PolicyCast

Senior Lecturer Marshall Ganz describes the essential role of storytelling in leadership and organizing. He explains how skilled campaigners leverage the public narrative to their advantage by appealing first to the heart, and then the mind, and cites recent examples from both sides of the aisle.

HKS Professor David Keith describes both the promise and peril involved with using geo-engineering to mitigate the effects of climate change. Solar radiation management (SRM) could conceivably cool the earth by placing particles in the upper atmosphere that reflect sunlight away. It's an idea that goes back as far as the Johnson administration, but has long been seen as too risky to be worth serio...

Former Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel, who recently stepped down as U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, emphasizes the value of the State Department’s public diplomacy efforts, despite signs that the Trump Administration could soon curtail them. He also discusses how journalism needs to adapt to a crowded marketplace of ideas where facts aren't always regarded...

Josh Earnest, former White House Press Secretary during the Obama administration, offers his assessment of the Trump administration’s handling of the press, and gives a behind the scenes look at several key moments in Obama’s second term, including when ISIS overtook the Iraqi city of Mosul, the accidental killing of an American hostage in a US counterterrorism operation, and Hillary Clinton’s sur...

How do you turn protest into policy? Three HKS experts discuss the aftermath of the historic Women’s March on Washington this past January, and explain what needs to happen next in order to translate that activism into real policy changes. Featuring HKS Assistant Professor Leah Wright Rigueur, Women and Public Policy Program Executive Director Victoria Budson, and HKS Adjunct Lecturer Tim McCarthy...

Mary Graham, Co-Director of the Transparency Policy Project at the Kennedy School’s Ash Center, discusses her book Presidents’ Secrets: The Use and Abuse of Hidden Power, which traces the evolution of secrecy in the executive branch, beginning with George Washington’s remarkably open administration, through the communist scares of the 20th century, all the way to the current president, Donald Trum...

Gil Kerlikowske, the recently retired commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and current Institute of Politics fellow, discusses the breakdowns in the rollout of the Trump administration’s executive order limiting travel by citizens of seven Middle Eastern nations into the United States. Kerlikowske details the complexity involved in implementing a major policy across the country’s lar...

HKS Professor Matthew Bunn, co-principal investigator for the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom, explains how the US nuclear arsenal is managed, what the outgoing Obama administration’s $1 trillion commitment to modernization will entail, and what, if any, changes can be expected under President Trump. He also discusses the state of non-proliferation and the greatest nuclear threats the...

HKS Professor Kathryn Sikkink shows how human rights efforts over the last century have largely succeeded in improving the living conditions for the vast majority of the world, and that even though the work is far from over and setbacks are inevitable, there is reason to have hope for things to continue to improve.

Three faculty members discuss the history of presidential leadership, how Donald Trump’s business experience will translate to the federal government, and how his relationship with a republican congress could play out. Guests include Senior Lecturer David King, chair of the Kennedy School’s Masters of Public Administration programs, Lecturer Barbara Kellerman, Founding Executive Director of the Sc...

Three HKS faculty members discuss the broad economic challenges facing President Donald Trump as he takes office, including the cumulative effects of decades of wage stagnation, rising healthcare costs, and declining economic mobility, as well as the growing challenges posed by automation and the gig economy. Featuring Dean Douglas Elmendorf, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, Pro...

As Donald Trump prepares to take office, three HKS faculty members discuss the challenges he’ll face in pursuing his unique brand of politics on the world stage. Featuring former US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, former Department of Homeland Security Official Juliette Kayyem and Foreign Policy Columnist Stephen Walt.

Sushma Raman, executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights and adjunct lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School, digs into the challenges facing human rights organizations on both the international and local levels and how they are rising up to meet the challenge.

HKS Professor Sheila Jasanoff urges us to closely consider the ways technologies have come to govern our lives, and question if unbridled technological innovation is inherently a good thing, or if it’s worth taking a step back before we make the next giant leap.

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy discusses the challenges posed by the growing crisis of opioid addiction in the United States, how to combat the over-prescription of painkillers, and the importance of eliminating the stigma that often surrounds addiction. He also discusses how his advocacy on public health issues will continue during the Trump administration. Murthy was on campus thanks to the Cen...

Nancy Lindborg, President of the U.S. Institute of Peace, discusses the development of practical tools that empower communities around the world to avoid violent conflict before it starts, and de-escalate where violence has already erupted.

Dr. Amanda Sloat, former US State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Southern Europe and Eastern Mediterranean Affairs, explains the situation in Turkey, just a few months removed from a military coup attempt, as it grapples with stark internal political divisions, violent conflicts in neighboring Syria and Iraq, an influx of millions of refugees and increasingly tense alliances with the Un...

Chuck Hagel, former US secretary of defense, discusses what motivated him to pursue military and public service, and examines how military service is regarded in modern American society. Secretary Hagel is at the Kennedy School as a joint visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics and Belfer Center.

HKS Associate Professor Todd Rogers demonstrates the drastic emotional impact electoral wins and losses have on political partisans, influencing their overall happiness even more than national tragedies. He also discusses our tendency to believe in a favorable future and introduces the concept of paltering, which describes the active use of truthful statements to mislead.

HKS Professor Alex Keyssar offers an historical perspective to modern worries about rigged elections and weighs the prevention of voter fraud against the risk of voter suppression.

Peter Quilter, a non-resident fellow at the Kennedy School’s Ash Center, details the internal state of affairs in Colombia, Venezuela, and Cuba, revealing that despite the unique nature of each country’s problems, their futures are all interconnected.

HKS Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad makes the case that modern hot-button issues surrounding race, policing and mass incarceration are fundamentally rooted in a widespread failure to educate Americans about their country’s racial history.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, recipient of the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, discusses his desire to pursue peace despite the concessions it might entail in a 2013 interview on PolicyCast. Santos had been on campus to deliver an address at the JFK Jr. Forum, sponsored by the Institute of Politics.

HKS Lecturer Siddharth Kara of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy explains how his research into the tens of millions of girls around the world who have been forced into sexual slavery led him to Hollywood, where he wrote and produced the new feature film “Trafficked.” The film, based on true stories, follows three enslaved teens who end up in a Texas brothel after being trafficked across the...

Iranian journalist Yeganeh Rezaian, a Fall 2016 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Center, discusses the challenges she faced as a reporter in her home country, and describes the common thread that joins her experience with that of journalists, especially women, across the Middle East. She then offers advice to young reporters interested in reporting from the region.