for democracy and author

Legacy admissions, particularly at elite colleges and universities, were thrust into the spotlight this summer when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended affirmative action in admissions. The ruling raised many questions, and fortunately, Harvard Kennedy School professor David Deming and Harvard Economics Professor Raj Chetty were there with some important answers—having just wrapped up a 6-year study of the impact of legacy admissions at so-called “Ivy-plus” schools. Students spend years preparing to face judgment by colleges and universities as a worthy potential applicant. They strive for report cards filled with A’s in advanced placement courses. They volunteer for service projects and participate in extracurricular activities. They cram furiously high-stakes standardized tests. They do all that only to find a big question many top colleges have is effectively: “Who’s your daddy? And who's your mother? Did they go to school here?” Using data from more than 400 colleges and universities and about three and a half million undergraduate students per year, the two economists found that legacy and other elite school admissions practices significantly favor students from wealthy families and serve a gate-keeping function to positions of power and prestige in society.  Read Chetty and Deming's paper (co-authored by John Friedman): Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of College Admissions David Deming’s Policy Recommendations:Build a robust system of collecting and measuring the distribution of income for admitted students at colleges across the country.Make standardized data in student income distribution transparent and widely available to facilitate better educational policy decisionmaking.Raj Chetty’s Policy Recommendations:Rework legacy admissions and other practices at elite colleges to reduce bias in favor of students from high-income familiesImprove access for low- and middle-income students to a broader array of private, public, and community colleges as a means to promote economic mobilityRaj Chetty is the William A. Ackman Professor of Public Economics at Harvard University. He is also the director of Opportunity Insights, which uses “big data” to understand how we can give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better chances of succeeding. Chetty's research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. His work on topics ranging from tax policy and unemployment insurance to education and affordable housing has been widely cited in academia, media outlets, and Congressional testimony. Che

Harvard Kennedy School faculty member Jorrit de Jong and Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson say the big, intractable problems challenges facing city leaders today are too complex to be addressed by any one agency or government department. Complex challenges like the shortage of economic opportunity and affordable housing, homelessness, the effects of the climate crisis, crime—and can only be solved by multiple organizations working together. But that’s easier said than done. Bringing together government agencies, nonprofits, private business, academia, and the public into successful collaborations can be a huge challenge. Different people bring different agendas and goals. They don’t necessarily trust each other. Sometimes they can’t even agree on what the problem actually is and they fail before even getting started. In a recent study, de Jong and Edmondson found that the most successful problem-solving collaborations have a number of things in common, including building a culture of safety and trust and being empowered to try, fail, and learn from mistakes. Sometimes, they say, the key can be just finding a place to start. Jorrit de Jong is the Emma Bloomberg Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School. He is director of the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University. His research and teaching focus on the challenges of making the public sector more effective, efficient, equitable, and responsive to social needs. A specialist in experiential learning, Jorrit has taught strategic management and public problem-solving in degree and executive education programs at HKS and around the world. He is also Faculty Co-Chair of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a joint program of Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School, the world’s most comprehensive effort to advance effective problem-solving and innovation through executive education, research, curriculum development, and fieldwork in cities.He is also Academic Director of the Innovations in Government Program at the Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. In that capacity, he launched the Innovation Field Lab, an experiential learning, executive education, and action-oriented research project working with 15 cities in Massachusetts and New York to help them leverage data, community engagement and innovation to revitalize distressed and underinvested neighborhoods. He holds a PhD in Public Policy and Management from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, as well as a Master in Philosophy and a Master in Public Administration from Leiden University. He has written extensively, including the books “The State of Access: Success and Failure of Democracies to Create Equal Opportunities;” “Agents of Change: Strategy and Tactics for Social Innovation;” and “Dealing with Dysfunction: Innovative Problem Solving in the Public

