INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS & SECURITY
A year into Russia’s war on Ukraine, faculty share policy insights and strategic analysis
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one year ago, shocked the world and touched off the largest land war in Europe since World War II. The fighting has led to massive loss of life, enormous displacement of the Ukrainian population, and the decimation of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Beyond the terrible human cost, the war’s effects have spilled over into countless aspects of life and of global politics, including redrawing geopolitical energy supply lines; strengthening alliances among Western countries and deepening divides with China; increasing the danger of nuclear weapons use; and highlighting the importance of leadership in moments of crisis. Harvard Kennedy School faculty members reflect not just on the military lessons learned but on policy questions with global implications, many of them still unanswered. | | | |
WHAT WE'RE HEARING
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War is an instructive if harsh teacher, and sometimes the most we can salvage from the sacrifices others have made is greater knowledge and wisdom for the future.” | |
—Professor Stephen Walt from his essay: “The Top 5 Lessons from Year One of Ukraine’s War” | | | | |
PUBLIC FINANCE
The debt ceiling fight: A collision course with no easy offramp
With the current political standoff between Republicans insisting on spending cuts in return for raising the statutory limit on federal debt and Democrats who support increased taxation on the wealthy and oppose cuts to social safety net programs, the United States is risking a default on its debt obligations, which experts say could have dire consequences for the economy and financial markets. As budget negotiations heat up between the two sides, Harvard Kennedy School Senior Lecturer Linda Bilmes is analyzing the difficult arithmetic and says the only responsible paths to reducing the nation’s debt will require “unpalatable political choices.” Bilmes is an expert on the federal budget process and served in the Clinton administration, when budget battles eventually led to a bipartisan deal and even budget surpluses. But she says the current situation is more fraught, given the country’s fractured politics and with the United States seeing its highest levels of debt relative to GPD since World War II, driven by unprecedented borrowing for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tax cuts, and pandemic-related federal spending. | | | |
WHAT WE'RE READING
Professor Sandra Susan Smith’s work has inspired a course on the cost versus benefits of crime and punishment | | | | | |
SOCIAL POLICY
Dean’s Discussion explores the role of religion in civic life
While the founding of the United States was in many ways driven by a desire to foster religious tolerance, the precise role of faith in America’s civic discourse and public policy has historically been clouded by ambiguity. For the first talk of the spring Dean’s Discussion Series, HKS Dean Douglas Elmendorf brought together a panel of faculty members well-versed in the nuances of how religion and civic life intersect. The panelists included faculty members Pippa Norris, the author of a book on religion and politics, Arthur Brooks, who writes frequently about the role of religious faith in his life, and Cornell William Brooks, an ordained minister and faculty affiliate of the Harvard Divinity School. The faculty members discussed the state of religion in America today and how it affects everything from politics to education to personal happiness to how we communicate with one another. | | | |
WHAT WE'RE HEARING
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The Belfer Center has been the source of ideas that have changed the course of history. I am honored to lead the Center … and to work with Belfer’s phenomenal faculty, staff, and students on the world’s toughest problems.” | |
—HKS Professor Meghan O’Sullivan, who was this week named director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | | | | |
FAIRNESS & JUSTICE
How equity and inclusion programs strengthen higher education
Diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have become a political target for conservatives, but the scholarly literature is clear that they help universities recruit, retain, and teach a more racially diverse pool of talented students and faculty, says Kennedy School Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad. As faculty director of the Kennedy School’s Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project in the School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Muhammad has developed a repository of social science research examining diversity, racial equity, and antiracist organizational change in private, public, and nonprofit firms and entities. Muhammad says the research, highlighted in the project’s Race, Research, and Policy Portal, “shows that DEI programs are important tools for recruiting and maintaining diverse cohorts of faculty, staff, and students at universities across the country.” | | | |
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