October 4, 2011
Transcription
October 4, 2011
THECITIZEN VOL. 17 NO. 2 | OCT OBE R 4 , 2011 THE FR E E S TUDE NT NE W S PA P E R OF T HE HA R VAR D K E NNE DY S C HOOL HA R VA RDC I TI Z E N . COM the university level. Student groups do not consider the amount to be enough and are calling for more investment in public education. About 80 percent of Chileans are said to support students’ demand for fair and affordable access to public education. As a result of this disagreement, Piñera’s approval rating has dropped to 26 percent-- the lowest for any president since the reinstatement of democracy in 1990. On a different note, Piñera also warned against the weakness of the current international system of governance and added that governments, no matter how powerful, are unable to act on their own to deal with 21st century challenges ranging from economic crises, to drug trafficking, and from global warming Chilean President Discusses Government’s Education Reforms drew to the Forum more than a dozen local demonstrators demanding educational equality in Chile. Denying claims that his administration had suppressed student protests, Piñera acknowledged the students’ constitutional right to demonstrate in the streets. However, he said that the way to resolve differences “is not through Molotov bombs, or rocks, or violence… but through dialogue.” Despite his government’s failure so far in engaging student groups and resolving differences through dialogue, Piñera was optimistic and claimed that “improving the quality of education is not only a great, noble, and beautiful cause; it is the main mission of the government.” “We agree that we should guarantee free education at the school level… before these inequalities become absolutely irreversible,” Piñera said, “but at the university level, we think that education should be free only for those people who really need it, because we don’t think it’s feasible and we don’t think it’s fair to use taxpayer’s money to finance all education.” Piñera added that his government has committed all the resources necessary, including 4 billion dollars to finance education reform at HKS Students Sail Out for a Great Year Ahead! within Harvard community. Zach Wineburg, a Mid-Career MPA student, said, “It was such a fantastic occasion to meet with other students in HKS. The weather was perfect. I am looking forward to what KSSG has planned next.” As the night progressed, the ship gradually turned itself into a moving club on the sea. People started dancing on multiple sections of the ship, particularly the upper deck, while others in a mellower mood enjoyed pleasant conversations below deck. The celebration continued until midnight when the ship safely returned to the same port which it left behind three hours ago. All the students disembarked and returned to their homes without incident — fortunately Dharana Rijal, News Writer, MPP ‘13 Cambridge, Sept 23 - Speaking at an event at the J.F.K Jr. Forum, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera defended his administration’s strategy in tackling Chile’s development challenges, including education reform, which has incited numerous student protests across Chile in the past couple of months. The most recent demonstration, which took place the day before Piñera’s address, saw tens of thousands of students flooding Chilean streets, demanding fair and affordable access to public education. Piñera’s speech on Friday also Continued on page 7 Skyscrapers far in the horizon, shining stars above in the sky, a balmy 70 degrees complimented by the light breeze blowing on students’ faces—the evening of September 21, 2011 turned out to be a perfect occasion for 400 Harvard Kennedy School students and their friends to sail out onto the Boston Harbor and celebrate the beginning of the great year ahead. Though it had rained just the day before, on that beautiful autumn evening Boston Harbor was as calm as it could ever be. All the guests arrived dressed up in their sharpest attire for what would become a memorable evening. The night cruise was the first event hosted by the newly elected members of the Kennedy School Student Government headed by President Sherry Hakimi and Executive Vice President Georgeta Dragoiu. The student government members gathered just before 8 pm to decorate and set up snacks for their classmates. Slowly, the boat filled up with smiling students out for a good time and it finally left the dock after all the party goers were safely on board. The students on the ship were a diverse lot hailing from all the various programs within HKS. Friends from other schools, such as the Harvard Business School, also joined in the festivities. It was a great place for students to interact with others from different programs and reach out to the other schools THE MISSION MATTERS MORE THAN DADT AN INTERVIEW WITH TIM MCCARTHY CELEBRATING OUR PAST, ENVISIONING