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Todd Rogers and Lecturer in Public Policy Lauren Brodsky say trying too hard to sound intelligent—even when communicating complex or nuanced ideas—isn't a smart strategy. Because today’s overburdened information consumers are as much skimmers as readers, Rogers and Brodsky teach people how to put readers first and use tools like simplification, formatting, and storytelling for maximum engagement. They say you can have the most brilliant, well-researched ideas in the policy world, but you can’t communicate them, they’ll never reach the ultimate goal—making an impact. Rogers is the faculty chair of the Behavioral Insights Group at the Kennedy School and the author of “Writing for Busy Readers: The Science of Writing Better.” Brodsky is senior director of the HKS Communications Program and the author of “Because Data Can’t Speak for Itself,” a book about how to more effectively communicate the data that supports groundbreaking research and evidence-based policy proposals. They say snarky millennials may be to something when they dismissively mocked your wordy social posts and text messages by replying “TLDR”—"too long; didn’t read”—because that’s how many busy readers feel about a lot of the writing that researchers, academics, and policy wonks do.Todd Rogers is a Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is a behavioral scientist who works to improve communication, increase student attendance, and strengthens democracy. At Harvard, he is the faculty director of the Behavioral Insights Group and faculty chair of the executive education program Behavioral Insights and Public Policy. He received a Ph.D. jointly from Harvard's department of Psychology and Harvard Business School, and received a B.A. from Williams College, majoring in both Religion and Psychology. He is also co-founded two social enterprises: the Analyst Institute which focuses on improving voter communications, and EveryDay Labs, which partners with school districts to reduce student absenteeism. He is the author of the book “Writing for Busy Readers: The Science of Writing Better.”Lauren Brodsky is the senior director of the HKS Communications Program and a lecturer in public policy who teaches courses on policy writing and persuasive communications. She is also faculty chair of the executive education program “Persuasive Communication: Narrative, Evidence, Impact.” A co-author of the book “Because Data Can’t Speak for Itself,” she also publishes the website Policy Memo Resource (www.policymemos.hks.harvard.edu) at HKS. Lauren lectures widely on policy communications and the use of evidence in writing for governmental agencies and non-profit orga

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who served as CDC director from 2021 to 2023, calls the job “probably the hardest thing I will ever do.” But she also calls it “the honor of a lifetime.” When she was appointed by President Biden as the CDC’s 19th director, she was already used to politicized health care issues, having spent her formative years as a physician working on HIV and AIDS. But COVID thrust her into an unprecedented spotlight, forcing her to lead a demoralized agency through the challenges of implementing policy and informing the public while navigating a highly polarized and often toxic public sphere and rapidly changing scientific data. Walensky says she learned some hard and valuable lessons during her tenure.  After stepping down from the post this summer, Walensky is now a senior fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, studying the topic of women’s leadership in the health care field. She is also exploring health care policy issues in concurrent fellowships at both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School.Dr. Rochelle Walensky is a renowned expert exploring the challenges and what it means for leaders, organizations, and the world to protect public health. Dr. Walensky was the chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and served as the 19th director of the CDC and the ninth administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Having received an M.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, she also trained in internal medicine and earned an MPH in clinical effectiveness from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2001. In the earliest part of the pandemic, Dr. Walensky served on the front lines, taking care of patients, serving on the Massachusetts General Hospital incident management team, and conducting research on vaccine delivery and strategies to reach underserved communities. Dr. Walensky’s tenure at the CDC began on January 20th, 2021, when she led the nation—and the world—through unprecedented times, facing the largest density of infectious threats likely ever seen in the United States. Dr. Walensky has also worked to improve HIV screening and care in South Africa, led health policy initiatives, and researched clinical trial design and evaluation in a variety of settings. She was chair of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health from 2014 to 2015. She has also been a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents and served as co-director of the Medical Practice Evaluation Center at Massachusetts General Hospital since 2011 before assuming the position of CDC director.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he hold

Kennedy School Lecturer in Public Policy Bruce Schneier says Artificial Intelligence has the potential to transform the democratic process in ways that could be good, bad, and potentially mind-boggling. The important thing, he says, will be to use  regulation and other tools to make sure that AIs are working for us, and just not for Big Tech companies—a hard lesson we’ve already learned through our experience with social media. When ChatGPT and other generative AI tools were released to the public late last year, it was as if someone had opened the floodgates on a thousand urgent questions that just weeks before had mostly preoccupied academics, futurists, and science fiction writers. Now those questions are being asked by many of us—teachers, students, parents, politicians, bureaucrats, citizens, businesspeople, and workers. What can it do for us? What will it do to us? Will it take our jobs? How do we use it in a way that’s both ethical and legal? And will it help or hurt our already-distressed democracy? Schneier, a public interest technologist, cryptographer, and internationally-known internet security specialist whose newsletter and blog are read by a quarter million people, says that AI’s inexorable march into our lives and into our politics is likely to start with small changes, like AI helping write policy and legislation. The future, however, could hold possibilities that we have a hard time wrapping our current minds around—like AI entities creating political parties or autonomously fundraising and generating profits to back political candidates or causes. Overall, like a lot of other things. it’s likely to be a mixed bag of the good and the bad.Bruce Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, a faculty affiliate at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at HKS, a fellow at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. An internationally renowned security technologist, he has been called a "security guru" by the Economist and is the New York Times best-selling author of 14 books—including A Hacker's Mind—as well as hundreds of articles, essays, and academic papers. His influential newsletter “Crypto-Gram” and blog “Schneier on Security” are read by over 250,000 people. Schneier is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and AccessNow, and an advisory board member of EPIC and VerifiedVoting.org. He is the Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.PolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, De

