J O H NF.K E N N E D Y S C H O O L O F G O V E R N M E N T ... · Words Photosrecord worldtravels...

KennedySchoolJ O H N F . K E N N E D Y S C H O O L O F G O V E R N M E N T B U L L E T I N H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y w i n t e r 2 0 0 9

After theFloodAlumni aid inrecovery

Outside InA new vision forWashington, DC,schools

1,000WordsPhotos recordworld travels

DECISIONSDECISIONSJennifer Lerner shows howemotions play a role

Board of Directors of thehks Alumni AssociationExecutive CommitteeRudy Brioché mpp 2000, ChairRosario Calderon mpa 1988,Vice Chair

Jacquelyne Weatherspoonmpa 1991, Treasurer

Gary Schwarz mpa 2007, SecretaryFarahnaz Karim mpa 2001,Member-at-Large

Paul Hodge mpa 2000, Ex-Officio

MembersGayane Afrikian mpa 2005Jeff Amestoy mpa 1982Marilyn Averill mpa 2000Michael Cardoso mpa 2005Roland Castañeda jd/mpp 1974Kriengsak Chareonwongsak

mpa 2007Shannon Christian mpp 1987Andrea Marmolejo mpa 1988Kathe Mullally mpa 1998Daniel Ostergaard mpa 2004Pradeep Singh mpa 1991Janet Thompson mpa 1987Giles Whiting mpp 2005

Associate MembersGreg Rosenbaum jd/mpp 1977Lenora Peters Gant

ksgee 1997/99Emily Card phd, mpa 1981,

haa RepresentativeArmando Lopez-Fernandez

mpa 1978, haa Representative

Dean’s Alumni LeadershipCouncilGreg Rosenbaum mpp/jd 1977,Chair

Joseph Caldwell mpa 1985,Vice Chair

José María Figueres mpa 1991,Vice Chair

Joshua Gotbaum mpp/jd 1976,Vice Chair

Paul Hodge mpa 2000,Founding Chair and Vice Chair

Yoko Makino mpa 1999,Vice Chair

Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourgmpa 1972, Vice Chair

Michael Spies mcrp 1982,Vice Chair

Judy Wade mpp 1989, Vice ChairJill Wagner mpa2 1983, Vice ChairJoan Abrams mpa 1993Geraldine Bermejo Acuna-Sunshine mpp 1996

Merribel Ayres smg 1984Douglas Bereuter mcp 1966,

mpa 1973Stuart Bernstein mpa2 1991Jeffrey Bialos mpp 1980William Blais mpa2 1982Osman Boyner mpa2 2001Teresa Brady mpp 1983Joseph Campbell mpp 1978Craig Cardon mpa 2002Alexandre Chavarot mpp 1992Nancy Connery mpa 1979Robert Culver mpa 1978William Cunningham mpa 1983Mark Dalzell mpp 1979Diane Damskey mpa2 1988Michael Davis mpp 1992Shari Davis mpp 1989Beth deHamel mpp 1982James DeNaut mpa2 1989Christine Dillon mpa 2004Scott Eblin mpa 1987Philip Edmundson mpa 2004Arturo Fermandois mpa 1994Ernesto Fernandez-Hurtado

mpa 1948Robert Ferri mpa 1986Caroline Flueh mpa2 1990John Gage ksgp 1971Thomas Gallagher mpp 1978Aaron Gershenberg mpp 1989

Fred Hochberg s&l 1996Henry Hubschman mpp 1973,

jd 1972David Hulse mpp 1984Mazen Jaidah mpp 1996David Johnson mpp 1983Karen Kalish mpa 2000Stacey Keare mpp 1994John Kennedy mpa 1988Petros Kokkalis mpa 2002Florence Koplow mpa 1995James Langevin mpa2 1994Pat Lawson mpa 1989Nancy LeaMond mcp 1974Leon Loeb mpp 1972Kent Lucken mpa 2001J. Michael McGinnis mpp 1977Patricia McGinnis mpa 1975Robert Metzger bcsiaPreston Miller, Jr. mpa 1976Marcia Morris mpa 1993Ajay Nagpal mpp 1992Robert Olian mpp/jd 1977Anthony Otten mpp 1981Howard Paster mcrp 1979Anne Reed mpa 1981Jorge Rosenblut mpa2 1985Sean Rowland mpa 1997Sean Charles Rush mpa2 2007Danny Sebright mpa 2001Daniel Sheffey mpp 1989Harry Sherr mpa 2003Andrew Sieg mpp 1992Heather Steans mpp 1987Donald Stewart mpa 1969,

dpa 1975Bob Suh mpa2 1985Harriett “Tee” Taggart mcp 1973Elizabeth Tamposi mpa 1984William Tobey mpp 1984Joseph Tompkins mpp 1975,

jd 1974Stacey Gillis Weber mpa2 1990Thomas White mpa2 1982Wilfred Wong mpa 1987Rudy Brioche mpp 2000,Ex-Officio

Visiting CommitteeJoel Fleishman, ChairCharles Baker, Jr.Robert BelferDouglas Bereuter mcp 1966Rebecca BlankJohn DeutchCheryl Dorsey mpa/md 1992Ann FudgeJohn GageJoshua Gotbaum mpp/jd 1976James HarpelJames JohnsonLawrence KatzHarold KohPeter MalkinBijan Mossavar-Rahmani

mpa 1982Franklin RainesAlice RivlinDavid RubensteinRalph SchlossteinKlaus Schwab mpa 1967Marta TiendaLan Xue

Dean’s CouncilPeter Malkin, ChairGianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki,Vice Chair

Roy AshKathleen BaderThomas BarryPius BascheraRalph Baxter, Jr.Robert BelferHazem Ben-GacemJudith BenardeteSteven BergerDaniel BiedermanMary BoiesAli BozkurtRobert CalhounCecilia ChanVictor ChuFerdinand “Moose”Colloredo-Mansfeld

Tony ConzaHoward Cox, Jr.Bharat DesaiArnold DonaldBülent Eczacıbasihrh Princess Firyal of JordanJacob FrenkelSteven GreenClifford GundleAzadeh HaririJames HarpelAlan HassenfeldRobert Hefner IIIJohn IncledonTasso JereissatiNicholas JosefowitzMaha Kaddoura mpa 2000Joseph KasputysGeorge KellnerJamileh KharraziNemir KirdarLatifa KostaNed LamontNicholas LazaresBrandt LouieBertram LubnerYoko MakinoGeorge MallinckrodtW.A. ManoukianDeryck MaughanMark MendellJames MetzgerYogendra ModiAnthony MorrisMarvin OdumIdan OferJorma OllilaAlvar Ortiz Cusnier mpa 1983Minnie Osmeña mpaRichard PleplerAndrew RappaportGordon RawlinsonJohn ReedDavid RichardsJames Rogers, Jr.Greg Rosenbaum mpp/jd 1977Joseph RoxeMohammad SafadiPaul SaganArmen SarkissianJohn ShaneNicholas ShreiberDouglas SimsNeil SmithRory StearPeter SteinerBjörn StigsonChristen SveaasTony TamerJohn TaysomEdward TianSidney TopolSamir ToubassyStokley TowlesMarvin TraubDonald Tsang mpa 1982Adair TurnerAgâh UgurEnzo ViscusiBrooke WadeJohn WhiteheadMalcolm WienerJ. McDonald Williams

Women’s Leadership BoardExecutive CommitteeRoxanne Mankin Cason, ChairBarbara Annis, Chair ElectHaifa Fahoum Al Kaylani,Vice Chair, International

Renee White Fraser,Vice Chair, Domestic

Margaret Traub, TreasurerJennifer Allyn mpp 1994Loreen ArbusLinda CoughlinJulia Bailey DulanRayona SharpnackAnisya Thomas

Executive Committee At-LargeSharon AllenMichèle Boutros-GhaliDiane DixonJean Minskoff Grant, Former ChairJanice Bryant HowroydClaudia KahnFrancine LeFrak

Corporate MembersJennifer Allyn mpp 1994,PricewaterhouseCoopers

Mary Bennett, Crowe Horwath llpBeth Brooke, Ernst & YoungMichelle Gadsden-Williams,Novartis

Dana Hagendorf, Audemars PiguetJanice Bryant Howroyd,Act-1 Personnel Services

Lorie Jackson mpa 1982,ExxonMobil

Angela Schwers, PearsonEducation

MembersCarla AbourjeilyGiselle AcevedoMindy Lipson AisenMaha Al-Juffali-GhandourWendy AppelbaumElizabeth ArkyJan BabiakEllyn BankMarilyn BarrettBarbara BeckClare Beckton mpa 2005Stephanie Bell Rose mpa 1984Carol Lavin BernickSusan BogartMaria Efantis BrennanAnna BurgerMaxine BurtonMary CarringtonDeborah CarstensJoan ChrestayEloise Yellen ClarkKathy CloningerBetty CohenAnne CointreauElizabeth ColtonLizbeth CooneyDiane CreelLaurie CunningtonMartha De LaurentiisCristina de ManuelRoxanne DecykSaundra DockserIvelisse EstradaHaifa FakhouriNina FialkowAnne FinucaneMarsha FirestoneStacy FisherJanie FongKaren FrankCarolee FriedlanderCarol FulpMaureen GaffneyDenise GatlingDana GoldingerSandra GoochSarah Moores Walker GuthrieSheila HarrellBarbara HarrisKathy HarrisPatricia HarrisLinda HartJoan HelpernSara HildebrandMargaret HolzworthDzana HomanMary Ellen IskenderianTamara JacobsJanis JonesLaurie McDonald JonssonMargaret JurcaClaudia KahnAnn KaplanLaurel KarabianDato Fawziah Abdul KarimMargaret KavalarisLou KerrSung Joo KimJulia Hobbs Kivistik

Peggy KlausPatricia KoubaRoelfien KuijpersRenee LaBranCatherine LeeRobin LeedsAmy LevineRenee Brody LevowSheela LevyCarol LockeLinda LoReAnn LovellMaria Paola LuksicNancy MaloneRanjini ManianFlorine MarkLana MarksBobbi McKennaEllen McLaughlinPamela McLeanNeena MehtaEllen MignoniDiane MillerPatricia MitchellEllen Jane MooreBarbara MorrisonValerie MosleyPansy MullerMarilyn Carlson NelsonAnne NoblesJulia Novy-HildesleyGun NowakAnna OuroumianAysen OzyeginKristine PearsonMaureen PeckmanCarol PennCarol PerrinSarah RaissJoyce ReubenMargaret RoseNancy RussellSarina RussoKim Samuel-JohnsonVirginia SanchezHoda Sarofim-SawirisSusan SilbermannPamela SmithPernille Spiers-LopezFredericka StevensonVickie SullivanMary Green SwigRobin TalbertSandra TaylorLinda Kaplan ThalerBeatrice TrussardiKathleen ValentiDamayanti VasudevanHerta Von StiegelLauren WachtlerDiedra WagerJudith WagnerMeredith WagnerGeraldine WaldorfClaudia WaltersLara WarnerLeigh WassonMarcia WilsonMarie WilsonEllen WingardAnn Ziegler

XX%

Cert no. SW-COC-002556

CLOCKWISEFROM

TOPLEFT:TANIT

SAKAKINI;

DAVID

DEAL,NAREA

MARIGEN;COURTESYOFLINDALANGSTON

Features

14 Science of DecisionsJennifer Lerner brings the art of decision making intothe laboratory.

20 After the FloodThe hks network mobilizes to help an ExecutiveEducation alumna helping others.

24 Outside InMichelle Rhee mpp 1997 offers a new vision forWashington, DC, school system.

28 1,000 WordsSummer interns chronicle their travels in photographs.

Departments

2 executive summary

3 letters

4 from the CharlesWarren Cikins mpa 1954, a life in public service…Bohnet on trust…Risse examines global order andcollective ownership…What they did during theirsummer internships

32 bully pulpit

34 in printThe Character of Harms…One Economics — ManyRecipes…Unlocking the Power of Networks

Kennedy SchoolJ O H N F . K E N N E D Y S C H O O L O F G O V E R N M E N T B U L L E T I N H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y w i n t e r 2 0 0 9

28

36 capital ideas

38 classnotesFrom the Field: Carol Chyau and Marie So (bothmpa/id 2006) put entrepreneurial know-how to workto create jobs in Western China.