OUR FUTURE PAEasy: A humorist’s perspective. By Cristina Garmendia. PAGE 7 By Matt Bieber. PAGE 8 Dean Ellwood on HKS’s 75th Anniversary. PAGE 10 By Christopher Gustafson. PAGE 13 Ryoji Watanabe, News Writer, MC/MPA ‘12 Students on the upper deck of Boston Harbor cruise ship. Photo Courtesy of Shannon Clark. for the KSSG, none of the party-goers were so intoxicated as to fall into the sea! The boat cruise was a great opportunity for students to establish new friendships and re-connect with classmates. Following the successful conclusion of its first event, the student government aims to host more exciting activities throughout the year that will provide students with opportunities to interContinued on page 7 NE W S 1 –7 | FE AT URE 8 –9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor 2 THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 CITIZENNEWS Attracting the best and the brightest The HKS philosophy of financial aid Alexi White, Opinions Editor, MPP ‘13 At first, Mark Truman wasn’t sure leaving his small test preparation business and going back to school was the right choice. But when he scrutinized the Kennedy School’s Master in Public Policy program, he was attracted by its interdisciplinary nature, the emphasis on service and idealism, and of course the Harvard name. “I had family and career concerns about coming to HKS,” Truman said. “The choice for me was not between two colleges, but rather between attending HKS or not attending at all.” Which is why being awarded a Dean’s Fellowship helped tip the scale toward attending. Truman, now in his first year, is unsure as to whether he would have made the same choice without it. “It certainly made it easier, but to say to what degree is really challenging,” Stephanie Streletz is the director of student financial services at HKS. She’s proud that financial assistance has doubled to approximately $22 million since 2004, including aid from donors, costsharing partnerships, university-wide funds, and the internal budget. And that doesn’t include student loans co-signed by the university or the cost of the Loan Repayment Assistance Program for domestic loans. Percentage of domestic students receiving scholarship/fellowship aid and average amount (Fall 2010) Mason: 57%, $34,228 MPA/MC: 35%, $28,983 MPA: 70%, $26,915 MPP: 48%, $32,712 MPAID: 50%, $35,638 “Financial assistance is one of the school’s first priorities,” Streletz says. “People have been laid off so that aid doesn’t need to be cut.” Domestic and international students in the class of 2011 borrowed an average of $58,050 and $22,550 respectively to cover the cost of their degree. Streletz concedes these numbers show there is still much room for improvement and points to Harvard’s upcoming capital campaign as a potential source of new funds. Part of the reason some students have to borrow so much is that only twenty percent of all financial assistance is distributed solely on the basis of need. Instead, the vast majority of funds are used to recruit top students who demonstrate leadership potential, academic achievement, a commitment to public service, and a “uniqueness factor.” “It is a strong message from the school Percentage of international students receiving scholarship/fellowship aid and average amount (Fall 2010) Mason: 30%, $52,223 MPA/MC: 26%, $69,024 MPA: 49%, $33,069 MPP: 45%, $32,655 MPAID: 65%, $43,856 Cambridge Celebrates Second Year as a Local Economy Community Cristina Garmendia, News Writer, MPP ‘13 Cambridge declared itself the first Local Economy Community in the nation last August in a policy order resolution spearheaded by Kennedy MPA student and Cambridge City Councilor Leland Cheung. The resolution presented powerful research demonstrating why governments ought to encourage local purchasing. “Money spent at locally-owned businesses,” says Cheung, “contributes 57% more to the local economy than does money spent at non-locally owned businesses and keeps valuable services and jobs in the city.” What is a Local Economy Community? It is composed of entrepreneurs and small business owners with deep and meaningful ties to the place where they live and work, says Bill Ailet, managing director of MIT’s Entrepreneurship Center. In an interview with WickedLocal, Ailet asserted that Cambridge has a fair claim to the title of “most entrepreneurial city in the United States,” with Kendall Square reputedly having between four to five times as many start-ups per square mile than any other place in the world. On his campaign website, Councilor Cheung lists as one of his campaign promises “Promote Local Products.” This promise is one close to his heart:“My mother was a small business owner--she was a baker, so it has always been an interest of mine.” His commitment to local business issues led him to reaffirm the declaration of Cambridge’s Local Economy Week for September 26- October 2. The