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Joseph Kalt and Megan Minoka Hill say the evidence is in: When Native nations make their own decisions about what development approaches to take, studies show they consistently out-perform external decision makers like the U.S. Department of Indian Affairs. Kalt and Hill say that’s why Harvard is going all in, recently changing the name of the Project on American Indian Economic Development to the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development—pushing the issue of governance to the forefront—and announcing an infusion of millions in funding.  When the project launched in the mid-1980s, the popular perception of life in America’s indigenous nations—based at least partly in reality—was one of poverty and dysfunction. But it was also a time when tribes were being granted increased autonomy from the federal government and starting to govern themselves. Researchers noticed that unexpected tribal economic success stories were starting to crop up, and they set about trying to determine those successes were a result of causation or coincidence. Over the decades, Kalt and Hill say the research has shown that empowered tribal nations not only succeed themselves, they also become economic engines for the regions that surround them. The recent announcement of $15 million in new support for the program, including an endowed professorship, will help make supporting tribal self-government a permanent part of the Kennedy School’s mission. Joseph P. Kalt is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and director of the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development, formerly the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. He is the author of numerous studies on economic development and nation building in Indian Country and a principal author of the Harvard Project's The State of the Native Nations. Together with the University of Arizona's Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, the Project has formed The Partnership for Native Nation Building. Since 2005, Kalt has been a visiting professor at The University of Arizona's Eller College of Management and is also faculty chair for nation building programs at the Native Nations Institute. Kalt has served as advisor to Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, a commissioner on the President's Commission on Aviation Safety, and on the Steering Committee of the National Park Service's National Parks for the 21st Century. A native of Tucson, Arizona, he earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles, and his B.A. in Economics from Stanford University.Megan Minoka Hill is senior director of the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development and director of the Honoring Nations program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Honori

The history of American democracy has always been fraught when it comes to race. Yet no matter how elusive it may be, Harvard Kennedy School professors Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Archon Fung say true multiracial democracy not only remains a worthy goal, but achieving it is critically important to our collective future. From the earliest, formative days of the American political experiment, the creation of laws and political structures was often less about achieving some Platonic ideal of the perfect democratic system than it was about finding tenuous compromises between people and groups who had very different beliefs and agendas when it came to the status of people of other races. Those tensions have been baked into our system ever since, and the history of the movement toward a true multi-racial democracy in the United States has been marked with conflict, progress, reaction, and regression—from the 3/5’s Compromise to the Civil War to Jim Crow to the Civil Rights movement and on up to threats to democracy in our present day. Fung is a leading scholar of citizenship and self-governance and the faculty director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Muhammad is a professor of history, race, and public policy and director of the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project. He is also the former director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the world’s leading library and archive of global black history.  They say that in our increasingly diverse and interconnected country and world, the question isn’t whether or not to strive for a multiracial democracy, but, if you don’t fully reckon with how race has shaped our system of governance, can you really have democracy at all?Archon Fung is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance. He focuses upon public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He co-directs the Transparency Policy Project and leads democratic governance programs of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School. His books include Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy. He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in professional journals. He received two SBs — in philosophy and physics — and his PhD in political science from MIT.Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He directs the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project and is the former Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library and

As the U.S. prepares to spend hundreds of billions on new projects, HKS Professor Stephen Goldsmith says successfully upgrading our infrastructure will not only require spending all that money smartly, but spending it on infrastructure that is itself smart—full of sensors that can anticipate problems before they require costly repairs and that serve multiple functions instead of just one. With the passage of 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, the federal government has ushered in levels of infrastructure spending we haven’t seen since the days of President Dwight Eisenhower. Between direct spending and loans, there could be as much as $800 billion dollars in spending the coming years on everything from roads and bridges to water treatment to public transit to climate readiness to clean energy to internet access. While the current infrastructure spending has been pushed mainly by Democrats, he says he’d also like to see Republicans rediscover their Eisenhower-style belief in public investment—both in physical infrastructure and what he calls soft infrastructure like job training and education  to address social and economic inequities. Goldsmith is director of the Innovations in American Government Program at the Kennedy School, but he is also a veteran of the infrastructure front lines—having served as the mayor of Indianapolis, a deputy mayor in New York City, as a chief domestic policy advisor to the George W. Bush campaign in 2000. Stephen Goldsmith is the Derek Bok Professor of the Practice of Urban Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and director of Data-Smart City Solutions at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University. He currently directs Data-Smart City Solutions, a project to highlight local government efforts to use new technologies that connect breakthroughs in the use of big data analytics with community input to reshape the relationship between government and citizen. He previously served as Deputy Mayor of New York and Mayor of Indianapolis, where he earned a reputation as one of the country's leaders in public-private partnerships, competition, and privatization. Stephen was also the chief domestic policy advisor to the George W. Bush campaign in 2000, the Chair of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and the elected prosecutor for Marion County, Indiana from 1977 to 1989. He has written numerous books, including The Power of Social Innovation; Governing by Network: the New Shape of the Public Sector; Putting Faith in Neighborhoods: Making Cities Work through Grassroots Citizenship; The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance; and most recently Growing Fairly, How to Build Opportunity and Equity in Workforce Development. Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS Policy