50 recognizing donors

64 exit poll

414

20

T H O U G H T S F R O M T H E C O N S T I T U E N C Yletters

Apples and OrangesIn the Summer 2008 Bulletin, Profes-sor Newhouse compares percentagesof gdp for health care in Americanstates with some oecd countries andfinds there is little difference. There-fore the pluralistic U.S. health carefinancing system may not be thereason for the heavy cost of Americanhealth care.This is the proverbial comparison

of oranges and apples. Millions ofAmericans are either not covered byinsurance or have inadequate insur-ance. They go without health care andthus reduce the apparent cost. If cov-erage here were as broad as in othercountries and we continued with ourcurrent system, the percentage of gdpfor health care could be much larger.Also, one should take into account thefact that some of the other countrieshave a lower gdp than the UnitedStates, which means that even if theyspend the same percentage as in ourcountry, they are spending less actualmoney. Some of the other countrieskeep their health costs at or belowAmerican averages even though theymust take care of a larger proportionof older people than is the case here inthe United States.Although his comparison may be

questionable, I still hope thatProfessor Newhouse will be provenright. It would be wonderful if wecould have good universal health

coverage through a pluralistic system.But I will believe it when I see it.

Elijah B.Z. Kaminskyab 1947, ab 1950, phd 1962Professor Emeritus of Political ScienceArizona State University

Professor Newhouse responds:I thank Professor Kaminsky for hisletter. The good news is that he iswrong that universal coverage wouldnecessarily result in a “much larger”percentage of gdp going to healthcare. A little under a sixth of the U.S.population is uninsured, and a con-sensus estimate is that the uninsuredget about half as much care as thefully insured. Thus, insuring thisgroup would increase the share ofgdp by less than a twelfth. Even thatis overstated because whatever insur-ance plan the uninsured would receivewould not likely be full coverage andbecause the uninsured are almost allnon-elderly, who are disproportion-ately less expensive.

Associate Dean for Communicationsand Public AffairsMelodie Jackson mpa 2001

Director of Alumni Relations andAnnual GivingWendy Wiedenmann

EditorSarah Abrams

Associate EditorRobert O’Neill

Contributing WritersMadeline DrexlerJulia HannaMatt Kohut mpa 2003David McKay Wilson

DesignersDiane SibleyJennifer Eaton Alden

PrinterLane Press

John F. Kennedy School of GovernmentPublications Office79 John F. Kennedy StreetCambridge, MA 02138Phone: 617-495-1164Fax: 617-495-5424E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright ©2009 by the President and Fellowsof Harvard College. All rights reserved.

Front cover photograph: Tanit Sakakini

Bulletin Advisory BoardJennifer Armini mpa 2001Jeanie Barnett mpa 2002Phil Cronin mpp 1996Henry DeSio mpa 2001Bill Dodd mpa 2004Harry Durning, Jr. mpa 1970Sayuri Inoue mpp 1996Colin Jackson mpa 1993David KingDavid Luberoff mpa 1989Ben McKay mpa 2003Heather Price mpa2 2002Craig Sandler mpa 2000Janice Saragoni mpa 1989Steven Singer mpa 1986Scott Talan mpa 2002

2

executive summary

KE

NT

DA

YT

ON

Dear reader,I suspect people in every generation feel they live in historictimes, but this moment certainly feels unique in my lifetime.As 2008 comes to a close, we are facing a multitude of chal-lenges: Global economic turmoil, terrorism, war, climatechange, and immigration all require our urgent attention.At the same time, our mission to train, support, and providenew ideas for public leaders has never been more critical.The recent presidential election highlighted the enthu-

siasm of this generation for integrating public service intotheir lives. Among our students, our prospective students,and even our faculty, I have rarely seen such a high level ofexcitement and engagement.There is no doubt that our society is facing some

extremely difficult problems, not the least of which is thechallenge that the current economic climate presents to anyuniversity. But we remain committed and energized as aschool to developing, through our research and training,the leaders who will help to solve many of these problems.The people featured in the following pages are wonderfulexamples of such leaders.Michelle Rhee mpp 1997 is making national headlines

daily for her bold innovation in working to turn around theWashington, DC, school system, and psychologist JenniferLerner, professor of public policy and management, iswidely recognized for her work studying the relationshipbetween emotions and decision making. And LindaLangston hksee 2007 continues to provide an exampleof leadership in Iowa.But as many of you are aware, the choice to pursue a

career in public service is becoming increasingly difficult forour students, for many reasons, including increased debtburdens and the widening gap between public and privatesector salaries. In the upcoming months you will be hearingabout a renewed effort at the Kennedy School to encouragestudents to choose careers that serve the public good.We have already stepped up our efforts to help our stu-

dents. We recently expanded our loan forgiveness program,created more public service fellowships, and expanded ourOffice of Career Advancement. We have also established anOffice of Public Service and launched an “Inspiring PublicService” campaign, an initiative you will be hearing moreabout. All of this is especially challenging in the currenteconomic climate, but I am committed to doing all I canto support our students on this front.

3H A R V A R D K E N N E D Y S C H O O L B U L L E T I N | w i n t e r 2 0 0 9

Later this month, Barack Obama will be sworn in asthe 44th president of the United States. President-electObama has repeatedly spoken on the importance of publicservice, and his candidacy and election galvanized a renewedspirit of service in young people in particular and ournation in general. Several of our faculty are working withthe Obama/Biden transition, and more will help the newadministration, both officially and in advisory capacities.We are proud of the hks community’s long tradition ofpublic service.I look forward to working with you as we renew our

commitment to training and encouraging the next genera-tion of public leaders.May we all enjoy a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

Dean David T. EllwoodJanuary 2009

T H E D E A N ’ S W O R D


ARREN CIKINS mpa 1954 remembershow his decision to attend the KennedySchool — then the Littauer School —was met with skepticism by peers andmentors alike. His closest friends fromhis undergraduate days at Harvard were

going into medicine, business, and law. His father had dreamed of hisbecoming an engineer, and one of his government professors wonderedaloud; “Why go here? Make a lot of money, then go into public service.”But he never doubted his career choice. His ambition, he says, began

as a boy, living in Dorchester, Massachusetts, listening to PresidentFranklin Delano Roosevelt on the radio talk to the American people.“It was always my intent to serve the public; I was committed to

making a difference,” says Cikins, 78, who grew up in a devout Ortho-dox Jewish household. Nothing, it seemed to him, could be moreimportant than the work of the public servant.Looking back, Cikins says he has no regrets. His career, spanning

more than 50 years and including work with all three branches ofgovernment, overlapped with many of the country’s pivotal events.In his first full-time job after the Kennedy School, he served as legisla-tive assistant to Arkansas Congressman Brooks Hays when Hays inter-vened in Governor Orval Faubus’s attempt to block the integration ofLittle Rock’s Central High School — an effort that would later costHays his seat.Cikins served with Hays in the Kennedy White House after first

serving as Hays’ assistant when he was appointed Assistant Secretary ofState for Congressional Relations. At the Commission on Civil Rights in1964 Cikins helped bring about the enactment of the Voting Rights Actof 1965. He followed with stints at the United States Agency forInternational Development (usaid), where he sought to attract highlyqualified minorities, and at the Equal Employment OpportunityCommission (eeoc).A self-described moderate liberal, Cikins fought throughout his

career for those who had no voice. And he did it, he says, by looking forthe similarities he shared with his colleagues rather than the differences.In his 2005 memoir, In Search of Middle Ground, Cikins writes, “Mystyle was always one of outreach. I believed in bipartisanship, bridge-building, compromise, and civility. Confrontational approaches werean anathema to me.”He put this advice to great use and success as a two-term elected

member of the Fairfax County (VA) Board of Supervisors, on which heserved from 1975 to 1980. Local politician Gerry Hyland, who workedwith Cikins, noted in a profile in the local newspaper: “Warren isviewed as a person who cares and who works toward consensus.The will of the group is going to prevail above his own point of view.”It is in the compromises, he says, that the work gets done, repeating

often a truism he attributes to Hays, his former boss and mentor:“Half of something is better than all of nothing.”

As a senior administrator at the BrookingsInstitution, where he spent more than 15 years,Cikins continued to promote outreach and con-ciliation by establishing, among many programshe created there, a highly successful annual semi-nar on the administration of justice, which soughtto resolve differences between the three branchesof government, and the Newly Elected Membersof Congress seminar, an effort that helped bringnew members of Congress up to speed. Towardsthe end of his career at Brookings, he devotedmuch of his energy to bringing greater attentionto improving criminal rehabilitation.In his 2001 class report marking the 50th

anniversary of his graduation from Harvard,Cikins wrote that he considered his work inimproving the criminal justice system, in cooper-ation with Supreme Court Chief Justice WarrenBurger, one of his greatest accomplishments.Quoting Dostoyevsky, Cikins noted in hismemoir, “Civilization will be judged by how ittreats its wrongdoers.”Cikins’s personal life reflects these same

values. He remains close to his friends from highschool at Boston Latin, many of whom went onwith him to Harvard. Recently with his wife of44 years, Sylvia, Cikins celebrated the 80thbirthday of his longtime Kennedy School friend,Mark Cannon mpp 1953, a Mormon and politicalconservative. And Cikins regarded Hays, whoseBaptist faith ran as deep as Cikins’s did inJudaism, as one of the most influential andinspirational people in his life. They remainedclose until Hays’s death in 1981.Of the many accolades recognizing his contri-

butions to public service that he’s received overthe years, from prominent figures that includeSupreme Court Justices Burger and WilliamRehnquist, a letter he recently received fromformer New York Congressman and Harvardalumnus Amo Houghton, a Republican, says itmost succinctly:“You were the role model; you’re the person

who constantly tried to bring us back toward thecenter, and I thank you for it…you’re a greatexample.”— SA

DA

VID

DE

AL

N E W S F R O M T H E S C H O O Lfrom the Charles

His Brilliant CareerLife devoted to service, bipartisanship

W


MA

RT

HA

ST

EW

AR

T

6

The timing was sadly auspicious.Tragic campus shootings at VirginiaTech and Northern Illinois University,and the colleges and universities dev-astated by Hurricane Katrina servedas stark reminders of the need foracademic crisis leadership skills. Inresponse to a survey indicatingconsiderable interest among highereducation administrators, the twoschools began joint development ofan Executive Education programdesigned to tailor the expertise ofLeonard and Howitt to the particularneeds and interests of the higher edu-cation community.“Higher education institutions are

simultaneously strong and fragile,resilient and vulnerable,” says Leonard,

noting that these are settings “that are deliberately designedto be open and diverse and are therefore potentially volatileand difficult to control.”

The resulting collaboration, CrisisLeadership in Higher Education, isslated to debut in March 2009. Theprogram will focus on helping seniorleaders in higher education developthe skills — gathering critical infor-mation, adapting to unique circum-

stances, and prioritizing actions and responses — neededto respond to and manage crises effectively. Leonard, Howitt,Honan, and Judith Block McLaughlin of hgse are workingtogether to develop new curriculum materials.Zolner is enthusiastic about the partnership. “It’s a terrific

blending of the expertise that Harvard Kennedy School haswith our knowledge of academe and a desire to continue toserve the leadership development needs of the higher edcommunity.”— MK

AP

PH

OT

O/

RO

BE

RT

F.

BU

KA

TY

Crisis Management ABCsPartnership offers senior educators crisisleadership training

F R O M T H E C H A R L E S

AT A COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY , a wide range of eventscan trigger a crisis. On-campus violence, natural disasters,disorderly protests, and controversial statements or actionsby faculty or staff members are just a few exam-ples. The quality of an institution’s response canhave a lasting impact on its people, culture, andreputation.Joseph Zolner, director of the Harvard

Institutes for Higher Education at the HarvardGraduate School of Education (hgse), recognizedthat crisis leadership was a growing concern among senioradministrators at colleges and universities. hgse facultymember James Honan had previously worked with HarvardKennedy School faculty Herman “Dutch” Leonard and ArnHowitt on crisis leadership, and Honan invited Leonard toteach a session at the Institute for Educational Management,an hgse Executive Education program designed for presi-dents, provosts, and senior leaders in institutions of higherlearning. “The session was incredibly well received by ouraudience,” Zolner recalls. “It certainly had direct applicationto many issues they were dealing with.”

