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 prevent

Public policy, values, and politics: Why so much depends on getting them right

20 days ago 41m 3s

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 t

The Ghost Budget: How U.S. war spending went rogue, wasted billions, and how to fix it

Mar 29th, 2024 45m 49s

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

The Great Creep Backward: Policy responses to China’s slowing economy

Mar 14th, 2024 55m 37s

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 p

Two peoples. Two states. Why U.S. diplomacy in Israel and Palestine needs vision, partners, and a backbone

Feb 29th, 2024 38m 39s

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,

We can productively discuss even the toughest topics—here’s how

Feb 16th, 2024 46m 14s

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 document that redefined humanity: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 75

Dec 21st, 2023 43m 10s

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

Legacy of privilege: David Deming and Raj Chetty on how elite college admissions policies affect who gains power and prestige

Nov 29th, 2023 41m 26s

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, Ha

Need to solve an intractable problem? Try collaborative governing

Nov 9th, 2023 42m 21s

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 depa

How to keep "TLDR" syndrome from killing your policy proposal

Oct 25th, 2023 45m 12s

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

Dr. Rochelle Walensky on making health care policy under fire

Oct 5th, 2023 41m 29s

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 directo

AI can be democracy’s ally—but not if it works for Big Tech

Sep 20th, 2023 43m 53s

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

The more Indigenous nations self govern, the more they succeed

Jun 8th, 2023 35m 24s

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 make

If you don’t have multiracial democracy, you have no democracy at all

May 16th, 2023 45m 54s

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 wor

Why smart infrastructure is a smart investment—for both Democrats and Republicans—in an era of historic public works spending

Apr 18th, 2023 36m 34s

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

Transitioning to clean power without workers absorbing the shock

Apr 6th, 2023 38m 54s

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

The rising tide no one’s talking about—finding homes for millions of climate crisis migrants

Mar 20th, 2023 35m 47s

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 ri

Local news is civic infrastructure. And it’s crumbling. Can we save it?

Mar 7th, 2023 44m 48s

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 polit

There's groundbreaking new science to help cut methane emissions, but is there the political will?

Feb 8th, 2023 40m 35s

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

Joe Aldy on the complex economics of the clean energy transition

Jan 25th, 2023 45m 37s

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

Goals and realities: What World Cup performances can teach us about development in African countries

Dec 9th, 2022 33m 44s

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’

How American cities can prepare for an increasingly destructive climate

Nov 23rd, 2022 33m 10s

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 I

Why women are authoritarianism’s targets—and how they can be its undoing

Nov 3rd, 2022 42m 26s

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 attai

Former Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven on stemming the tide of right-wing authoritarianism

Oct 19th, 2022 39m 25s

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 work

Low-wage and gig workers have it worse than we thought—and why that matters for us all

Oct 5th, 2022 39m 8s

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 Th