program, he says, presents the City of Cambridge with a great opportunity to review its progress towards the resolution: (1) achieve 10 percent municipal procurement from local businesses, (2) encourage local banks to bid for municipal banking services, (3) support schools in procuring locally grown food, (4) emphasize the importance of buying local to the public, and (5) continue to consider policies that support the growth of locally owned businesses. Cheung, also chair of the Economic Development Committee, states, “I started the Local Economy Task Force one and a half years ago, which has done two things: declared Local Economy that merit is more important than need. We’re looking for the best and the brightest,” said Streletz. “Each year in our analysis, the rate of acceptance from those offered aid is consistently higher than those who were not.” Natasha Warikoo, a professor at the Harvard School of Graduate Education with expertise in higher education administration, expressed surprise that HKS relies so heavily on merit-based assistance. “People who avail themselves of merit aid tend to be able to afford school already,” said Warikoo. “There has been a rise in merit aid among second-tier universities to improve their status, but I would assume the Kennedy School is seen as one of the top policy schools in the country.” One of the Kennedy School’s main competitors, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, has a different philosophy of financial assistance. Its small student body and comparatively large endowment allows for a greater level of per-student aid. Covering all students’ tuition costs is the first priority; the remainder goes to those with the greatest need. Continued on page 4 Week and advocated for the City of Cambridge to bank locally with taxpayer dollars.” The City of Cambridge currently banks with Citibank, a subsidiary of the Bank of Scotland. According to Janneke House, Executive Director of Cambridge Local First, that might change soon. “We also encourage residents and even our member businesses to move [their banking] to one of Cambridge’s locally owned banks: Cambridge Trust Company, Cambridge Savings Bank, and East Cambridge Savings Bank,” he says. House has been working with Councilor Cheung in making government support of the local economy a priority. She explains, “Local government needs to be a leader in encouraging city staff and city departments to encourage the building of the local economy. [Local] business owners invest all their time and talent into the community.” Cheung clarifies, “It’s not the business of government to keep businesses in business. People should think about the economic impact of their purchasing decisions.” NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 3 CITIZENNEWS THECITIZEN ency. (Georgia’s governor does not have the power to grant clemency.) Anti-death penalty groups directed hundreds of letters towards state officials, while the Innocence Project, famous for exonerating death row inmates through the use of DNA testing, sent a letter to the county district attorney urging him to retract the death order. Groups staged vigils in solidarity across the U.S. and Europe, with signs and T-shirts stating “I am Troy Davis.” Some tried more desperate measures like urging prison workers to stay home and calling Georgia judges at their home addresses. On the evening of the execution, as many as 700 gathered outside the prison in Georgia and the Supreme Court in Washington, shouting slogans and praying for Davis’s safety. In Harvard Square, nearly two hundred gathered to take part in a vigil organized by Amnesty International to coincide with Davis’s expected time of execution at 7:00pm. According to Joshua Rubenstein, Amnesty International’s Northeast Director, students and members of Cambridge’s antideath penalty community joined together to pray, show solidarity, and listen to up-to-the-minute situation updates on Democracy Now! “We were startled by cheering in Georgia,” he recalls. “We didn’t know what to make of it. Maybe something positive had happened, we thought… everyone had their Blackberries out checking for an announcement.” But hope turned to despair as everyone realized that the reprieve was only a temporary one and that the writing was on the wall. At 11:00pm – four hours behind schedule -- Davis was wheeled into the death chamber. He died at 11:08pm. Davis’s supporters, both on campus and in the community, insist that their fight is not over. “Georgia’s execution of Troy Davis was simply unconscionable,” says Leon Ratz, MPP1. “The decision by authorities to go ahead with the execution despite significant doubts over Davis’s guilt reflects not only the arbitrariness of the application of the death penalty, but also the sheer barbarity of it.” Rubenstein adds: “In 2007 the Board vowed that no execution would go for- News Editor Shloka Nath, MPP ‘13 Georgia man executed over cries of his innocence Assistant News Editor Zachary Rosenfeld, MPP ‘13 Zachary Rosenfeld, Assistant News Editor, MPP ‘13 Editor-in-Chief Irene Shih, MPP ‘13 News Writers Matt Bieber, MPP ‘11 Cristina Garmendia, MPP ‘13 Dharana Rijal, MPP ‘13 Imran Sarwar, MPP ‘13 Khaleel Seecharan, MC/MPA ‘12 Ryoji Watanabe, MC/MPA ‘12 Opinions Editor Alexi White, MPP ‘13 Assistant Opinions Editor Carli Hetland, MPP ‘13 Opinions Writer Sujoyini Mandal, MPP ‘13 Culture Editor Sherry Hakimi, MPP ‘12 Culture Writers Alex Remington, MPP ‘13 Humor Columnist Chris Gustafson, MPP ‘12 Photographer Grace Chung, MPP ‘12 Business Manager Mike Conway, MPP ‘13 Web Developers Kristina Redgrave, MPP ‘13 Jesus Bolivar, MPA-ID2 Diane Chang, MPP ‘13 Layout & Design Janell Sims Website http://harvardcitizen.com Contact hkscitizen@gmail.com Interested in contributing to the Citizen? Please contact hkscitizen@gmail.com. Troy Davis – a death row inmate in Georgia who for many had come to personify the injustice and racial skew of the American death penalty – was executed by lethal injection on the evening of Wednesday 9/21. Anti-death penalty activists worldwide collectively held their breaths as the Supreme Court extended Davis a surprise, last-minute reprieve, only to have their hopes dashed when the justices weighed the case and summarily denied him a stay of execution. According to witnesses, Davis remained defiant even his last moments. Looking directly through the glass window to the taciturn son and brother of the man he allegedly murdered, Davis insisted that they and the state were punishing the wrong person. “I am innocent,” said Davis. “All I can ask is that you look deeper into this case so you really can finally see the truth.” He then exhorted his supporters to “keep the faith” and said to prison personnel, “May God have mercy on your souls; may God bless your souls.” The family of the victim, Mark McPhail, was not moved. “He’s been telling himself that for 22 years,” said Annaleise McPhail, the victim’s mother, in a telephone interview with CBS News. “You know how it is; he can talk himself into anything.” Both the McPhails and state prosecutors asserted that justice had finally been served after a long, exhaustive, and in many ways convoluted and frustrating appeals process. Davis, 44, stood accused in 1991 for the murder of Mark McPhail, a Savannah police officer, during a heated confrontation in a local parking lot. He was convicted and sentenced to death primarily on the testimony of nine witnesses, seven claiming that they had seen Davis shoot McPhail and two others testifying that they had heard Davis admit to committing the crime. Defenders point to the fact that, aside from their key witnesses, the pros- ecution presented very little evidence directly tying Davis to the crime, and that most of the evidence that they did present was circumstantial. Later, all but two of these witnesses submitted affidavits rescinding their testimony in whole or in part, some claiming that they had been coerced to false testimony by aggressive Georgia police and others alleging that they had seen another man, Sylvester Coles, murder McPhail. (Coles was one of the two witnesses who did not change his testimony.) Paris demonstration for Troy Davis. Photo Courtesy of World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. Davis’s execution was delayed a total of four times while Georgia’s courts considered whether new evidence and testimony “clearly established Davis’s innocence.” Each time prosecutors dismissed the defense’s arguments as “smoke and mirrors” with great emotional appeal but little basis in evidence or reality. They demonstrated, for example, that some of the defense’s affidavits were not true recantations at all, and cast doubt on Davis’s strategy when his lawyers failed to allow important witnesses stand for cross-examination. Lower court judges consistently ruled in the prosecutors’ favor, frustrating a defense team who said their hands were tied by an unfair “guilty until proven innocent” standard. A record 630,000 petitions – signed from supporters from within Georgia, across the United States, and around the world – urged the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant Davis clem- Continued on page 12 NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor 4 THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 CITIZENNEWS HKS Alum and Chavez Opponent, Leopoldo Lopez Launches Presidential Bid Shloka Nath, News Editor, MPP ‘13 In what is likely to be seen as a significant boon for Venezuelan democracy, Leopoldo López – HKS alum, technocrat and former mayor of the affluent Chacao district of Caracas – recently launched his campaign to contest President Hugo Chavez in elections next year. Previously barred from seeking election on corruption charges, Lopez made his decision after