Hale ChampionFriends, former colleagues, and family rememberedand celebrated the life of Hale Champion, formerexecutive dean, lecturer, and good friend of theKennedy School at a memorial service in October.

Champion served during a time of great growthfor the school and was valued for his professionalexpertise, wise counsel, and keen sense of humor.

Among the many positions he held during hishalf-century career, Champion served as journalist;

John MontgomeryLast spring, Harvard Kennedy School mourned theloss of John Montgomery, one of the school’s earlypioneers. An expert in international development who

Remembering Good Friends

Hale Champion

John Montgomery“Hale played a vital role in the

creation of Harvard’s Kennedy

School.…Hale anchored the effort

in real-world experience.”

“He was an outstanding practitioner

and a serious scholar. He showed a

deep interest in Asia long before it

became popular.”

Above, police tape surrounds Nor-ris Hall on the campus of VirginiaTech in Blacksburg, Virginia, wherea gunman killed 30 people andhimself April 16, 2007.

press secretary to California Governor Pat Brown;head of the Boston Redevelopment Authority; under-secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare during theCarter administration; and chief of staff to GovernorMichael S. Dukakis.

“Hale played a vital role in the creation of Harvard’sKennedy School,” said Kennedy School Dean GrahamAllison, for whom Champion served as executive deanfrom 1980 to 1987. “From acquiring the land on whichwe sit to creation of the jfk Memorial Park in our frontyard, Hale was a moving force. As the school was cre-ating curriculum in public management, Hale anchoredthe effort in real-world experience.”

served in more than 80 countries as an internationaldevelopment advisor, Montgomery was Harvard’s firstprofessor of public administration.

“Jack had it all,” said Steve Kelman, HarvardKennedy School professor of public management. “Hewas an outstanding practitioner and a serious scholar.He showed a deep interest in Asia long before itbecame popular. And he was a great tennis partner!”

Throughout his career he consulted for numerousorganizations, including the Agency for InternationalDevelopment, the World Bank, the Department of Agri-culture, the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, unesco,the Asian Center for Development Administration, theund, the Southern Africa Coordinating, and severalforeign governments. He joined Harvard in 1963 andwas the Ford Foundation Professor of InternationalStudies Emeritus.


MA

RT

HA

ST

EW

AR

T

8


Newsmakers

APPOINTMENTS AND PROMOTIONS

Media Message Matthew Baum wasappointed the Marvin Kalb Professor ofGlobal Communications. Baum’s researchfocuses on the role of mass media andpublic opinion on contemporary Americanpolitics and the effects of domestic politicson international conflict and cooperation.

Our Man in Cambridge Following a27-year diplomatic career capped by hisservice as the third-highest-ranking officialin the State Department, Nicholas Burnshas joined Harvard Kennedy School asprofessor of the practice of diplomacy.

Atomic Matt Bunn has been appointedassociate professor of public policy. Beforecoming to Harvard Kennedy School in 1997,he served as an advisor to the U.S. Officeof Science and Technology Policy.

International Develop-ment, has been namedassistant professor ofpublic policy. Hanna’sinterests includedevelopment andenvironmentaleconomics.

Hail Sarah Wald was namedchief of staff and senior advisor in DeanDavid Ellwood’s office. Wald, a lawyer,held several previous positions at Harvard,including assistant provost for policy andplanning and dean of students at HarvardLaw School. Most recently she was at theUniversity of North Carolina, where shewas special assistant to the dean at thelaw school.

Second Tour Robin Engels mpa 2005has been appointed director of mpaprograms. Besides senior administrativeexperience in higher education atMercyhurst and Pine Manor colleges,Engels has also held leadership positionsin a number of political campaigns.

AWARDS AND HONORS

Good Fellow John Ruggie, professor ofinternational affairs, is the recipient of aGuggenheim Fellowship. Ruggie, who willuse the fellowship to help fund his work onmultinationals and human rights, is on sab-batical after a six-year tenure as director ofthe Center for Business and Government.(See Centers and Programs news below.)

Genius Wafaa El-Sadr mpa 1996 hasbeen named a MacArthur Fellow. El-Sadr,the director of the International Center foraids Care and Treatment Programs atColumbia University Mailman School ofPublic Health, was selected for her innova-tive work in the treatment of hiv/aids andtuberculosis.

Truth to Power Linda Bilmes receivedthe annual “Speaking Truth to Power”award from the American Friends ServiceCommittee. Previous recipients haveincluded Studs Terkel and the founders ofMilitary Families Speak Out.

Breaking News RobertYoon mpp 1998 was part of

cnn’s Emmy-winning teamearlier this year for its coverageof elections. Yoon serves as thecable network’s politicalresearch director.

DEBUT

Impact A new quarterlynewsletter launched this fall will bring thebreadth and depth of our faculty’s cutting-edge research to as wide an audienceas possible. Impact was conceived andcreated in large part through the enthu-siasm and generous support of Dan Paul,long-time friend of the school. Look for itat hks.harvard.edu/news-events.

CENTERS AND PROGRAMS

Carr Center Rory Stewart has beennamed the new director of the Carr Centerfor Human Rights Policy and Ryan FamilyProfessor of the Practice of Human Rights.Stewart’s career has included service asan officer in the British Army and as adiplomat. He has also written two criticallyacclaimed books. The center is markingthe 60th anniversary of the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights throughvisual displays and a series of lectures.

Center for Business and GovernmentRoger Porter, who served as director from1995 to 2000, is returning to head theMossavar-Rahmani Center for Businessand Government for the year.

Ash Institute Tony Saich is the newhead of the Ash Institute for DemocraticGovernance. Saich’s appointment wasmarked by the integration within the AshInstitute of the school’s Asia Programs.Arn Howitt also joined the Ash Instituteas executive director, after 24 years atthe Taubman Center for State and LocalGovernment.

Taubman Center Sandra Garron hasbeen named executive director of theTaubman Center for State and LocalGovernment. Garron, who has been atTaubman since 1991, replaces Arn Howitt,who moved to the Ash Institute.

ILL

US

TR

AT

ION

:A

.R

ICH

AR

DA

LL

EN

For the past several years, in studies conducted inSaudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, the United ArabEmirates, and most recently in Jordan, behavioral

economist Iris Bohnet has been looking at the various factors thatmotivate individuals to trust.

Can you describe the focus of your most recent work?One of the questions Mohamad Al-Issis, phd candidate in publicpolicy, and I examined in Jordan this past summer was whether indi-viduals are more willing to trust if we (partially) insure them againstlosses in case things go badly. In many ways, that’s the way the West isfostering trust. Our contract law makes it cheaper for people to trustothers as it offers damages for the betrayed party in case of breach.

And what did you find?Insurance does not increase trust in Jordan. In fact, the more vulnerablepeople made themselves when trusting, the more their trust wasreturned. In Jordan this also meant individuals were more likely toreward the trust of women and Palestinians who are part of moredisadvantaged groups and thus more vulnerable.

What is the significance of this finding?What we’re seeing is that instruments, such as insurance, that decreasethe costs of betrayal also affect the likelihood of trustworthiness.This leaves people with a difficult optimization problem: it is cheaperto trust when insured but insurance also makes betrayal occur. It alsosuggests that we have to be careful when exporting Western institu-tions to other parts of the world. They may work quite differently there.

As the new faculty director of the Women and Public Policy Program(wappp), can you talk about your plans for the program?My goal is for wappp to be a knowledge center on gender and publicpolicy and leadership. We’ve created a new structure consisting of fourareas: gender and decision making and negotiation, gender and policy,gender and politics, and gender and security. Some of our research isfocusing currently on how to overcome stereotypes and on whether“counter-factual positive experiences” might change people’s beliefsabout what they and people like them can accomplish even in areasstereotyped to “not be for them.”— SA

To read more about Bohnet’s work, go to www.hks.harvard.edu/research/working_papers/index.htm.

Who Do You Trust?

Iris Bohnet

Q&A >>>

New Faculty Tarek Masoud, who spe-cializes on comparative politics and theMiddle East, has been named assistantprofessor of public policy. MoshikTemkin joins the faculty as assistant pro-fessor of public policy. Temkin’s first book,The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial,will be published in 2009. Rema Hanna,a research fellow in the SustainabilityScience Program at the Center for



Footprint

What They Did Last SummerEach June, with classes finished, exams completed,and quantitative analysis safely behind them, about400 Harvard Kennedy School students head forsummer internships. For students the internships area chance to use those skills they worked so hard toacquire during their first year. It’s also often a chanceto explore new directions. For many students theinternships provide a first opportunity to work outsidetheir home countries or their first professional experi-ence in government.

It’s also a chance to be reminded of financial reali-ties. Slightly fewer than one in four students receiveawards from hks’s two largest internship funds, theHarvard International Development Internship Fund(hidif) and the Summer Internship Fund (sif). Thefunds total about $190,000 a year, and their awardsaverage around $2,500. Other students find fundingelsewhere, or fully paid internships (see graphic).

The eight to ten weeks students typically spendin internships vary greatly in content. But whetherworking with organizations like unicef or Google or theCenter for Microfinance, or in places from Harrisburg,Pennsylvania, to Lusaka, Zambia, they find ways toput to the test across the world the school’s traditionof academic excellence, technical preparation, andcommitment to solving public problems.

The map on this page was created using surveyscompleted by students following their internshipsand compiled by the school. Roughly half of returningstudents provided information.

“My experience in India was fascinating. The job was very interesting.I helped in a research project on the impact of access to microfinanceon the economic lives of poor families led by Professor Rohini Pandefrom the Kennedy School. The institution in which I worked is a veryinteresting one that specializes in cutting-edge research. Moreover,the possibility of traveling around India, getting to know its beautifulpeople and lively culture, marked me profoundly.”

whokenzo asahi mpa/id 2009

home Chile

internship Center for Microfinance,Institute for Financial Management andResearch, Chennai and Ahmedabad, India

sponsor Summer Internship Fund

whoamy moran mpp 2009

home United States

internship Policy Development and ResearchDivision, Boston Redevelopment Authority,Boston, Massachusetts

sponsor Rappaport Fellowship

“If the internship at City Hall was like a coursepracticum in city governance, the research Iundertook for the Research Division of the BostonRedevelopment Authority was like a field trip onleadership. Through interviewing executive directorsof immigrant-led nonprofit organizations, I learnedabout the daily sacrifices leaders make to give avoice to their communities.”

“I spent three months working with sitawi in Rio, a start-upsocial enterprise in Brazil providing consulting and low-cost capital to other social enterprises. SpeakingPortuguese with an Irish accent was certainly a challenge,but spending time in Brazil was hugely rewarding for me,not only because it is at such an interesting point as acountry, but also as a contrast to my previous internationaldevelopment experiences in Africa.”

whochris trimblempa/id 2009

home Ireland

internship sitawi, Rio de Janeiro,Brazil

sponsor hidif and drclas

unpaid

partially paid

paid

outside funding

68

21

85

80

howfundingt number of students

international organizations

government

nonprofits and ngos

private sector

24 20

58 28

47 17

31 14

whatsectort the breakdown

number of students in sector

first-time experience in sector

Washington, DC

Boston

New York

Monrovia

developing countries

industrialized countries

home country

29

24

12

9

18

7

10

wherelocationt most popular and new territory

number of students

first-time experience


political philosophy: whether the state is the best form oforganized government and what that means for us as indi-viduals and our relationship to one another. But his novelapproach is being formulated at a time when those questionsare more relevant than ever.Globalization is exposing much of humanity to the same

political and economic forces, making borders less relevant,increasing the power and coerciveness of internationalorganizations, and imposing vastly different opportunitieson people.

In that context, the state notonly needs to be acceptable toits own citizens, it also needs tomake itself acceptable to citizensof other countries, Risse argues.“Principles of justice need to

apply not only within, but alsoacross states,” he writes.One central component of

Risse’s argument is the conceptof collective ownership, anevolution of a once crucial con-cept in political philosophy:that the earth had been givento mankind in common.That idea gained great cur-

rency among European thinkersin the 17th century, at the begin-ning of another type of global-ization, when European navalpowers began to explore andproject their power across theworld. But it was soon eclipsedby the rise of the nation state,whose cornerstone of inviolablesovereignty has ruled supremefor much of the past threecenturies.