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Gordon Hanson and Harvard Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability James Stock say an important part of the green energy transition will be mitigating its effects on employment, both in the United States and overseas. Talking about the clean energy transition can conjure up images of commuters using sleek electric trains and electric cars powered by the sun and wind, and of workers with good-paying jobs installing the infrastructure of the future. But the outlook for communities that are economically tied to the fossil fuel economy that will be left behind isn’t quite as sunny.  Stock is director of Harvard's Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, which brings together researchers from around the university to collaborate on climate solutions. Hanson is co-director of the Reimagining the Economy Project at the Kennedy School's Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. They say making the green energy transition is urgent and vital, but to do it successfully will mean planning a different sort of transition for almost a million workers in just the American fossil fuel extraction and refining industries alone—not to mention millions of workers further up the fossil fuel ecosystem. Thanks to previous economic shocks like globalization, automation, and the decline of the coal industry, we’ve seen first-hand the devastation that large-scale job loss can wreak on one-industry cities and company towns. Hanson and Stock say harnessing the lessons from those prior transitions can help power a future that’s both green and inclusively prosperous.Gordon Hanson is the Peter Wertheim Professor in Urban Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He is also Chair of the Social and Urban Policy Area at HKS, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Hanson received his PhD in economics from MIT in 1992 and his BA in economics from Occidental College in 1986. Prior to joining Harvard in 2020, he held the Pacific Economic Cooperation Chair in International Economic Relations at UC San Diego, where he was founding director of the Center on Global Transformation. In his scholarship, Hanson studies the labor market consequences of globalization. He has published extensively in top economics journals, is widely cited for his research by scholars from across the social sciences and is frequently quoted in major media outlets. Hanson’s current research addresses how the China trade shock has affected US local labor markets, the causes and consequences of international migration, and the origins of regional economic divides.James H. Stock is Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University; the Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; and a member of the faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School. His current research includ

When it comes to the climate crisis, there’s barely a day that goes by when we don’t hear about the impending effects of rising sea levels and storm-driven tides. But Harvard professors Jaqueline Bhabha and Hannah Teicher say there’s another rising tide that’s not getting as much attention, despite its potential to reshape our world. It’s the wave of climate migrants—people who have been and will be driven from their homes by rising seas, extreme heat, catastrophic weather, and climate-related famine and economic hardship. Some will try to relocate within their home countries, others across international borders, but most experts predict that there will be hundreds of millions of them. In fact the United Nations says hundreds of millions of people globally have already been forced to relocate for climate-related reasons, and experts say as many as a billion people could be seeking new homes by 2050. Meanwhile, immigration is already a political third rail in many countries, including the United States, and has driven a rise in both authoritarianism and ethnonationalism. So where will they go? And what kind of welcome will they receive when they get there? Bhabha and Teicher are working on those questions, examining everything from the language we use when we talk about climate migration to international law and human rights to urban planning policies that can help create win-win situations when newcomers arrive. They say major changes to our climate and to the earth’s habitable spaces are coming, and a large part of adjusting to that successfully will involve another difficult change—to our way of thinking about how we share the world with our fellow humans.Jacqueline Bhabha is a faculty affiliate of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, director of research for the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, a professor of the practice of health and human rights at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School. From 1997 to 2001 Bhabha directed the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago. Prior to 1997, she was a practicing human rights lawyer in London and at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. She has published extensively on issues of transnational child migration, refugee protection, children's rights and citizenship. She is author of Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age, and the editor of Children Without A State and Human Rights and Adolescence. Bhabha serves on the board of directors of the Scholars at Risk Network, the World Peace Foundation, and the Journal of Refugee Studies. She is also a founder of the Alba Collective, an international NGO currently working with rural women and girls in developing countries to enhance financial security and youth rights. She received a first class honors degree and an M.Sc. from Oxford Universi

