PolicyCast

Adam Conner, a spring 2018 fellow at the Institute of Politics, digs into the nuance behind the question many are asking about platforms like Facebook and Twitter, namely: are they good for democracy?

Admiral James “Sandy” Winnefeld, a non-resident senior fellow at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, knows firsthand the damage inflicted by the ongoing opioid crisis. After losing his son to addiction in late 2017, he has committed himself to finding solutions to the seemingly intractable public health dilemma. He discusses his recently-launched foundation Stop the Addiction Fatality Epidemic (SA...

Francisco Marquez Lara MPP 2012 describes his experience as a political prisoner in his home country of Venezuela. He describes what drove him to pursue his political advocacy despite the inherent risks, what his experience was like in captivity, what he learned from the ordeal, and what motivates him to continue his advocacy in exile. Marquez is the Executive Director of Vision Democratica Founda...

The Shorenstein Center’s Claire Wardle and journalist Hossein Derakhshan explain how information disorder has taken the world by storm, breaking down how it’s created, produced, and distributed, paying particular attention to the ways in which social media has exacerbated the problem, and making the case that the term F*** News isn’t just inaccurate, but actively harmful to democratic institutions...

HKS Lecturer Juliette Kayyem provides context to the endless stream of news regarding Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. In addition to giving a brief on what we now know, Kayyem also discusses the potential ramifications if President Trump were to attempt to fire Mueller in a move reminiscent of Nixon’s infamous Saturday Night Massacre.

With tax reform legislation now in conference committee having cleared both the U.S. House and Senate, HKS Professor Jason Furman returns with an update on where things stand. He addresses the economic growth the bill’s proponents have claimed; why provisions dealing with “pass-through corporations” have raised questions from economists on both sides of the aisle; how the elimination of the State...

HKS Professor Nicholas Burns sounds the alarm about what he sees as a deliberate attempt to dismantle the US State Department and Foreign Service.

HKS Senior Lecturer Jeff Seglin offers advice and strategies on how to handle conversations about politics with family and friends who you may not see eye to eye with. And as an added bonus, he shares his family recipe for turkey stuffing.

Kansas City Mayor Sly James explains why city governments have become models for policy innovation and good governance while federal and state governments continue to be mired in partisan gridlock. He speaks to the value of data-driven decision making, as well as his experience enticing Google to pilot their high speed internet service in Kansas City, and the ongoing attempts to attract Amazon’s 2...

HKS Professor Ricardo Hausmann, the director of the Kennedy School’s Center for International Development, explains the concept of economic complexity and why it has become a reliable predictor of future economic growth. He also discusses the Atlas of Economic Complexity, an interactive website that could help entrepreneurs and policymakers see where a particular country’s economy is heading. This...

HKS Professor Jason Furman speaks with host Matt Cadwallader about the Trump administration’s tax reform proposal, expressing serious doubts about some of the claims made by the Council of Economic Advisors, a White House agency he previously presided over as chairman from 2013 to early 2017. Among the issues he digs into are simplifying the tax code; increasing the standard deduction for the midd...

Former US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, currently a Fall 2017 Fellow at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, recounts her experiences as a private sector executive and how they shaped her attitude towards environmental stewardship, and ultimately prepared her for her role in President Obama’s cabinet.

Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and former Doctors for America CEO Alice Chen dive into the state of healthcare in the United States, from the Trump administration’s recent moves to end cost-sharing subsidies, to finding ways to cut costs by focusing efforts on prevention. They also discuss the oft-neglected impact of loneliness and stress on health. Dr. Chen and Vice Admiral Murthy were...

Professor Tony Saich, director of the Kennedy School's Ash Center, lays out the challenges and tensions China faces just before the Communist Party gathers to choose its leadership at the 19th Party Congress, and how President Xi Jinping hopes to overcome them.

As Chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler reclassified broadband as a public utility, to ensure that internet service providers would continue to treat all data equally. Now, his successor is trying to undo those efforts, and he’s not happy about it. Wheeler is currently a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, as well as a visiting professor at Harvard...

As South Africa’s Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela investigated and exposed corruption at the highest levels of government. Now she’s a fellow at the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative and is sharing her experience and insights on what it takes to hold powerful public officials accountable.

The bloody events that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia this summer shocked the national conscience, leaving many to wonder how such a thing could take place in modern America. In this week’s roundtable discussion, Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Lecturer Robert Livingston, and IOP Fall 2017 Fellow Karen Finney put Charlottesville into a broader historical, psychological, and economic con...

Dr. John Park, the director of the Korea Working Group at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, digs into the political and economic forces driving Kim Jong-un’s continued provocations; the difficulty China faces in pressuring their longtime ally to give up its nuclear ambitions; and how the calculus has changed for officials in Washington.

For the last few months, former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been working with students and faculty at HKS on the deeply complex problems he grappled with during his decade-long tenure as the world's top diplomat. In this episode, Ban discusses the experiences that drove him to pursue public service as a young man - including a high school encounter with John F. Kennedy; the sk...

Prof. Dani Rodrik has never been shy about bucking conventional wisdom, and many of his insights, often deemed unorthodox at their inception, now seem prescient. Nowhere is that more clear than in his warning, twenty years ago, that unrestricted globalization could have a backlash effect, straining the fundamental ideals that support democratic governance. In this episode, Rodrik explains some of...

Former EPA Chief Gina McCarthy explains how she was able to get utility companies, the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, on board with regulations to fight global climate change. The resulting Clean Power Plan has helped bring emissions from US electricity production to their lowest level since 1993. She also discusses the EPA’s future under Scott Pruitt, her successor in th...

HKS and HGSE Professor David Deming delves into the complicated causes and consequences of inequality, discusses why jobs lost from traditional sectors like manufacturing aren’t likely to return, and explains his belief in education as an important piece of the solution.

Farai Chideya has covered every presidential election since 1996, but after last year’s raucous campaign, she wondered how how political campaign coverage is influenced by the gender and racial makeup of our political press. This spring she joined the Shorenstein Center as a Joan Shorenstein Fellow to take a closer look at the question, but was surprised by the number of newsrooms that were deeply...

After a series of upset victories for right-wing populist movements around the globe, the French presidential election has been subject to close international scrutiny. But the narratives that animate that scrutiny often reflect international uncertainty over the stability of the post-war liberal world order, rather than the complicated politics that have driven France over the last few years. As...

Former New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, a visiting fellow at both the Kennedy School's Belfer Center and Institute of Politics, takes us behind the scenes of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, reflects on the value of the U.S. Senate and its infamous filibuster, and discusses the challenges facing Republicans as they try to turn their control of Congress and the Whit...