TO

MF

ITZ

SIM

MO

NS

Stokey Honored

12

Kennedy School founder andlongtime teacher and adminis-trator Edith Stokey spoke ather portrait unveiling lastspring, where she was cele-brated by colleagues, family,and friends. Characteristicallyhumble, Stokey said shewas honored by the portrait,but noted she was only asymbol for the many founderswho worked so hard for theschool’s success. The oilportrait, painted by Cambridge

artist Stephen Coit, hangs on the second floor outside the entranceto the dean’s office. Academic Dean Mary Jo Bane credited Stokeywith opening the doors to many women who have since followedher. “In 1987, I became the first woman to hold the title of tenuredprofessor at the Kennedy School. Last year I became the firstwoman to hold the title of academic dean. I use the language of“hold the title” quite consciously because I am not the first womanto do the jobs; Edith is. And the fact that Edith did the jobs and didthem so well laid the groundwork for those of us lucky enough tobe born a generation later to both do the jobs, though probably notas well, and to hold the titles,” said Bane.

ON A TYPICAL DAY at the Kennedy School, as studentsstudy the management of a state, as speeches are deliveredby heads of state, as faculty members advise national leaderson matters of state, Mathias Risse is likely to be questioningsomething more fundamental.Should there be states at all? What obligations does a

state have toward its citizens? And what does it owe thoseliving outside its borders?The questions that Risse, associate professor of public

policy and philosophy, ponders are the basic questions of

ILL

US

TR

AT

ION

:A

.R

ICH

AR

DA

LL

EN

Risse’s starting point is equal entitlement toresources, and from there flows a notion of humanrights and global responsibility designed to protectthose entitlements.The state, then, according to this view, is an area

fenced off from outsiders and exercising power overthose inside. It has a responsibility to make sure thatpeople inside its borders are able to pursue those enti-tlements. But what of people elsewhere?“It’s not just that the state has to do right by those

who live in it,” says Risse. The state also has to be ableto explain to immigrants at its border why they can’tget in because it is exercising power over people byforcibly keeping them from entering.In other words, a wealthy, sparsely populated

country must justify closing its borders to peopleescaping a crowded, poor one.The approach raises many questions that cannot

yet be answered: What is the value of resources weare entitled to? How do we calculate potential wealth?How can one country’s obligation towards othersbe satisfied?But it also reorients the language of rights, so long

rooted in the language of human dignity.“The dignity approach to human rights makes it

easy to explain why everyone should have humanrights but not why people over there should worryabout these people here, whereas my approach canexplain that,” Risse contends. “Keeping these peopleat a distance comes at a cost.”That obligation, Risse is careful to point out,

extends not only across space, but through time tofuture generations, providing “philosophical founda-tions to the idea of sustainability.”But collective ownership does not imply a world

without borders. Instead, Risse sees it as an alternativeto “the two ‘standard’ views: that principles of justiceeither apply only within states or to all human beingsregardless of their state membership.”Changing the state system, he also argues, is too

fraught with risk. “This question doesn’t have muchof a strong answer except to say ‘we have it now, weunderstand things about the state system, we don’tentirely know what the global order would be withoutstates.’”— RDO


Imagine if You CanHuman rights, countries, collective ownership

…the fact that Edith

did the jobs, and did

them so well, laid

the groundwork for

those of us lucky

enough to be born

a generation later…

15

DECISIONSAt the Kennedy School, the art of decision making is brought into the lab

B Y M A D E L I N E D R E X L E R P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y T A N I T S A K A K I N I

Science of

The Harvard DecisionScience Laboratory staff(left to right): SerenaRwejuna, financecoordinator; Yoel Inbar,postdoctoral fellow; ViralGandhi, doctoral student;Jennifer Lerner, professorand laboratory director;Jessica Kustoff, researchassociate; Paul Litvak,doctoral student; AndreaRobbett, doctoral student;Ayres Heller, laboratorymanager; Eric Mattison,information systemsspecialist

17K E N N E D Y S C H O O L B U L L E T I N | w i n t e r 2 0 0 9

Jennifer Lerner’s favorite emotion —intellectually speaking — is anger.Partly that’s because anger courses throughAmerican political rhetoric: capturing theattention of media and citizens and conferringhigher approval ratings for leaders who displayit. Partly it’s because anger’s stark effects onjudgment are measurable in a controlled labsetting, where Lerner — director of theHarvard Decision Science Laboratory andprofessor at the Harvard Kennedy School —does much of her research.

But it’s also because anger as a topic ofphilosophical inquiry has smoldered inscholars’ minds for thousands of years.“Anyone can become angry — that is easy,”wrote Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics.“But to be angry with the right person, andto the right degree, and at the right time, andfor the right purpose, and in the right way —that is not easy.” At the Kennedy School, Lernerhopes to apply fundamental research on thehidden mechanisms of decision making to help leaders recognize their owncognitive and emotional biases, avoid those pitfalls, and set up environments thatcan help whole organizations avert individuals’ fallibilities. As she put it, “I wantto add data to Aristotle’s speculation.”

The science of decision making is relatively new, operating at thenexus of psychology, economics, and neuroscience. And Lerner, 40, is one of itspioneers. Small, trim, her hair pinned up in a practical style, she is often mistakenfor a student. A standard part of her academic “uniform,” as she calls it, are a primpearl necklace and set of earrings handed down from her mother. The combina-tion of outward composure and animating passion seems typical of Lerner.She punctuates careful explanations of theory with a deep, ironic laugh. Andher main area of inquiry, exploring how emotions color and often skew judgmentand decision making, has rattled a discipline long in thrall to the rational idealof Homo economicus.

Lerner’s publications have been cited in scholarly articles more than 2,000times. In 2004, she won the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists andEngineers, from the National Science Foundation. But Lerner has reached farbeyond academic outlets to communicate her ideas, having presented in suchpolicy arenas as nato Headquarters and in such public forums as Good MorningAmerica.“My ultimate question is: How does the mind work? That’s what wakesme up in the morning,” she said. But her ultimate application is public policyand society.

At the Kennedy School, where the seismic impact of good and bad decisions iswell appreciated, Lerner feels she is in her element. What can she do here that shecan’t anywhere else? “A lot,” she replied. “We have approximately 3,000 executiveeducation students come through each year — over and above the enrolled stu-dents. The executive ed students are often leaders of governments around the

world. And many of our enrolled students will goon to lead governments or multinational corpo-rations. In one capacity or another, they will haveinternational influence. I get to reach people whoare in a position to structure the decision envi-ronments of their governments. I cannot think ofanother place in the world where I could do that.”

Lerner’s work rests on the tenet thatmost people can’t fathom why they make thedecisions they do. As President John F. Kennedyhimself observed: “The essence of ultimatedecision remains impenetrable to the observer —often, indeed, to the decider himself.”

First at the University of California atBerkeley, then at Carnegie Mellon University,Lerner shined light on that disconnect. She’sbest known for teasing apart the effects of

specific emotions on judgment and choice — particularly when the emotion is“incidental,” meaning it has no inherent relevance to the decision being made.One study showed that, contrary to expectations, volunteers who were sad andself-absorbed (after watching a tear-jerker video clip) dramatically increased theamount of money they would pay to acquire something (in the experiment, asports water bottle); the finding, which Lerner dubbed the “misery is not miserlyeffect,” brings psychological insight to theories of consumer behavior. Anotherexperiment demonstrated that volunteers primed to anger reduced the amount ofgovernment assistance in a hypothetical case, while those primed to sadness choseto increase government largesse. Lerner has also delved into the physiologicalunderpinnings of emotion — linking, for instance, fine muscle movement in theface to secretion of the stress hormone cortisol.

At the Kennedy School, she plans to broaden her field of investigation whilecontinuing to explore the biological substrates of emotions. Admittedly, launchinga state-of-the-art decision science laboratory — where researchers take salivasamples, chart blood pressure, and measure skin temperature, as well as map thecognitive path of volunteers’ decisions — has been a stretch for some residentscholars. “There’s a tendency to think that emotion is not something we can studyrigorously, scientifically, experimentally,” Lerner said. “People ask, ‘How can youstudy trust, emotion, ethics, and morality in a lab?’ They think I’m being tooreductionistic.”

Some of the fiercest skeptics are ceos and other powerful alumni — often thosewho have learned, through escalating career challenges, to trust their “gut,” not toobserve their mind. “I had one person say to me: ‘What does this have to do withpublic policy?’”

What does her work have to do with public policy? “Emotion is a huge driverof human behavior,” Lerner said, her voice rising. “And a lot of the problems thatwe have in the world today come from non-rational human behavior. We havetechnological solutions that aren’t working — because of human behavior.We have the technologies that we need to improve national security — but notthe human performance to carry them out. We have energy solutions — but notthe political will to enact them.”

16

“MYULTIMATEQUESTIONIS: HOWDOESTHE MINDWORK?THAT’SWHATWAKESME UPIN THEMORNING.”

“PEOPLEASK,‘HOWCAN YOUSTUDYTRUST,EMOTION,ETHICS,ANDMORALITYIN ALAB?’”

THE LABORATORYcontains 36 cubicleswhere subjectsparticipate innumerous researchstudies.

SUBJECTS’ HANDSare hooked up inthree spots tomeasure bloodpressure (wrist),galvanic skinresponse (palm),and skin tempera-ture (finger).

Clockwise from top left: Associate DirectorsDavid Laibson, professor of economics,Harvard University; Iris Bohnet, professorof public policy, hks; Chair of the AdvisoryBoard Max Bazerman, professor of businessadministration, Harvard Business School; andHonorary Chair of the Advisory Board HowardRaiffa, professor of managerial economicsemeritus, hks.

CLOCKWIS

EFROM

TOP

LEFT:COURTESY

OFDAVID

LAIB

SON,

MARTHA

STEWART,RIC

HARD

CHASE,STUARTCAHILL


In her own life Jenn Lerner has had plenty of reason to harbor a senseof grievance and anger, but apparently has avoided those sentiments. At the ageof 16, she was diagnosed with lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that can affectthe joints and almost every major organ in the body. Typically lupus causes jointinflammation, fever, and fatigue. For Lerner, the condition has brought ceaselesspain, advanced osteoporosis, and problems with her eyes, lungs, hands, feet, andknees. She takes daily medication to ease the worst symptoms.

Lupus is notoriously capricious, with unpredictable flare-ups and remissions.Though Lerner suffers flare-ups, she has not been lucky enough to experience aremission that would allow her to eliminate the array of medications needed tomanage the illness. Over the last 24 years, as a result, she has made extraordinaryaccommodations to move forward in her career. She’s conducted graduate semi-nars in her home, where she would lecture from a horizontal position on hercouch. She’s held meetings with students while undergoing intravenous infusions.She has given lectures from a wheelchair. Confined to hospital beds, she’s plottedout future lab experiments.

“I have an extremely strong will,” she said. “But I don’t think I could do it ifit were just a matter of will. Here’s the way it works — it’s actually very simple:Work is a treat for me. Work is a balm. And I feel really lucky to have my work.It is a distraction from pain and fatigue.”

Building the Decision Research Laboratory as a Harvard-wide enterprise,Lerner will be collaborating with Associate Directors Iris Bohnet, professor ofpublic policy, hks; David Laibson, professor of economics, Harvard University;Chair of the Advisory Board Max Bazerman, professor of business administration,Harvard Business School; and Honorary Chair of the Advisory Board HowardRaiffa, professor of managerial economics emeritus, hks. At the lab, Lerner intendsto broaden the scope of her questions to a vast range of public policy issues.

She wants to know how sadness and disgust affect decisions on whether todonate the organs of a deceased loved one. She will continue to study the physio-logical underpinnings of emotion. And as part of a recent $610,000 grant from theNational Science Foundation, she will study high-level decision makers — fromgovernments, militaries, nongovernmental organizations, and corporations — toexplore whether their knowledge and leadership experience protects them fromdecision-making biases. When are such leaders, for instance, willing to make“tough calls”: taking actions that improve things in the long term but impose costsin the short term? Do angry leaders focus so much on winning battles that theylose the war? Does anger prompt risk-taking? These and related questions willfocus her work in the school’s Center for Public Leadership, where she has broughtProfessor David Gergen in as a consultant to the grant, bringing real-worldexperience to the formation of theory-driven hypotheses.