the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) ordered Venezuela last month to allow him to run. “Since 2008, he’s been looking for a mechanism to remove me from the political game,” López said in a speech before thousands of supporters in Caracas. “Mr. President, I ask myself: ... Are you afraid of me?” To many, López’s background would appear to be a severe disadvantage in a country like Venezuela, where the government’s poor and working-class constituency is frequently stirred into an agitated fury against the rich, upper classes. Young and photogenic, López, is a sinewy man with a charismatic smile and personality and comes from one of Venezuela’s richest families. López graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 1996 with a Masters in Public Policy. He is related to both Venezuela’s first President, Cristobal Mendoza, and Simón Bolivar, considered the Liberator of both Venezuela and Colombia. In 2007 he married Lilian Tintori, a former professional athlete with whom he has one daughter. But López has dampened such denigration and grown into an intimidating activist and campaigner, pounding away on issues such as high crime rates, electricity shortages and inflation, all of which he believes affect the poor most severely. According to López, Venezuelans have had enough of what they say is Mr Chavez’s poor economic management and autocratic style. López has also nurtured support among members of the U.S. Congress and in countries that have close ties to Venezuela, such as Spain and Colombia. Leopoldo Lopez. By User: Camila84 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Venezuela’s Comptroller General, an ally of Chávez, banned Lopez from running for public office in 2004 over two independent allegations of financial misconduct. López was charged with taking donations between 1998 and 2001 on behalf of an organization he led from the state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, where his mother worked at the time. The comptroller general also accused López in 2004 of supposed indiscretions in the movement of funds from one portion of his local budget to another. Lopez however, insists he is innocent, that the charges are politically motivated and that he has never been tried in court. López is one of several contenders in primary elections to be held in February when Venezuela’s opposition alliance will nominate a single representative to run against President Chávez in October 2012. The current favorites to win the opposition nomination in February’s primary are the governor of Miranda state, Henrique Capriles Radonski, and the governor of Zulia state, Pablo Perez. They are the same age as López (Chávez is 57) and gravitate about the ideological center. Almost all their supporters will back the winner of the primary. But to defeat Chávez, the opposition will still have to widen its appeal. Disappointed and resentful Chávez supporters have in the past, refused to vote rather than vote against him. None of the opposition candidates has framed a message to attract them, although Capriles is likely to incite the most favorable reaction from Chavez supporters. Chávez has governed Venezuela since 1999, winning every national election over the last decade. The leftist leader is determined to run for a third six-year term, despite undergoing surgery in June for cancer. In 2009 he won a referendum to eliminate term limits, paving the way for him to rule far into the 21st century, were he to keep winning elections. Chávez still is a formidable candidate; he has strong support, particularly among the poor who have benefited most from his socialist policies, which have seen Venezuela’s oil riches spent on services including health and education. He will not be easy to unseat. “Financial aid,” continued from page 2 According to the Wilson School’s website, its goal is reducing student debt so that graduates can afford to take jobs in the public sector. It may be why in 2010, only 16% of the Wilson School’s MPA graduates took positions in the private sector compared to 29% of MPP graduates at HKS. John Templeton, coordinator of the Wilson School’s admissions office, said equity concerns are the chief reason for the focus on reducing need. He said he knows of the occasional student who chooses HKS after receiving a large scholarship, but that the Wilson School doesn’t feel it has trouble recruiting top students. “Quite honestly, we don’t lose enough of our top ranked admits for financial reasons,” Templeton said. For Truman, attracting a diverse set of students with unique strengths and experiences is worthwhile and will serve the institution well over time. Continued on page 9 Greece and the Crisis in the Eurozone Dharana Rijal, News Writer, MPP ‘13 Before entering the eurozone in 1999, member countries had to satisfy the Maastricht criteria, which required that their inflation could be no more