Harvard Kennedy School professors Nancy Gibbs and Tom Patterson say local news is civic infrastructure. And it's crumbling. Like bridges, local news organizations use facts to help people connect with each other over the chasm of partisan political divides. People need reliable information to make important decisions about their lives—Where should I send my child to school? Who should I vote for? Should I buy a bigger house or a new car?—just as much as they need breathable air, clean water, and safe roads. Unfortunately, internet-driven market forces have cut traditional sources of revenue by 80 percent, and vulture capitalists have bought up local newspapers, sold off their physical assets and gutted newsroom staffs. Across America, more than 2,000 local news organizations have shut their doors in just the past two decades. Meanwhile, studies show that when local news declines, voting and other key forms of civic participation decline with it. Gibbs and Patterson join host Ralph Ranalli to talk about how to rebuild the local news ecosystem and with it, the civic health of America’s community life.Nancy Gibbs is the director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics Public Policy and the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice of Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Until September 2017, she was Editor in Chief of TIME, the first woman to hold the position. During her three decades at TIME, she covered four presidential campaigns and she is the co-author, along with Michael Duffy, of two best-selling presidential histories: The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity (2012), and The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House (2007). She has interviewed five U.S. presidents and multiple other world leaders, and lectured extensively on the American presidency. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and a master’s degree in politics and philosophy from Oxford University, where she was a Marshall Scholar. She has twice served as the Ferris Professor at Princeton University, where she taught a seminar on politics and the press.Thomas Patterson is Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at HKS. He has authored numerous books, including Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism; How America Lost Its Mind: The Assault on Reason That's Crippling Our Democracy, and Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself?. An earlier book, The Vanishing Voter, examined electoral participation, and his book on the media’s political role, Out of Order, received the American Political Science Association’s Graber Award as the best book of the decade in political communication. His first book, The Unseeing Eye, was named by the American Association for Public Opinion Research as one of the 50 most influential books on publi

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Robert Stavins and Professor Daniel Jacob of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are at the forefront of new efforts to monitor and control methane, a potent greenhouse gas. It used to seem like methane wasn't such a big deal. It was that other climate gas, the one that was the butt of cow flatulence jokes and that only stayed in the atmosphere for a decade or so. But since important global warming targets are now just 7 years away and science has developed a better understanding of both methane’s pervasiveness and its potent role in warming the atmosphere, it’s now very much on the front burner for increasingly concerned climate policymakers. The good news is that the science of monitoring methane emissions has taken huge leaps forward recently, thanks to advances in supercomputing, weather modeling, and satellite imaging, to the point where we could soon have daily real-time monitoring and measuring of methane emissions around the globe. Our two guests are playing an important role in that effort. Robert Stavins is an economist and the director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Project and the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements. Daniel Jacob was named the world’s top environmental scientist last year by Research.com and his groundbreaking work has been instrumental in creating methane monitoring systems so precise they can track emissions to a specific company or another individual source—from space. Both say that the need to address the methane issue is urgent and that the countries of the world now have the wherewithal to get methane emissions under control. There are hopeful signs, including a major international agreement called the Global Methane Pledge, but the big question will be whether global leaders have the will to follow through.Robert Stavins is the A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy & Economic Development, Director of Graduate Studies for the Doctoral Programs in Public Policy and in Political Economy and Government, Cochair of the MPP/MBA and MPA/ID/MBA Joint Degree Programs. He is the Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a University Fellow of Resources for the Future, former Chair of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Economics Advisory Board, and a member of the editorial councils of scholarly periodicals. His research has examined diverse areas of environmental economics and policy and has appeared in a variety of economics, law, and policy journals, as well as several books. Stavins directed Project 88, a bipartisan effort cochaired by former Senator Timothy Wirth and the late Senator John Heinz to develop innovative approaches to environmental problems. He has been a consultant to government agencies, international organizations, corporations, and advocacy groups. He holds a BA in philo

Economist and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Joe Aldy says  possibly the most complex—and one of the most existentially important—problems facing humanity is how to pull out the roots of fossil fuel infrastructure that are so deeply embedded in the global economy. The work is complex and the scale is immense; In fact it’s been said that transitioning the global economy from fossil fuels to sustainable sources will require the largest reallocation of capital in human history. Meanwhile Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its willingness to weaponize oil and natural gas distribution was a sign to many that the green energy transition will be bumpy and buffeted by geopolitical crises and the domestic politics of countries around the world. Joe Aldy is here to help us swap our rose-colored glasses for a clear-eyed vision of what the future holds for the economics of climate.Joe Aldy is a Professor of the Practice of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a University Fellow at Resources for the Future, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also the Faculty Chair for the Regulatory Policy Program at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. His research focuses on climate change policy, energy policy, and regulatory policy. In 2009-2010, Aldy served as the Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Environment, reporting through both the National Economic Council and the Office of Energy and Climate Change at the White House. Aldy was a Fellow at Resources for the Future from 2005 to 2008 and served on the staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 2000. He also served as the Co-Director of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, Co-Director of the International Energy Workshop, and Treasurer for the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists before joining the Obama Administration. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University, a Master of Environmental Management degree from the Nicholas School of the Environment, and a BA from Duke University.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.