“Most people at the Kennedy School start with the policy problem. I’munusual here in that I start with: How does the mind work?” Lerner said.“We’re studying basic processes that underlie countless decisions in daily life —in medicine, business, finance, law. There are many different places where I couldbe. I feel very lucky to be in the place where it will do the most public good.”

Madeline Drexler is a Boston-based journalist and author, specializing in science,medicine, and public health.

“To say that you can exclude emotion…” Shelooked dumbstruck. “It’s like saying you’re goingto exclude oxygen from co2.”

At the Kennedy School,students and faculty often approach Lerner —the only tenured psychologist in their midst —with a commonplace question: “What shouldI do when I’m really mad and have to makea decision?”

Lerner can quickly tell them what not todo. For example, “The idea that you can hit apunching bag and feel better: That’s wrong.Generally speaking, aggression leads to moreaggression. Another thing that doesn’t work istelling people: ‘Don’t be mad.’”

What does work, Lerner has found, is alteringthe environment in which angry people makedecisions. The technical term is: “predecisionalaccountability to an audience with unknown views.” In one study, volunteers whowere primed to anger (by watching a video) were asked to render a judgment in afictional tort case. When asked to explain their decisions to a well-informed audi-ence whose views they did not know in advance, their anger did not lead them tobe more punitive — as it did when they weren’t asked to justify their decisions.Being accountable created the conditions by which they could consciously monitortheir thinking and perceive the issue with more nuance and complexity.

In other words, context matters. The environment in which a decision is madeturns out to be more important than the decider. Traditionally experts assumedthat good decision making stemmed from individual personality traits — somepeople naturally made smart choices, others did not. They assumed that greatleaders were great decision makers. And they assumed that the smarter the deci-sion maker, the better the decisions.

Lerner takes the opposite tack. “What we find is that there are situationsthat affect all of us in similar ways, leading us to be biased, and that personalitydoesn’t matter in those cases. It’s not so much about finding people with the rightpersonal characteristics as it is changing the judgment and decision context.”

Which takes her back to anger. “Anger is a more positive emotion in theStates than it is in cultures that are more interdependent and collectivistic,”she explained. In America, anger pervades political culture and many styles oforganizational leadership. Indeed, research shows that the effects of being in powerresemble the effects of being angry. So if any emotion needs to be contextuallyde-fanged, it’s anger.

One of Lerner’s best-known papers is titled “Portrait of the Angry DecisionMaker.” Though the 2006 article was not connected to the Bush presidency, thepicture she paints almost uncannily describes President George W. Bush’s behaviorleading up to the invasion of Iraq. Lerner is careful to say that scientific findingsabout decision making in general can’t be proven determinative in any specificinstance. Still, the Bush Administration’s process in going to war in Iraq mirrorsher findings about angry deciders: “Not feeling you need more information.Underperceiving risks. Being prone to taking risks. Attributing causality toindividuals rather than situations. Simplistic thought.”

18

SELECTED TITLES fromJennifer Lerner’s academicpublications:

Misery Is Not Miserly: Sadand Self-Focused IndividualsSpend More (2008)

Heart Strings and PurseStrings: Carryover Effects ofEmotions on EconomicDecisions (2004)

The Psychology of theUnthinkable: Taboo Trade-Offs,Forbidden Base Rates, andHeretical Counterfactuals(2000)

Rage and Reason: ThePsychology of the IntuitiveProsecutor (1999)

Sober Second Thought:The Effects of Accountability,Anger and Authoritarianism onAttributions of Responsibility(1998)

“ANGER ISONE OF THEEMOTIONSTHAT ISMOST LIKELYTO SEEPINTOJUDGMENTSANDDECISIONSWITHOUTOURREALIZINGIT.”

FIFTY MILESof cable wiretransmit audio,visual, and datainformation to thelaboratory’s AVracks.

a way with words

AFTERTHE

2120

20'

12'

31'

B Y R O B E R T O ’ N E I L L

In the aftermath of a catastrophe,the Kennedy School networkmobilizes to help an alumna

LINN COUNTY is a neat rectangle cut from Midwest prairie in theeastern part of Iowa. It’s the second most populous county in the state,

with 200,000 residents and the state’s largest manufacturing center. The

Cedar River flows from the northwest to the southeast, cutting through

Cedar Rapids, the county seat, on its way from Minnesota to the Iowa

River and then the Mississippi.Four times in the past 160 years, including during the great floods

of 1993, the river has reached a flood level of 20 feet, 8 feet over theflood limit.In summer 2008, the area was anticipating another big flood. Heavy

winter snowfalls and an unusually wet and cool spring had left the areawaterlogged. Experts were calling for flood levels of 22 feet. Instead,they got 31.

The surging Cedar River sweptthrough Cedar Rapids and much ofsoutheast Iowa, uprooting homes,businesses, and people.

Linda Langston hksee 2007(front left) in the Linn Countyemergency operations centerduring the June 2008 flood thatinundated much of Iowa.

PHOTOS

COURTESY

OFLIN

DA

LANGSTON


herself turning often to those peersand mentors she had found and theinvaluable lessons she had learned, atthe Harvard Kennedy School. Practicaland technical advice, friendship andsympathy, and lessons on leadershippoured in from the school’s extensivenetwork. And the school gained some-thing beyond seeing an alum rise tothe occasion; Linn County’s experi-ence allowed researchers to study andlearn important lessons about gover-nance and recovery from disaster thatare at the heart of its Acting in Timeinitiative.

Linn County, and in fact much ofIowa, is rich in what social scientistscall “social capital,” roughly speaking,those threads between people andinstitutions that are woven together toform a strong social fabric. It is alsono stranger to disasters, having experi-enced, and learned much from, thecatastrophic 1993 floods. So when thewater started to rise last summer,much had been done to prepare. Landuse improvements helped minimizedamage. Debris was removed quickly.And, remarkably, there were no deathsattributed to the flooding.Still, six months after the flood,

Cedar Rapids is a changed city. In thedowntown area, there isn’t much leftbelow the second floor of most build-ings. In the city and the surroundingrural areas, many people have simplypicked up and left to start a new lifeelsewhere. Langston estimates it willtake at the minimum five years toreturn to normal.And at the time of the flood,

normal wasn’t even on the horizon.Building peer networks is an

important part of the State and Local

Linda Langston hksee 2007, one of three commissionerson the Linn County board of supervisors, remembers the near panic asthe waters began to rise. A 400-bed jail, a hospital, small towns, and cityneighborhoods had to be evacuated. County and city officials had tomove their offices to a local community college.And in the middle of all that, a fellow alumna of the 2007 Senior

Executives in State and Local Government program called. Karyn DestHarrington hksee 2007 was in the state attending a conference. Heremployer, Coca Cola, was donating supplies to the community. ButHarrington decided to visit Langston with a load of soda and snacks. Itwas a small gesture, but the only one she could make.Langston remembers thanking her, feeling bad she had no time to

give her, and then passing the food and drink along to volunteers fillingsandbags. As the water rose, the offers of help from fellow hkseealumni also began to trickle and then pour in.“I will need help, and I don’t even know what that help looks like,”

Langston remembers telling fellow alumni. Those alumni helpedLangston reconnect with her online Executive Education friends’ groupwhen she couldn’t reach her computer and then reached out on herbehalf to Harvard Kennedy School faculty.On June 20th, Langston was meeting with government officials and

business leaders. Much of the county was under water, including 1,300square blocks, or 9.2 square miles, of Cedar Rapids.Then the phone rang. It was Linda Kaboolian, public policy lecturer,

faculty chair of the State and Local program.“The day she called she said: ‘Here are some names, and they will be

in touch with you, and here’s the program,’” Langston remembers. “Andit was just one of those ‘Thank God!’ moments.”While she also made use of other personal and professional net-

works, as well as her own extensive experience, in the midst of one ofthe largest natural disasters in the country’s history, Langston found

22

As a former psychotherapist, she was particularly sensitive to theeffect the crisis was having on herself and those around her. Not onlywere officials and disaster workers dealing with the unprecedentedcrisis, they were also dealing with personal difficulty (Langston’s ownhome was flooded). She has seen, months after the disaster first struck,some people around her falling apart.“You’re consumed by [the crisis], you’re moving very fast, and the

sheer, I almost would call it terror that you have about it does not allowyou to see clearly,” she says of her experience.Kaboolian, who talked often with Langston, said Langston in

many ways personified the reflective leader they often discuss in theclassroom.“She’s a person in the world working on really hard public problems,

but also asking: ‘Is what I’m doing contributing to or undermining thehealthy dynamic of people working together to solve this problem?’”Kaboolian says.That leadership has real consequences after a disaster, according to

Kaboolian. When people have lost everything and the choice ofrebuilding or pulling up stakes is actually at one’s disposal, the decisionis often made quickly and based in part on the messages people receivefrom leaders.“How do you instill energy and hope when they’re faced with this is

one of the crucial leadership tests,” says Kaboolian.Harvard Kennedy School has also been able to learn through the

experience of Langston and Linn County.Chakos, who works with Leonard on a post-disaster recovery project

as part of Dean David Ellwood’s Acting in Time initiative and hadalso worked on earthquake preparedness as a city official in Berkeley,California, spoke often with Langston in the aftermath of the flood andvisited in July.“Cedar Rapids has become just what Dean Ellwood envisioned.

How, just after the disaster impact, do you improve the resilience of thecommunity and its ability to recover,” says Chakos. “It’s a living labora-tory with regard to that initiative.”Chakos, who as part of the project has worked with San Francisco

studying that city’s earthquake preparedness, is connecting LinnCounty and San Francisco experts so they can compare notes.She said the disaster has also helped underscore the importance of

social and political dimensions in responding to disasters, as opposed tosimply technical and practical solutions.Langston could testify to the importance of connections. What is so

terrifying to leaders about crises, says Professor Herman “Dutch”Leonard, is the “stark knowledge that they are beyond the playbook andtruly on their own.”“In moments like these, support networks — a sense that they are

not completely alone — can be a crucial source of confidence and,therefore, of the capacity to invent the way forward.”

Infrastructure crumbled as roadswere destroyed by the surgingwaters.

program, one of the flagships ofHarvard Kennedy School ExecutiveEducation. Allowing alumni to keep intouch, learn from one another, andeven teach others are importantaspects of the program’s success.Helping Langston would be a virtualcase study in that.“When the floods were happening

we happened to be in the middleof the State and Local program,”Kaboolian remembers. “Langstonliterally had up to 12 feet of water inher office. So I asked the class, ‘Whatdo you guys know about recoveryfrom a disaster like this?’”Quite a bit, it turned out. Several of

the people in the course were man-aging infrastructure recovery in NewOrleans. Other faculty members,such as Dutch Leonard, Julie Wilson,Henry Lee, and researchers workingat the school such as Arietta Chakosmpa 2008 also sent along importanttechnical information or helped con-nect Langston to experts in the field.“In a situation like this, the last

thing you’re thinking about is gettingout the manual,” Kaboolian says.Through Langston, Linn County

received expertise in the seeminglysmall things that matter a lot in dis-aster recovery, like how you negotiatewith the federal government for dis-aster assistance, how you put a valueon what’s been lost, or how to maxi-mize child protection when child carenetworks are broken.Langston connected the experts

sent her way to the appropriate peoplein county government. But despite theendless work hours, she remainedmindful of taking a step back to reflecton the situation.She constantly referred to Leader-

ship on the Line by Harvard KennedySchool faculty members Marty Linsky,one of her teachers, and RonaldHeifetz, turning to the section onhow a leader must be both on thedance floor and the balcony at thesame time. (She bought copies forher colleagues too.)

in25

Plucked from the nonprofit education world to becomeWashington, DC, schools chancellor last year, Michelle Rheempp 1997 has taken the city by storm in her first year onthe job.

She closed 23 schools, laid off close to 100 employeesin the district’s central office staff, and fired 250 teacherswho lacked proper certification. She restructured 27 ofWashington’s remaining 120 schools and challenged theteachers union to give up tenure rights in exchange for asalary plan that would boost salaries to as high as $122,000.