than 1.5 percent a year, their budget deficit could be no more than 3 percent of the GDP, and that their debt-to-GDP ratio could be no more than 60 percent. However, not all member countries were diligent in ensuring that their budgets were truly line with the stringent criteria. Moreover, many continued to depart from the criteria after joining the monetary union. After years of flawed accounting and unbridled spending and consumption, Greece today faces a debt and deficit crisis such that its gross government debt is expected to be about 166 percent of GDP in 2011. Its deficit is expected to be about 8 percent of GDP in 2011. (Source: IMF- Fiscal Monitor). Given their exposure to Greek bonds, international financial institutions and countries follow the Greek government balance closely. In May 2010, Greece received a rescue package of 750 billion euros through the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). This required that Greece implement strict measures to reduce its government balance. However, Greece has continued to struggle to implement these measures. Since it is part of the monetary union, Greece cannot use exchange rates in order to get competitive in the international market. It seems doomed to default on its debt unless further financial assistance is provided. However, following the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank last weekend, a new European rescue package seems to be emerging. The plan, if implemented, would increasue the size of EFSF to 2 trillion euros, which would help to write down half of Greece’s public debt. NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 5 CITIZENNEWS The Uncertain Future of Microfinance Imran Sarwar, News Writer, MPP ‘13 Microfinance has lost its halo. Once touted as the instrument for economic advancement of the poor, an enterprise model that was not only self-sustainable but also socially responsible, the microfinance sector’s efficacy is now in doubt. Microfinance started out as the work of nonprofit organizations and then shifted to for-profit companies, providing small loans to poor borrowers to help them generate income and lift themselves out of poverty. But there has been a drastic shift from this starting principle. Microfinance organizations have focused attention on generating high profits on these loans in order to pay back the debt based on which these loans were financed, and cover their operating costs. Loans were thus, extended to the poor left, right and center, as microfinance institutions (MFIs) increased their portfolios, charged exorbitant interest without taking into account the ability of the clients to repay. In turn, these MFIs displayed amazing growth rates at the end of each fiscal year. Effects of high growth rates at break-neck speed are starting to show. Krishnamurthy Subramanian, in his recent article “Microfinance Lenders: To Profit or Not To Profit”, finds that forprofit MFIs in India tend to have higher costs and expenses, and consequentially higher interest rates. These high interest rates, coupled with not-so-pleasant recovery mechanisms may have resulted in events such as suicides of close to 30 borrowers in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, has declared that MFIs are “sucking the blood from the poor in the name of poverty alleviation”. MFIs in Pakistan are having a hard time recovering disbursed loans after a series of natural disasters struck the country. Many Rural Support Programs in Pakistan have had to wrap up their operations in some locations hit by the 2010 flood. MFIs are having trouble recovering loans from over-indebted borrowers who were given the loans for non-productive purposes in an attempt to increase loan portfolios. In an environment where different MFIs are concerned about financial sustainability and are looking for ways to increase interest rates even further in THE CITIZEN CHEAT SHEET: Obama’s Deficit Plan Khaleel Seecharan, News Writer, MC/ MPA ‘12 Last month President Obama proposed a ten-year plan aimed at shaving of $3 trillion dollars of the United States deficit. Coming on the heels of the acrimonious debt ceiling agreement that paralyzed the nation over the summer, Obama hopes to submit this plan to the bi-partisan committee that was created to work towards a firm debt reduction course of action by December 23rd. If an agreement is not reached by December 23rd, $1.2 million in cuts will occur regardless what Obama’s plan outlines as a result of the debt ceiling agreement. Obama’s plan is the first salvo in what is expected to be a contentious debate between Democrats and Republicans that must be resolved over the next few months. In presenting the plan, President Obama said “I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on order to meet growing costs, one Pakistan based organization, Akhuwat, is giving microloans totally interest-free. In a