Matt Andrews, the faculty director of the Building State Capability program at Harvard Kennedy School, says the reasons why African nations haven’t done better at soccer’s world championships have a lot in common with why much of the continent’s economic promise has also gone unfulfilled. The World Cup, the biggest championship in soccer—or football, depending on where you are from—is currently underway and it's one of the two most-watched sporting events on the planet, the other being the Olympic Games. Yet even though it’s a world-wide event, the list of World Cup champions is dominated by European countries like France, Italy, and Germany, plus a handful of South American ones like Argentina and Brazil. No African nation, meanwhile, has ever made it even as far as the semifinals, although Morocco will have the opportunity to make history tomorrow when they face off against Portugal in the quarterfinals. Some possible reasons for Africa’s lack of success were recently outlined in a research paper by Matt Andrews, the Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development at HKS and faculty director of the Building State Capability program. Andrews, who grew up as a soccer fan in South Africa, says the problem isn’t talent—in fact, top professional soccer teams around the world are loaded with African-born players. Instead, Andrews says the reasons Africa’s soccer teams don’t do better look a lot like the reasons their economies don’t do better—they lack the institutional support that would help them realize their latent talent and promise. Matt Andrews is here today to talk football, goals, aspirations, and how to put African on a winning path.Matt Andrews is the Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He has worked in over 50 countries across the globe as a civil servant, international development expert, researcher, teacher, advisor and coach. He has written three books and over 60 other publications on the topics of development and management. He is also the faculty director of the Building State Capability program at Harvard, which is where he has developed – with a team – a policy and management method to address complex challenges. This method is called problem driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) and was developed through over a decade of applied action research work by Matt and his team. It is now used by practitioners across the globe. Matt holds a BCom degree from the University of Natal, Durban (South Africa), an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD in Public Administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.The

Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has a unique perspective on the topic of climate resiliency. He was a city official in 2012 for Superstorm Sandy—which many call the worst disaster in New York City’s history—and in 2021 for Hurricane Ida, which caused $24 billion worth of flooding in the Northeastern United States, making it the costliest and most damaging storm since Sandy nine years before. He was also mayor during most of those nine years, when policymakers, planners, and the citizens of New York tried to grapple with the enormous task of making the city more resilient in the face of ever more destructive and dangerous weather events driven by the man-made climate crisis and global warming. With 520 miles of shoreline, 443 miles of underground railroad and subway tracks, and 14 major under-river tunnels, New York City is a nightmare to protect from rising seas and catastrophic rainfall, and de Blasio and city planners proposed billions in dollars of resiliency projects—including extending Manhattan’s shoreline 500 feet at the island’s vulnerable southern tip. But those plans, he says, encountered some surprisingly strong headwinds, including neighborhood opposition, short political and public attention spans, and competing concerns including the COVID-19 pandemic. So how do vulnerable localities like New York City overcome such obstacles and prepare for an increasingly adversarial climate? de Blasio, who is currently a visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School, explores the possibilities with host Ralph Ranalli.Bill de Blasio is a Fall 2022 Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. He served as the 109th mayor of New York City from 2014 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he held the office of New York City Public Advocate from 2010 to 2013 and started his career as an elected official on the New York City Council, representing the 39th district in Brooklyn from 2002 to 2009. Prior to being an elected official, de Blasio served as the campaign manager for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s successful senatorial campaign of 2000 and got his start in NYC government working for Mayor David Dinkins. He launched a campaign for president during the 2020 Democratic primary but ended his bid before the primary election. He holds an A.B. from New York University in metropolitan studies, and a master of international affairs degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an A.B. in Political Science from UCLA and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University.The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows </str

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Erica Chenoweth and Lecturer in Public Policy Zoe Marks say the parallel global trends of rising authoritarianism and attempts to roll back women’s rights are no coincidence. The hard won rights women have attained over the past century—to education, to full participation in the workforce, in politics, and civic life, and to reproductive healthcare—have transformed society and corresponded with historic waves of democratization around the world. But they have also increasingly become the target of authoritarian leaders and regimes looking to displace democracy with hierarchies controlled by male elites and to re-confine women in traditional roles as wives, mothers, and caregivers. LGBTQ people and others who don’t fit into the traditional binary patriarchal model have become targets not just in places like Iran, Russia, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia but also China, Hungary, Poland, and the United States. But Chenoweth and Marks say the authoritarians are also fearful of empowered women—and that their research says they should be. Social movements like the protests currently underway in Iran that include large numbers of women tend to be more resilient, creative, and ultimately successful—which means the future of democracy and the future of women’s empowerment in this pivotal historic era may go hand-in-hand. Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University. They study political violence and its alternatives. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that provides empirical evidence in support of movement-led political transformation. Chenoweth has authored or edited nine books and dozens of articles on mass movements, nonviolent resistance, terrorism, political violence, revolutions, and state repression. Their recent book, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2021), explores what civil resistance is, how it works, why it sometimes fails, how violence and repression affect it, and the long-term impacts of such resistance. They also recently co-authored the book On Revolutions (Oxford, 2022), which explores the ways in which revolutions and revolutionary studies have evolved over the past several centuries. Their next book with Zoe Marks, tentatively titled Rebel XX: Women on the Frontlines of Revolution, investigates the impact of women’s participation on revolutionary outcomes and democratization.Chenoweth maintains the <a hre