Feeling pressure to perform, Rhee says, can motivate.It certainly motivates her.

“Every day, I feel pressure because I have 47,000 kids inmy purview,” says Rhee, 38, the mother of two children whoattend the Washington, DC, schools, in an interview in earlyAugust. “I want every educator to feel that pressure. Whatwe are doing is incredibly important, and if you are goinginto a classroom, you need to produce for the kids.”

Rhee now oversees a budget of close to $1 billion. Thestudents, overwhelmingly from poor black families, have along way to go. The 2007 National Assessment for Educa-tional Progress ranked the Washington, DC, district deadlast, behind all 50 states, with just 12 percent of its eighth-graders proficient in reading and just 8 percent up to parin math.

24

Rhee’s selection in 2007 made her the latest big-cityschools chief to come from outside the education establish-ment. Like Joel Klein in New York City and Arne Duncan inChicago, Rhee had served neither as a principal nor districtadministrator. She also lacked the traditional academiccredentials for such a position. But Rhee had made a namein education circles as founder of the New Teacher Project,a nonprofit she developed as she left the Harvard KennedySchool that addresses the issues of teacher quality andteacher shortages in inner-city schools.

Through that work, she came to the attention of Wash-ington Mayor Adrian Fenty, who had just been granted con-trol of the district schools by the city council. He turned toRhee, vowing to back her bold initiatives to turn around adistrict viewed as one of the nation’s most troubled.

At first, Rhee balked, unwilling to give up her role asa social entrepreneur for the demands of heading up asprawling government bureaucracy. She feared Fentywouldn’t support her in the face of the community uproarshe knew could erupt. But Fenty insisted she had hissupport, promising Rhee he was the only one in his admin-istration who would tell her “No.”

“I told him he didn’t want me for the job because he wasa politician and he was interested in keeping the noise downand keeping people happy,” says Rhee. “I asked him what hewas willing to risk. He said, ‘Everything.’”

[Outside]Michelle Rhee’s vision for Washington, DC, schools

is turning the system inside out

B Y D A V I D M C K A Y W I L S O N

P H O T O G R A P H B Y D A V I D D E A L


says provided a strong foundation for her work in the fieldof education, which has become increasingly reliant on test-score data to drive policy discussions.

Toward the end of her second year at Harvard, she hadlunch with Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp, atwhich they discussed the difficulties urban districts haverecruiting quality teachers. Kopp suggested Rhee develop aprogram to address that problem and offered her officespace at Teach for America for the nonprofit start-up.

At the New Teacher Project, Rhee worked with urbandistricts to recruit college graduates and mid-careerprofessionals with an unapologetic appeal to aspiringeducators who want to work in some of the nation’stoughest school districts.

A decade later, she left the nonprofit to run an urbanschool district with more than 5,000 employees, severallabor unions, and the volatile political pressures fromWashington’s diverse community. She has retained someof the personal touch that served her well working for asmaller organization. She still responds to every e-mail, apractice that can keep her at her computer at home lateinto the evening.

She says reporting directly to the mayor has helped pushher reform agenda. With his support, Rhee began to reshapethe district. Too many DC schools were half-full, as studentshad fled to private schools or public charter schools, whichnow educate almost 30 percent of Washington’s children,outside the purview of Rhee’s administration. Closing 23schools at once spared the city a prolonged battle over whichschools would be shuttered. Rhee held a difficult series ofpublic hearings over nine weeks on the closures, at whichtime the anguished, and often angry, voices of parents andschool staff were heard.

At the meetings she listened carefully, and the finalclosing plan reflected what she learned at those meetings.The closings allowed Rhee to cut operating costs becauseshe had fewer schools to heat, clean, and staff. She vowed touse the savings to ensure that all 62 elementary schools hada library, physical education, music, and art program whenthe school year opened in September. She delivered onthat promise.

“People were yelling and screaming and picketing,” shesays. “But we did it, and every school will have those posi-tions filled.”

it was her chance to be on theinside, at the top.

“My gut instinct was that I needed to do this, in orderto change the face of public education,” she told a gatheringat the Kennedy School in September. “I wanted to show thatit was possible for poor and minority kids to achieve at thesame level as their wealthy white counterparts.”

Education Trust President Kati Haycock, who has knownRhee for a decade and chairs the New Teacher Project’sboard, says that Fenty’s unwavering support, along withRhee’s steely drive to do what’s best for kids, has helpedmove the reform agenda.

“Michelle is very courageous and very smart, but shealso has a very courageous mayor,” says Haycock. “What sheis trying to do is take a system that has been systemicallymis-educating mostly low-income black kids and turn it intoa system where they are getting quality education in everyclassroom. And she’s in a big hurry to do it.”

Rhee, the daughter of South Korean immigrants, grew upin the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio, aware of the poverty down-town. Her father, a physician, would remind her she wasblessed to grow up in an upper-middle-class family and thatthe poor kids in Toledo were no less deserving. After gradu-ating from Cornell, she joined Teach for America, the non-profit that sends college graduates into inner-city schools.She calls it “the defining experience of my life.”

Rhee taught at Harlem Park Elementary School, one ofBaltimore’s lowest-performing schools. Her first year wasmiserable, with her second-grade class scoring at the bottomof the district’s competency tests. But the next year sheteamed up with a third-grade teacher, combined the twoclasses, and they taught that group for two years. By the timethose children completed third grade, they were scoring inthe top tier.

“People told me I couldn’t do it because the kids camefrom poor homes, they didn’t get breakfast, and no one washelping them out,” she recalls. “The reality was that theywent from the bottom to the top, and their home environ-ment didn’t change. What changed were the adults in frontof them who were teaching. That gave me the convictionthat academic outcomes are dependent upon what the adultsare doing.”

After three years in Baltimore, she came to the KennedySchool, where she earned a degree in public policy. Thereshe honed her skills in data analysis and statistics, which she

26

Rhee says she’s able to handle the opposition becauseshe’s able to keep the criticism from getting inside her.

“I don’t take things personally,” she says. “I never reallycared what people think of me. I came to understand whysix chancellors had come and gone in the 10 years before Iarrived. If you let this stuff get to you, you start thinking,‘maybe they are right.’ And at that point, you have lost.”

as an outsider in a city of insiders.She’s a Korean-American running a

school district that’s predominantly African-American.And she’s an outspoken critic of the alliance between theDemocrats and teachers’ unions in a city where Democratsrule the urban political roost.

“The Democratic Party has been extraordinarily weakon education and education policy, and its ties to the laborunions have got to be broken if we are going to transformthe public education system in this country,” says Rhee.

Rhee’s national stature has been burnished by the contin-uing coverage of her tenure by the Lehrer News Hour, whereveteran education journalist John Merrow had producedsix segments of “Leadership: A Challenging Course” duringher first year in office. In December, Rhee was on the coverof Time magazine.

“She’s very engaging, yet reserved, and very direct,” saysMerrow. “She says what she means and means what she says.That kind of candor is refreshing.”

Rhee’s biggest battle in her second year involves her planto raise teacher pay while eliminating tenure, which hasbeen the heart of teacher contracts across the nation. InWashington, teachers can be granted tenure after two yearson the job. Rhee’s plan would create two tiers of service.Under the “red” tier, teachers would retain tenure rightsin exchange for a 28 percent raise over five years, theWashington Post reported. Pay for teachers in the “green”tier would rise from $46,500 to as much as $101,000 by 2010.Teachers with a decade on the job could see their pay morethan double to $122,500.

By giving up tenure, teachers would subject themselvesto annual evaluations based on the performance of theirstudents, which would determine salary increases.

“It’s going to be a game-changer,” said Rhee. “The bottomline is that teacher union contracts are one of the big prob-lems we have in public schools. I don’t want to demonizethe union. These contracts are signed by two parties, andthose who have signed these contracts are just as guilty.But I’m not going to sign my name to a document that putsthe rights and privileges of adults above the best interestsof kids.”

The contract had yet to be resolved by mid-September.First, Rhee was still wooing foundations to help providethe funding to so dramatically raise teacher pay. Theteachers union was also decidedly split on the proposal.The Washington Teachers’ Union is a local of the AmericanFederation of Teachers, whose president, Randi Weingarten,collaborated with Rhee when both were working in NewYork City. Rhee was setting up a fellowship program toattract teachers to the city while Weingarten then led NewYork’s teachers union.

“This whole notion that you scare people into betterteaching will garner great headlines and make you look likea warrior, but it never works,” says Weingarten. “The DCschools will improve when there’s cooperation and collabo-ration between teachers and administration.”

But Rhee maintains new work rules would help instilla culture of accountability among the district’s adults, aswell as its students, who need 24 credits to graduate,including three lab sciences and math courses up throughAlgebra ii. This past summer, her staff audited the tran-scripts of each incoming 12th-grader to make sure they wereon track to graduate. The audit found hundreds of studentsscheduled for classes that would not lead them to gradua-tion, including several signed up to take algebra classes theyhad already passed.

Rhee gets her hackles up over such mismanagement,especially when it is students who suffer. A high schooldiploma is the minimum credential for a young adultentering today’s job market.

“Nobody was paying attention to the fact that they’dalready taken algebra,” says Rhee. “How can we hold the kidsaccountable until we do our job? We have to hold the adultsaccountable too.”

David McKay Wilson is a New York-based freelance journalist.

After years ofstanding on theoutside,[

]

Rhee hasweathered thestorm

28

1,000 WordsHarvard Kennedy School has a uniquely internationalmakeup, and that is certainly a part of the student internshipexperience, as every summer hundreds of students travelfar and wide, driven by their passion and their curiosity.Many of the photographs in these pages, taken by hksstudents, will be featured in the 2009 “1,000 Words”calendar. Proceeds from sales of the calendar help supportthe Summer Internship Fund. To purchase a calendarcontact [email protected].

STAIRS Gujarat, India. Womenclimb steps out of an ancient watertank, also known as a baoli.Narea Marigen, mpa/id spouse

WATER AND SMOKE Bahid Dar, Ethiopia.During the rainy season, the Blue Nile Fallsturn a chocolate color. Pastures are greenand lush and cattle graze freely.Francisco Almendra mpa/id 2009

SWEAT IT OUT Juba,Southern Sudan.A member of the presi-dential guard of thePresident of SouthernSudan Salva Kiir Mayarditstands at attention inthe searing heat.Francisco Almendrampa/id 2009

30

RETURNING HOMEShanghai, China.Maria AgustinaMascitti, mpa/idspouse

THE MALAM AND HISDAUGHTER Daggo,Niger. Malam Sadik isa religious leader in asmall, mud hut villageand leads the childrenin Koranic readings andprayers every evening.Laura Bacon, mpp 2009

RWANDAN SOLDIER Rwanda.A soldier protecting moun-tain gorillas from poachersin Volcanoes National Park.Joseph Koo, mpa/id 2009

SOLDIERS Yerevan, Armenia.Soldiers stand around rocketsin advance of the annualIndependence Day Parade.Varoujan Avedikian, mpa 2009

THE UNDRESSINGOF THE PRIESTMoldova.In a ritual of theChristian OrthodoxChurch, a priestreads prayers tobring health anddrive away badspirits from thoseunder the cover.Alexander Culiuc,phd Public Policy

LAUNDERINGKolkata, India.The color of thecity’s street culturemay not be soevident to wearyresidents.Esther Hsu,mpa/mba 2010

ANGKOR SiemReap, Cambodia.Monks walking infront of Angkor Wat,Cambodia.Liewi Liu, Lee KwanYew Fellow

DALAI LAMALeh, India. A groupof exiled Tibetanswaiting to see theDalai Lama.Joseph Koo,mpa/id 2009


FORUM | Difficult Challenges Chile’sfirst woman president, Michelle Bachelet,told a Forum audience in September thatthe great advances achieved in LatinAmerica over the last quarter of a centuryare being eroded by unresolved problems.

“Yes, we have presidents and parlia-ments elected, but that’s not goodenough. We have to do more,” said theformer physician and minister of bothhealth and defense, who was elected tothe presidency in January 2006.