recently published paper entitled, ‘Akhuwat – it sometimes makes sense to break the rules,’ Malcolm Harper, Chairman Micro-Credit Ratings International, noted the organization is unique “Because it breaks just about all the generally accepted rules of microfinance, but has nevertheless (or perhaps for that reason) survived and grown”. The most significant of these is the insistence on interest-free loans. The organization derives inspiration from teachings of Islam, though it serves all religions, and considers charging interest not only Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share. We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable.” The Citizen has compiled a list of key initiatives from the plan that are sure to come under contentious debate on Capitol Hill in the months to come: t $1.5 trillion of tax increases combined with $1.5 trillion of spending cuts/ savings for a total debt reduction of $3 trillion. t Creation of the so-called “Buffett Rule” – named after the pro-tax billionaire Warren Buffett – which holds that “no person should pay less in income taxes than his or her secre- Wife and daughters of Abdul Aziz, a borrower of Akhuwat from Faisalabad, working on cone yarn winding machines bought with the help of microloan. Photo Courtesy of Imran Sarwar. against the principles of Islam, but also unjust when dealing with the poorest strata of society. Working since 2001, Akhuwat has expanded into more than 30 cities in Pakistan, served more than 100,000 families and disbursed approximately $14 million. Just how have they done this? The secret lies in the name: Akhuwat, literally translated as ‘brotherhood’, a spirit whereby each member looks after the other in the community. The Continued on page 13 tary.” In practice, this will result in the creation of a new tax bracket for households that earn more than $1 million in annual income. t The expiration of tax cuts introduced during the Bush presidency and the restructuring of tax deductions for families making more than $250,000 annually or individuals making more than $200,000 annually. t $500 billion set aside for job creations to stimulate a struggling economy. t Adjustments to Medicare, Medicaid, agriculture subsidies, and federal retirement programs. t Savings from the planned ending of the Iraq and Afghanistan military engagements. NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor 6 THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 celebrating years with the &91-03*/( Shorenstein center 5IF.FEJBBOE1PMJUJDT'SPOUJFS Two days of provocative conversation and forward thinking /ZF$POGSFODF$FOUFS5BVCNBO#VJMEJOHUI'MPPS Friday, October 14 t BN8FMDPNFALEX S. JONESEJSFDUPS4IPSFOTUFJO$FOUFS 41&",&34&3*&4 Tuesday, October 4, 12 p.m. 5BVCNBO i)Vò1PTUUIF8FCBOEUIF $BNQBJHOPGw Conversations t oBNKEN AULETTA"OOBMTPG$PNNVOJDBUJPOT DPMVNOTThe New YorkerBOEVIVEK KUNDRA'PSNFS64 $IJFG*OGPSNBUJPO0óDFS t oBNXENI JARDINGPVOEJOHQBSUOFSBOEDPFEJUPS PGUIFCMPH#PJOH#PJOHBOEMILES O’BRIENTDJFODF DPSSFTQPOEFOU1#4/FXT)PVS t BNoQNSTEVE GROVE)FBEPG/FXTBOE 1PMJUJDT:PV5VCFBOEANNE MARIE SLAUGHTER#FSU( ,FSTUFUUFSA6OJWFSTJUZ1SPGFTTPSPG1PMJUJDTBOE*OUFSOBUJPOBM "òBJST1SJODFUPO6OJWFSTJUZ t oQNREBECCA MACKINNONTFOJPSGFMMPX/FX"NFSJDB 'PVOEBUJPOBOEABDERRAHIM FOUKARA8BTIJOHUPO CVSFBVDIJFG"M+B[FFSB t oQNDAVID CARRDPMVNOJTUBOESFQPSUFSThe New York TimesBOEDANAH BOYDTFOJPSSFTFBSDIFS.JDSPTPGU3FTFBSDI HOWARD FINEMAN TFOJPSQPMJUJDTFEJUPSBUUIF )VóOHUPO1PTUBOEBO/#$/FXTBOBMZTU DPOUSJCVUJOHSFQPSUTUPUIFOFUXPSLBOEJUTDBCMF BóMJBUF.4/#$ Thursday, October 6, 12 p.m. -JUUBVFS i5IF%JWJEFE4UBUFTPG "NFSJDB8IBUUIF7PUFST 5IJOLw PETER HARTDIBJSNBOPG 1FUFS%)BSU3FTFBSDI"TTPDJBUFT$PTQPOTPSFE XJUIUIF*OTUJUVUFPG1PMJUJDT t oQNDAN OKRENT,XSJUFSBOEFEJUPSBOEADAM MOSS, FEJUPSJODIJFGNew YorkNBHB[JOF Tuesday, October 11, 12 p.m. 5BVCNBO Saturday, October 15 i)BVOUJOH-FHBDZ)PXB-PTU 8BS4UJMM*OøVFODFT8IJUF )PVTF8BS1PMJDZw t oBNEMILY BELL,EJSFDUPS5PX$FOUFSGPS%JHJUBM +PVSOBMJTN$PMVNCJB+PVSOBMJTN4DIPPMBOEJOICHI ITO EJSFDUPS.*5.FEJB-BC t BNoQNMARK MCKINNONDPNNVOJDBUJPOTTUSBUFHJTU BOEJIM VANDEHEIFYFDVUJWFFEJUPSBOEDPGPVOEFS1PMJUJDP MARVIN KALBGPVOEJOH EJSFDUPSPGUIF+PBO4IPSFOTUFJO$FOUFSBOE BVUIPSPGHaunting LegacyXJUI%FCPSBI,BMC $PTQPOTPSFEXJUIUIF#FMGFS$FOUFSPO4DJFODF BOE*OUFSOBUJPOBM"òBJST NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 7 CITIZENNEWS Future Military Leaders: The Mission Matters More than DADT Cristina Garmendia, News Writer, MPP ‘ 13 Following the historic end of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy on September 20, The Citizen interviewed nine soldiers, sailors, and airmen from the Harvard Kennedy School community about their opinions and reactions. Dan Futrell, MPP2, spent five years on active duty in the U.S. Army. As a Captain, he commanded 30-60 soldiers. His response to critics of the repeal of DADT: “We hold up the military as a mature and professional fighting force and we ask