During his 7 years leading Sweden’s government from 2014 to 2021, Stefan Löfven had a front row seat to observe the rise of right-wing and neo-fascist political parties both at home and around Europe. A former welder, and union leader from working class roots, Löfven earned the nickname “the escape artist” during his years as prime minister for his knack for holding together governments despite his country’s increasingly fractious and polarized politics. But this year the Sweden Democrats—a party with its roots in fascist and white nationalist ideology—became the second leading vote-getter and were embraced as part of a ruling coalition government by other conservative and centrist parties. Löfven says the Sweden Democrats, who were once politically radioactive, are now the tail wagging the dog of Sweden’s new government. And he says the rise of far-right parties is a trend all over Europe, most recently in Italy, but also in Poland and Hungary, where they have fanned fears of economic insecurity, cultural displacement, and crime to scapegoat immigrants and offer authoritarianism as a cure-all, which has enabled them to steal followers from more mainstream parties and take power. Löfven says Europe’s democratic multilateralists are now on the back foot, trying to sell democracy and tolerance in a social-media-driven communications culture that favors the simplistic slogans and memes favored by the right. In this tumultuous era in European politics, he says only time will tell whether the rapid pace of societal change will keep driving voters into the arms of extremist parties, or whether the unpopular Russian war on Ukraine being prosecuted by the Godfather of the continent’s strongmen, Vladimir Putin, will take some the shine off authoritarianism’s allure. Stefan Löfven grew up as foster child in a working-class family in the small town in northern Sweden. He studied social work at university and worked as a welder for a manufacturer of railcars. In 1981 he began taking an active role in the Swedish Metalworkers’ Union, ultimately become the president 2006–2012. In 1973 he started a local Swedish Social Democratic Youth League club. In 2012 he became leader of the party. In the parliamentary election in September 2014 Löfven won, and his party is still the leading and largest party in Sweden. He stepped down as a prime minister in November 2021. Today, Löfven is chairman of the board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, as well as chairman of the board of the Olof Palme Memorial Fund. A staunch supporter of the United Nations and multilateralism, he was appointed to lead the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism by Secretary-General António Guterres in February.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Danny Schneider says research shows that even as they were being lauded as heroes during the COVID-19 pandemic, working conditions for hourly workers were deteriorating. Eight years ago,  Schneider co-founded The Shift Project, which has built an unprecedented repository of data on scheduling and working conditions for hourly service workers. But if there was silver lining to the pandemic, it was that it also put a spotlight on the plight of workers who had been largely invisible as they dealt with low pay, ruthlessly unpredictable algorithmic scheduling, and health problems related to stress and overwork. And, as evidenced by recent successful efforts to unionize at places like Starbucks and Amazon, Schneider says hourly workers may even have found a voice in shaping their own working environments. The question, he says, is, "Are corporate executives and policymakers are actually listening?"

As healthcare policy navigates what is widely seen as a historic inflection point, Harvard Kennedy School professors Amitabh Chandra and Soroush Saghafian say policymakers need to pursue change with care, deeply analyzing the weaknesses the COVID-19 pandemic exposed and using that data to design intelligent policy that can create truly transformational change.  COVID stretched the U.S. health care system and health care systems across the world to the breaking point and beyond, buy if there’s a silver lining, it may be that there is now the urgency and will among politicians and policymakers to pursue meaningful changes that could result in improved access to healthcare services that are both more affordable and higher quality.  But Saghafian and Chandra say quick-fix policy changes—even those that are well-intentioned—may be destined to fail, including the health care provisions in the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which were hailed as a breakthrough if for nothing else other than finally breaking the pharmaceutical industry’s stranglehold on any attempt to control prescription drug prices. Professor Chandra is the director of Health Policy Research at the Kennedy School, and his research focuses on innovation and pricing in the biopharmaceutical industry and value and racial disparities in health care delivery. Professor Saghafian is the founder of the Public Impact Analytics Science Lab at Harvard and his work combines big data analytics, health policy, and decision science to discover new insights and provide new solutions to various existing problems. They’re here to talk through this important historic moment in healthcare policy, both in terms of challenges and opportunities.