“We forget that in addition to freeelections, modern democracy also callsfor the equality of opportunity that has itsroots in access to education, health care,social security, and housing, just to namea few,” she said. “It must be inclusiveacross all areas.”

FORUM | Present Sacrifice U.S.Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrezspoke about relations between the UnitedStates and Cuba as the Caribbean islandnation transitions from the rule of FidelCastro towards an uncertain future.

Questioned during a Forum appearancein September by several audience mem-bers who had fled Cuba or were childrenof refugees, Gutierrez defended the UnitedStates’ policy of isolating Cuba, whichincludes an economic embargo and limitson travel there.

“I think we’re all sacrificing,” saidGutierrez, who fled Cuba with his family asa boy in 1960. “We’re all sacrificing for theday when Cuba will change.”

ALLPHOTOGRAPHY:MARTHA

STEWART

E X P E R T S S P E A K O U T

32

bully pulpit

FORUM | In the Arena The Forumkicked off the academic year with an eventon the importance of public service.Following Dean David Ellwood’s welcome,David Gergen led a panel of faculty andalumni in a discussion on the importanceof working in the public sphere.

Nicholas Burns, who recently joined theKennedy School faculty after a 27-yearcareer as a diplomat, said that as a personinterested in governance, he “wanted tobe in the arena.”

“You can practice idealism, you canmake a difference, and you can be directlyinvolved in the life of your country and theworld. I can’t think of a better thing, on anexistential basis, to do with your life.”

The Buzz“When you writesix things a dayas opposed toone thing a day,you becomecodependent.”Alex Castellanos,Republican mediastrategist and iop Fall2008 resident fellow, on thechanging relationships betweenjournalists adapting to the new mediaenvironment and their sources inpolitical campaigns.

“Frankly, I am not worried abouteither of the Donalds — Trump orDuck. The “D-word” I am moreconcerned by is Detroit.”Jed Horne, former city editor ofthe The Times-Picayune of NewOrleans, speaking about thepossible influences on NewOrleans’ future in the after-math of Hurricane Katrina, at

a brown bag in September.

“We live in the era of thefreak show. It’s worseevery four years.”Mark Halperin, editor-at-large and senior polit-ical analyst for Time,describing the nature of

today’s presidential campaigns and themedia’s challenge in covering them, ata Shorenstein Center brown bag.

“Even if it’s a fragile instrument, it’sstill an instrument that gives anawareness of how one should betreated.”Manuel Duarte de Oliveira, co-founder and president of the Institutefor Humane Studies and Intelligent

Sciences, about the UniversalDeclaration of HumanRights, at a speaker seriesmarking the document’s60th anniversary, spon-sored by the Carr Centerfor Human Rights Policy,

in September.


FO RUM | THE WORLD HAD ALREADY been facinga dangerous confluence of challenges, including climatechange and soaring food and energy prices, before the onsetof the recent global financial crisis, un Secretary-GeneralBan Ki-moon mpa 1984 said at the John F. Kennedy Jr.Forum in October.

Now, more than ever, these challenges must be mettogether.

“In these times of crisis when we are tempted to lookinward, it is precisely the time when we must move thecommon good to the top of the agenda,” said Ban, a formerMason Fellow.

He warned that global goods, such as climate changesolutions, global health, disarmament, and action againstterrorism can only be addressed in a global context.

“These global public goods distinguish themselves fromother issues of concern because they endanger all countries,whether rich or poor, small or big, and all their people, andthey cross borders freely,” said Ban, a former South Koreanforeign minister. “They cannot be resolved without actionby all.”

Ban said terrorism, combined with the spread ofweapons of mass destruction, represent the most seriousthreat to international peace and security. And he called ona more coordinated effort in combating global public healthchallenges, such as malaria and tuberculosis. “We mustmove from silos to building systems, systems that work forthe poorest and most vulnerable,” he said.

But Ban said he believed that the “historical pendulum”was swinging back towards multilateralism and said he wasconvinced the next U.S. president would take a leadershiprole in solving global problems.

Globally Challenged

Mark Halperin

Alex Castellanos

David Gergen and Nicholas Burns

Michelle Bachelet

Carlos Gutierrez


One Economics — Many RecipesGlobalization, Institutions, and Economic GrowthDani Rodrik

Development is working. Globalization isworking. But the advice on offer from develop-ment and globalization experts is not.

“We thought we knew a lot about whatgovernments needed to do. But…reality has beenunkind to our expectations,” writes Dani Rodrik,Rafiq Hariri Professor of International PoliticalEconomy, about the intriguing paradox at the

heart of his new book, One Economics — ManyRecipes. “If Latin America were booming today and Chinaand India were stagnating, we would have an easier timefitting the world to our policy framework. Instead, we arestraining to explain why unorthodox, two-track, gradualistreform paths have done so much better than sure-fire adop-tion of the standard package.”

That standard package refers to the Washington Con-sensus: a neoliberal approach characterized by policies suchas privatization, trade liberalization, fiscal discipline, and,Rodrik argues “simple rules of thumb, regardless of context.”The path toward the neoliberal goals of sound growth —goals such as global integration, sound money, institutionsand property rights, which Rodrik endorses — can be trav-eled in any number of ways. China, which has lifted 400 mil-lion out of extreme poverty since 1980, has done so by steer-ing clear of orthodoxies, changing the system at the margins,building support for reforms, and avoiding large disruptions.

To read more on Rodrik, including his blog, visithttp://ksghome.harvard.edu/~drodrik/.

Unlocking the Power of NetworksKeys to High-Performance GovernmentStephen Goldsmith and Donald Kettl, editors

Few would argue that public management nolonger employs a top-down management stylethat directly manages workers and provides serv-ices. Instead, public managers direct networks of public, pri-vate, and nonprofit organizations to deliver those services.

In Unlocking the Power of Networks, Stephen Goldsmith,Dan Paul Professor of Government and director of theInnovations in American Government Program, and DonaldKettl, professor of leadership at the University of Pennsyl-vania, offer a cast of policy practitioners and scholars whoexplore potential strategies and best practices of high-per-formance networks and identify next-generation issues inpublic sector network management.

The publication offers sector-specific analyses to showhow networked governance achieves previously unthinkablegoals. The environmental movement in particular is takingadvantage of the networked governance movement. Con-tributing writers examine the Interior Department’s effortsto organize a network of state and local officials, land-owners, businesses, and citizens to protect natural resources.

American officials are not the only ones employing net-worked governance. One contributing writer reveals howIslamic terror organizations have adapted and transformedthemselves since September 11. On the flip side, another con-siders how network management could be used in the fightagainst terrorism, utilizing new organizational structures,upgraded technology, and new cross-agency mechanisms.

To read more on Goldsmith, visit www.ashinstitute.harvard.edu/innovations.

P U B L I C A T I O N S B Y T H E E X P E R T S

34

The Character of HarmsOperational Challenges in ControlMalcolm Sparrow mpa 1986

Controlling corruption is not the same aspromoting integrity. Reducing crime is notsimply the flip side of promoting public safety.The difference is not just one of vantage pointor semantics, but instead marks a critical

change in approach, writes Malcolm Sparrowin The Character of Harms.

“Scrutinizing the harms themselves, and discoveringtheir dynamics and dependencies, leads to the possibility ofsabotage,” Sparrow argues. “Cleverly conceived acts of sabo-tage, exploiting identified vulnerabilities of the object underattack, can be not only effective, but extremely resource-efficient too.”

Put crudely, building something is a lot harder thandestroying it. And Sparrow’s book attempts to describethe science, or art, of identifying problems and organizingaround resolving them.

The book offers numerous illustrations. In the UnitedStates in the early 1990s, for example, emergency roominjuries involving baby-walkers averaged around 25,000 ayear. Federal safety officials worked with manufacturers tochange the walkers’ design and came up with new standardsthat would make them, among other things, less prone totipping over once they came to the edge of a stairway. By2005, injuries were reduced by almost 90 percent to 2,600.

In Holland, analysis of train derailments and collisionsfound that almost all the accidents were preceded by a trainpassing red signals, leading to a collaborative effort —including railways companies, rail traffic controllers, andenvironmental planners — focused on this specific precursor.

In both those instances, regulatory agencies changed theirapproach from one of function and process to one of focusedproblem solving — “substantial departure from business asusual”— and one fraught with organizational problems.

“When staff gather in functional units, they gatheraround their shared past, their shared training, their sharedskills. When staff gather around processes, they gatheraround a visible and tangible flow of calls, files, transactions,or reports. Little imagination is required in either case tounderstand the nature of the work,” Sparrow writes.

“But when people gather around a specific identifiedharm, what is it exactly they are gathering around? Somepiece of a more general harm to be reduced? Who sayswhich piece, and how best to define it? Who decides whichcomponent of a risk to address? Who decides if the focusshould be on reducing the probability of some class ofevents, or changing their distribution, or limiting theirconsequences?”

Sparrow, faculty chair of Harvard Kennedy School’sExecutive Education program on Strategic Management ofRegulatory and Enforcement Agencies and faculty chair ofthe mpp program, aims to provide practitioners working inharm reduction with a set of guiding principles and theinstitutional and conceptual framework needed to accom-modate that new approach.

“[Practitioners] very much want to understand what hap-pens to the nature of managerial decision making, forms oforganizational accountability, and the character of their rela-tionships with the regulated community, when an agencytilts its focus towards the central purpose of harm reductionand away from functional, programmatic, or process-basedtraditions,” Sparrow writes.

To hear Sparrow discuss his work, visit www.hks.harvard.edu/research-publications/vbt/index/sparrow-character-of-harm.

ALLPHOTOGRAPHY:MARTHA

STEWART

Stephen Goldsmith

Dani Rodrik

in print


Sosa cites the Kennedy School’s global network of part-ners, including alumni, as one of the most important rea-sons for their decision to invest in this project. “This is anincredible place where research, policy, and practice meet.For the complex questions of extending the reach of mar-kets, it is critical to leverage the expertise and experience ofeach of these perspectives.” In addition to the seed capitalgiven to launch the lab, the mpower Foundation is alsoagreeing to fund a cutting-edge data warehouse to whichorganizations and companies can donate data for use byresearchers in The Empowerment Lab. “Many importantresearch questions are not explored because of lack of data,”says Sosa. Businesses, nonprofits, and governments all gen-erate information that could be used for research and leadto discoveries about the reasons for exclusion and systemicpoverty. “We often don’t think about how we could make

ONY TAMER , cofounder and managing partner ofh.i.g. Capital and a member of the HarvardKennedy School Dean’s Council, helps businessesgrow. He knows a solid foundation is the key to

success. And that is what he believes hks strivesto provide its students — a firm intellectual andpractical foundation that gives them the toolsand leadership skills to make a significant differ-ence in the world.

With over 45 percent of the student bodydrawn from countries outside the United States,the school is also a truly global communitywith an environment that encourages culturalexchange and fosters lifelong bonds. Tamer’s con-cern for the citizens of the Middle East and Africaalso intersects with the hks mission to educate,support, and inspire the next generation of worldleaders. For prospective students from poorer countries,however, financial constraints can be insurmountable.

Recognizing a unique opportunity to help potentialleaders from the poorest countries in the Middle East andAfrica — such as Lebanon, Jordan, Tanzania, and Ethiopia— attend hks, Tamer and his wife, Sandra, have endowedthe Tamer Fellowship Fund.

O P P O R T U N I T I E S F O R I M P A C T

36

ways and means

T IS EASY TO THINK that the greatest value youwill ever get from the Kennedy School is in the yearsthat you spend as a graduate student here,” remarksmpa/id 2001 alumna Suzi Sosa, “But, in fact, I’m seeing

now that the greatest benefit I will have is through this long-term partnership with the school.” As founder and presidentof the mpower Foundation, the philanthropic investmentarm of the mpower Group, Sosa recently made a $3 millionseed capital grant to the Center for International Develop-ment to create The Empowerment Lab. “Our mpowercompanies seek to empower underserved individualsthrough products and services that transform their lives.As I thought about our work in the global context, I recog-nized that the systemic change we are seeking to createwould require partnerships with both researchers andpolicymakers, and the Kennedy School is without a doubtthe best place to do that.”

