INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS & SECURITY
Research study: Newly aggressive China flaunts its 21st century diplomatic offensive
With the United States and China engaged in a series of high-risk disputes, researchers at Harvard Kennedy School have assessed how the U.S.-China diplomatic rivalry evolved during the past two decades as China became a global power. Their conclusion: China has abandoned its longtime policy of keeping a low profile and quietly getting along. “In a phrase: Game on,” the researchers write. “China is now determined to compete as aggressively in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy as it does in other arenas.” For lead author Professor Graham Allison, a veteran analyst of great-power rivalries, the current U.S.-China showdown over Taiwan policy is an especially worrying and dangerous example of American strategic and tactical lapses documented throughout the study. The discussion paper, “The Great Diplomatic Rivalry: China vs. the U.S.,” is the fourth in a series titled “The Great Rivalry: China vs. the U.S. in the 21st Century,” from the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. | | | |
POLITICS
Assessing tax, climate, and inflation in major Biden administration package
The landmark Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Biden this week, includes important new climate protections measures, health care reforms, and tax policy changes. Harvard Kennedy scholars weigh these aspects in separate analyses: Research Professor John Holdren, who served as President Obama’s top adviser on science and technology policy, said in an interview that the package contains significant investments in clean and efficient energy, and while not ideal, “it is so much more than we thought we were going to get.” Adjunct lecturer Jay Rosengard says the new 15% minimum tax on corporate earnings closes a major loophole by making sure big companies—some of which now pay no federal tax—start paying for the public infrastructure they use each day. And University Professor Lawrence Summers says the bill’s provisions to strengthen the Internal Revenue Service will generate significant tax revenues, which will reduce budget deficits; he says other facets of the bill will improve energy supplies and bring down healthcare prices, in particular pharmaceutical goods, which over time will reduce inflation. | | | |
WHAT WE'RE HEARING
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Each year in recent years, I've asked my students to read even just sections of the Electoral Count Act, and they do not know what it means. ... It's just vague and confused.” | |
—Alex Keyssar, on reforming the Electoral Count Act | | | | |
HUMAN RIGHTS
HKS leadership program has supported LGBTQ leaders for two decades
More than 200 leaders in the LGBTQ community from across the United States have learned leadership skills at a Harvard Kennedy School executive education program over the past 20 years, with the support of the Victory Institute and the David Bohnett Foundation. The Senior Executives in State and Local Government program provides six spaces for LGBTQ leaders each year in this flagship program in the School’s executive education lineup, taught for the past 45 years. HKS faculty members who teach in the program include faculty chair David King, Robert Wilkinson, Kessely Hong, Julie Boatright Wilson, and Todd Rogers. The idea came from Fred Hochberg, a longtime LGBTQ activist, who approached the Victory Institute after attending the HKS program in 1996. | | | |
WHAT WE'RE READING
The Growth Lab evaluates which countries will grow fastest—and which won’t | | | | | |
FAIRNESS & JUSTICE
Internment camps don’t fire up minority political engagement—they depress it
The incarceration of Americans of Japanese ancestry by the U.S. government during World War II is a dark chapter in American history. Unlike other populations of Americans related by ancestry to the wartime enemies of the United States, the Japanese were seen as a particular threat and incarcerated, sometimes for years. The experience marked Japanese Americans in many ways, and many believe it explained subsequent successes, including high political engagement. But new research by HKS Professor Maya Sen, together with Mayya Komisarchik of the University of Rochester and Yamil Velez of Columbia University, finds instead that it had the opposite effect. Not only does this research help us better understand the unique history of the Japanese American community, but it provides a universal lesson on how, even in democracies, the targeting of minorities—think migrant detention centers—can have deep and long-lasting effects. | | | |
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