New Center for Public Leadership co-director Deval Patrick ascribes bad leadership as a root cause of many of the huge problems facing human society and the world, including the climate crisis, and threats to democracy and human rights. But are bad leaders flawed because of their personal shortcomings or are they an inevitable product of the flawed systems they operate within? And what makes a good leader? Is it their ability to get people to follow them? Or is it choosing the right things to lead those people toward? Patrick recently became co-director with Hannah Riley Bowles of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, or CPL, as it’s usually referred to here in Cambridge. Transcending his humble beginnings growing up as the son of a single mother on the South Side of Chicago, Patrick has built an impressive—and impressively varied—leadership resume, including serving as governor of Massachusetts, becoming the first Black man to do so. He also served as the Assistant US Attorney General for Civil Rights under President Bill Clinton, as a top corporate executive at Texaco and Coca-Cola, and even launched a brief bid for the White House in 2020. Patrick says that too many of today’s leaders are focused on getting into leadership positions and keeping them—with all the power and perks that entails—but have lost track of the greater meaning of what they can achieve for the common good. He joins us to talk about how good, values-based leadership can help turn things around—and the role he hopes CPL can play in that effort.

For more than a quarter century, economist and Harvard Kennedy School professor Dani Rodrik has been ringing alarm bells about the dangers of globalization. And for a long time, it didn’t seem like a whole lot of people were listening. Now as record economic inequality, a climate in crisis, and global financial shocks from to the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have exposed the vulnerabilities and shortcomings of unchecked globalization and neoliberal orthodoxy about the primacy of markets, Rodrik may be having the world’s least-satisfying “I told you so” moment. But while the temptation might be to look backward for vindication, Rodrik is choosing to look toward solutions instead. He says that finding a way forward for the world economy will require two kinds of thinking: small picture—about how to create good jobs in an equitable way in specific settings—and big picture: imaging possible futures and what a more inclusive, post-globalization economy might look like. And he says it will also mean freeing political and economic discourse from what he calls a “prison of ideology” that rigidly limits policymakers’ ability to consider solutions outside of market-centric approaches. Rodrik recently launched a new project called Reimagining the Economy with fellow professor Gordon Hansen, supported by a $7.5 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The initiative will be based at the Kennedy School's Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy.

As war rages in neighboring Ukraine, Moldovan President Maia Sandu talks to about fighting corruption, moving her country toward the European Union, and the half million refugees who’ve crossed the border since February. Sandu is a popular choice on lists of up-and-coming world leaders, including a recent one that nicknamed her “the tightrope walker.” Sandu’s task has been daunting—preserving her country’s young democracy while fighting endemic corruption; modernizing Moldova’s economy and turning its focus toward the European Union and away from Russia; and dealing with the pro-Russian breakaway region of Transnistria. And she’s had to take on all of those challenges in the context of the COVID pandemic and the Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine, which has sent an estimated 500,000 refugees over the country’s eastern border, of which 100,000 have taken up temporary residence in Moldova. Sandu has shown resilience in the face of challenges and setbacks—as education minister she was frustrated by the corruption she found in the country’s education system, so she and some allies founded their own political party, the party of Action and Solidarity. She lost her post as prime minister in 2019 after just five months, but a year later she was elected president and helped her party sweep into power in parliamentary elections. Sandu says the key to her success has been convincing ordinary Moldovans, who she says are weary from decades of pervasive corruption and scandal in government, that political reforms and an economic and political alignment with Europe hold the key to a better future.

Rema Hanna is the Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South-East Asia Studies and Chair of the International Development Area at the Harvard Kennedy School.  She also serves as the Faculty Director of Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) at Harvard University’s Center for International Development and is the co-Scientific Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) South East Asia Office in Indonesia.  In addition, Professor Hanna is a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and an affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD). Her research revolves around improving the provision of public services in developing and emerging nations, particularly for the very poor.  She combines economic theory, qualitative field work, extensive data collection, and cutting-edge empirical analysis to offer insights into how governments function and how they can do better.  Part of her work focuses on how to improve overall service delivery, as well as understanding the impacts of corruption, bureaucratic absenteeism, and discrimination against disadvantaged minority groups on delivery outcomes.  She is particularly interested in how governments can improve and strengthen social protection, tax collection, and environmental safety. Prior to joining the Harvard Kennedy School, Hanna was an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at New York University. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a B.S. from Cornell University with Honors and Distinction.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Public Affairs and Communications is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an A.B. in Political Science from UCLA and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University.The co-producer of PolicyCast is Susan Hughes. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.