To mark its official launch, The EmpowermentLab hosted the first annual Global EmpowermentMeeting on September 22 and 23 at the KennedySchool campus. This event, which includedleaders from business, government, academia,and nonprofits, focused on the question of howto expand the reach of financial markets tounderserved communities. “We often take forgranted one of the greatest privileges we have inthe developed world: freedom of choice. In mostparts of the world, markets do not function well,leaving people with fewer choices for more

expensive products and services of inferior quality. Thisaffects not only consumer goods, but also health care, educa-tion, and basic infrastructure,” says Sosa. The EmpowermentLab will fund interdisciplinary research to explore the mostcomplex questions around why some individuals have beenperpetually excluded from mainstream markets. In addition,through events like the Global Empowerment Meeting, thelab will create strategic partnerships with global leaders whocan translate applied research findings into direct businessand policy applications.

Commenting on the impact of the Sosas’ generosity,Professor Ricardo Hausmann, director of the Center forInternational Development, said, “The Sosas share thecenter’s commitment to global empowerment and arewilling to invest their resources, tremendous talent, andvision in making a difference.”

MARTHA

STEWART

Suzi Sosa joins forces with the Kennedy School to extendmarkets to the poor

our data available for research, though in doing so we couldcreate invaluable findings for all humankind.”

Citing the Kennedy School motto, “Ask what you can do,”Sosa hopes more alumni will consider how they can createlong-term partnerships with the school. “Few of us realizehow many resources we have at our disposal and what animpact we could have if we collaborated with the school.”

In addition to her role as founder and president of thempower Foundation, Sosa is also chief of staff of mpowerLabs, a global business incubator and accelerator. She servedas a presidential management intern in the U.S. Departmentof Commerce, and before that as a short-term policy advisorfor the prime ministers of Bermuda and Lebanon. Sosa andher husband, Roy, live in Austin, Texas, where they are com-munity leaders in entrepreneurship and philanthropy.

Not only will Tamer Fellows benefit from a HarvardKennedy School education, each will also bring to the hkscommunity a unique perspective that will enrich the experi-ence of their classmates.T

“I

Fellowship will help develop international leadership

Suzi Sosa mpa/id 2001, her husband, Roy Sosa,and Dean David Ellwood.

“For the rest of our lives we’re alumni, and

I believe the more we are engaged as

continuing members of the community, the

better it’s going to be both for us and for the

Kennedy School.” — Suzi Sosa mpa/id 2001

Tamer’s concern for the citizens of

the Middle East and Africa also

intersects with the hks mission to

educate, support, and inspire the

next generation of world leaders.

“This new fellowship will play a vital role in the KennedySchool’s mission of attracting the best students from aroundthe world and giving them the ideas, inspiration, and oppor-tunities they need to realize their dreams of making a differ-ence in the world,” said Dean David Ellwood. “Key to thismission is our ability to offer financial aid at a level that willallow our students, especially those from developing coun-tries, to pursue their highest ideals and deepest convictions.We are deeply grateful to Tony and Sandra Tamer forhelping make this possible.”

38

T H E I N S I D E S C O O Pclassnotes

FOR CAROL CHYAU AND MARIE SO

(both mpa/id 2006), a yak is more than a hairy,one-ton animal. It’s an undeveloped asset, num-bering in the millions, that can bring change tothe mountainous areas of Western China thathave missed out on the country’s stunningeconomic success story. The nomadic people whohave herded yaks for centuries already know thatit’s an extremely useful creature, of course. Theyuse it as a pack animal, eat its meat, and makedairy products from its milk; use its dung tobuild walls for their homes and burn the samestuff for heat; and they turn its fibrous coat intotents and clothing. What they probably didn’tknow is that patrons of fine restaurants in HongKong and Shanghai would pay good money todine on yak cheese (a bit like sharp cheddar inconsistency and flavor), or that in cities as faraway as New York, San Francisco, and London,customers would buy clothing and accessoriesmade from the finest hand-combed yak down.That’s where Chyau and So come in. The pair

met at the Kennedy School. Chyau, a native ofTaiwan, came directly from the University ofPennsylvania, where she studied abroad in Chileand Peru and wrote her senior thesis on microfi-nance. So, a native of Hong Kong, left anengineering career (her last project was theBeijing Olympics’ swimming pool). They beganto talk seriously about their shared passion forbringing economic change to the poorest partsof China at a social enterprise conference atHarvard Business School and traveled to Chinaover winter break in January 2006 to researchexisting nonprofit organizations and opportuni-

ties there. In Kunming, the capital of YunnanProvince, they met with How Man Wong,founder of the China Exploration ResearchSociety, and learned that the organization hadbrought over an expert from the University ofWisconsin a couple of years earlier to helpvillagers start up a yak cheese project in theisolated Diquing region.“The society’s mission was exploration,

not economic development,” Chyau explains.“Marie and I thought we could add the mostvalue by trying to bring the cheese to market.”They returned to Cambridge and wrote up aplan for two yak-based, for-profit businesses:one selling cheese, the other, marketing aluxurious, cashmere-like yarn produced fromthe softest yak fiber. After teaming up with twohbs students and an undergraduate from Penn,“Yashmere” (their proposed name) won thesocial enterprise track of the hbs Business PlanContest and a $20,000 start-up grant.Chyau and So went back to China after

graduating to do more on-the-ground research,traveling to four yak-rich provinces in threemonths to gain some clarity around the detailsof their proposed endeavor. (Their business planteammates chose to pursue other opportunities.)They worked with experts in China’s Bureau ofAnimal Husbandry to develop the best methodto hand-comb yak fiber and sourced a manufac-

From the Field

Uncommon Thread

Carol Chyau mpa/id 2006Marie So mpa/id 2006

Carol Chyau and Marie So,both mpa/id 2006


but it’s an essential part of the process. “Otherwise you’rejust talking, right?” So remarks. “We focus on income gener-ation, but also on what is done with the money. We do ourbest to educate people on the value of investing in aneducation for their children versus buying a radio oralcohol, although we can’t dictate how the money is spent.”Recently the pair took a short break from their field workto attend an Echoing Green Fellowship conference at DukeUniversity. (The fellowship awards a two-year, $90,000grant to social entrepreneurs.)Shokay has scaled up quickly, working with 15,000

people this year compared with 3,000 last year. In 2009, theyexpect to break even and expand their reach into newcommunities. After an initial product launch with yarn,hand-knitted scarves, and throws, the business has branchedout into pillows, children’s clothing, and accessories like hatsand mittens, all of which can be purchased via the Internet,at the Shokay retail store in Shanghai, or at boutiques incities around the world. Soon, Shokay will even be offeringhats, gloves, and scarves through Harvard Student Agencies.Despite these early successes, the demands of Shokay, the

cheese business, and building the Ventures in Developmentnonprofit can be overwhelming at times. “My brain everyday is divided into 10-minute slots,” says So. “The drivingfactor is the level of satisfaction that comes from making adifference in someone else’s life.”“Balancing the double bottom line of financial return

and social impact is challenging,” Chyau agrees. “But I loveusing business skills in a way that helps other people.”— JH

turing partner to produce a sample batch of yarn. “It wasso beautiful that it confirmed we had a doablebusiness plan,” Chyau recalls. In September 2006 theychanged their name from Yashmere to Shokay (“yak down”in Tibetan) and formed an umbrella nonprofit organization,Ventures in Development, to serve as an incubator for itand the Mei Xiang Cheese Farm, which is run by a Tibetanfamily. Each has the goal of operating as a sustainable,for-profit enterprise that can bring about long-termeconomic development.“When we looked at traditional models, it didn’t seem

that charity and philanthropy could do the job on its own,”says So. “We were attracted to the idea of bringing privatesector business efficiency to social enterprise.” It’s a conceptthat doesn’t always go over easily, So acknowledges. Whenshe and Chyau speak to new herders about coming into thebusiness, they often find they have to do quite a bit ofexplaining. “If you go into rural areas in China, peopleoften expect free stuff,” says So. “We try to show them thedifference between a onetime deal and something moresustainable that they can create by using their ownresources. It’s a paradigm shift; the government doesn’talways understand what we’re doing, and we’re learningas we go too. It can be very challenging.”No day is the same, she adds. From April to October,

Chyau and So are often in the field, exploring new areas fordevelopment, training villagers in proper shearing tech-niques, or surveying households to measure the program’simpact. Given that they’re working with nomadic herderswho don’t follow a set schedule, this can take a while —P

HOTOS

COURTESYOFVENTURES

INDEVELOPMENT

Cheese made from yak milk (left)and yarn made from the one-tonanimal’s warm coat (above). Theproducts help create wealth fora region bypassed by China’seconomic development.

T H E L A S T W O R D

64

exit poll

Chez David Yoko Makino mpa 1999 successfully bidding for a dinner for six at Dean Ellwood’s

home. The dinner, personally prepared by the dean, is one of the highlights of the annual Summer

Internship Fund auction, which raises money for stipends for students’ unpaid summer internships in the

nonprofit and public sectors (see more on pages 10 and 28). Among the more than 150 items were a handknit

sweater by Academic Dean Mary Jo Bane and a tour of New York in an nypd squad car, courtesy of Police

Commissioner Ray Kelly mpa 1984. This year, the event raised more than $52,000. Makino, pictured with

guest Shigeru Aoi, a prospective student from Japan, is a founding member of the hks Club of Japan and

also a member of the Dean’s Alumni Leadership Council.

What inspired youto attend hks?While the first 10 years of my careerwere spent in government — the latterof those as legal counsel at theSupreme Court of the United Statesand assistant to Chief Justice WarrenBurger — those years did not includeactive participation in politics. So onleaving the Supreme Court, I wasthrilled to become submerged in gov-ernment and politics at the KennedySchool.

Could you describeyour experience at hks?Every day was exciting, informative,and gratifying — from the enormoustalent of the faculty through the sharedexperiences of the extraordinarily

gifted students. Each night posed thedifficult choice of reading several hun-dred pages from insightful authors, orsitting in the Forum to listen to, andtalk personally with, world leaders andnotable figures on global issues.

Where has lifetaken you since hks?After graduation, I put my hksinsights to work right away. I joineda law firm in Washington, dc, wheremy practice included representingclients in several disputes connectedto politics, political figures, and civilrights. It has also included servingas an advisor to a U.S. senator con-

Why do you give toHarvard Kennedy School?

I am enormously grateful for what hks has

provided me—the insights, analysis, focus,

and friendships. The fact is I doubt seri-

ously that many of the career opportunities

I have encountered would have occurred

without hks. In short, hks remains for me

the gift that keeps on giving. That each year

I give a substantial amount to hks in return

seems a natural step for me, and one I will

continue to make a priority.

Joe Caldwell mpa 1985

cerning U.S. Supreme Court nomina-tions. While at the firm, I volunteeredas legal counsel for Sharon PrattDixon’s campaign for mayor (of theDistrict of Columbia) and became herchief of staff and legal counsel aftershe won the election. (In that post,I quickly hired a hks faculty memberto study some of dc’s more intransi-gent problems.) After returning to thefirm, I joined, and became the eventualcochair of, the National LawyersCouncil of the Democratic NationalCommittee.

To learn more about what you can doto support Harvard Kennedy School,visit ww.hks.harvard.edu/about/giving.617-496-7073617-496-4511 FAX

THE GIFT THATKEEPS ON GIVING

Nonprofit Organization

U.S. Postage

PAID

Burlington, VT

Permit No. 216

79 John F. Kennedy StreetCambridge, MA 02138 USA

617-495-1100

www.hks.harvard.edu

HARVARDKENNEDYSCHOOLREUNIONWEEKENDMay 15–16, 2009

Degree program alumni from the classes of 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999,and 2004, mark your calendars and return to Cambridge for ReunionWeekend 2009!

For more informationon the web t www.hks.harvard.edu/about/alumni/reunionse-mail t [email protected] t the Reunion Help Line at 617-496-9959

Calling all volunteers If you are interested in being a part of yourReunion Committee, contact:Carolyn Hogan, Associate Director of Reunionse-mail t [email protected] t 617-495-0549

MARTHA

STEWART

J O H NF.K E N N E D Y S C H O O L O F G O V E R N M E N T ... · Words Photosrecord worldtravels...

Documents

Transcript of J O H NF.K E N N E D Y S C H O O L O F G O V E R N M E N T ... · Words Photosrecord worldtravels...