them to handle incredibly hard and complex problems. To then assume that they are not mature and professional enough to handle homosexuality in the ranks is contradictory to everything we have seen in the past ten years [of war].” Commander Scott Farr, a National Security Fellow, just turned over command of a Navy squadron, having been in charge of implementing DADT policy until August 9. Says Farr on the implementation process: “The Navy and Marine Corps took a very systematic approach to it, from the top down. The Chief of Naval Operations had a multimedia program where he briefed us, and then there were facilitators were trained at the fleet level who facilitated discussion among the unit commanders. The discussion was wide ranging and covered a lot of what-if scenarios.” Commander Farr describes how on the day after the repeal, “I called up my former executive officer who is now in command, wondering how our command was doing.” The response was, “Just another day.” The responsibilities of military leaders haven’t changed at all, Farr states. “It’s up to you to ensure good leadership, dignity, and professionalism in your unit.” Captain Ryan Miller, MPP1 and an Army Ranger, shared a similar sentiment from his experience as the infantry officer of a 40-member platoon: “I don’t think it’s as big of a leadership challenge as its opponents made it out to be.” He explains, “They were focusing on these points that really didn’t matter: the army would be less cohesive, enlistment would go down… etc. They will make it work… we have the most adaptable army in the world.” A number of other HKS servicemen and women agreed to comment on condition of anonymity: “I support the spirit of the repeal of DADT, but I criticize the practicality of the repeal and those fighting for it. This is a peacetime issue and it’s deplorable that our military’s leaders are being forced to spend time and energy on this issue while we’re at war.” DADT. It seemed like such a bulwark policy, kind of like military pensions, untouchable. It seemed to me as a reasonable way to allow homosexuals to serve and to assuage the moral sensibilities of people against it. There was a time I would have defended DADT. Why create a lot of drama for commanders when there is a war going on? But my views have really changed on it. Now I think repealing DADT is a total non-issue.” “DADT was a policy of Bill Clintonnot the military. I would like to see us move on and stop talking about it. The military has more important things to do. Why is this an issue when ten soldiers are killed every week?” “It’s going to be extremely liberating as an officer who is tasked to manage the emotional and psychological health of his subordinates, because it is a huge aspect of military leadership to really know your people and how they can do their job. [The DADT repeal] is one of the biggest instances of military implementing a policy change and explaining it. They are doing a good job at walking through step by step and doing the appropriate training.” “It is a little personal because a good friend of mine who was killed in Afghanistan, everyone was pretty sure he was gay but he was the most phenomenal leaders I have ever seen. He was perfect. It was really sad that he died, highly decorated, without ever being able to be himself. I never really thought about it until the issue [of DADT repeal] started coming out, but he was the first person I thought about.” “[Repealing DADT] is the right thing for change but it won’t be easy. I think as wrong as it is; it’s going to change the cohesiveness of some specific units, like the war fighting units, as opposed to the support units.” Judging by the opinions of those servicemen and women currently in the MPP program, there seemed to be two distinct camps: those who felt conflicting emotions and believed that implementation of the DADT repeal would be difficult and possibly detrimental to the war effort, and those who believed that the military is very good at adapting to change and that implementation would not change day to day operations whatsoever. Some registered happiness for their gay compatriots, some admitted to have not given much thought to the issue, others expressed a desire to simply drop it and move on. It seems that they are all united, however, in their desire to integrate newly-outed homosexuals into the military quickly, effectively, and with little fuss so that they can get on with their most important mission: defending the United States. “Integrity is part and parcel about who we are. If the institution is forcing someone to be dishonest, the institution is not being faithful to our core values. Repealing DADT drops that barrier.” “There are protocols against fraternization already in place. [Gays] are adhering to the same principles of soldiers and sailors, so the argument that gays will disrupt the ‘neighborhood’ is flawed.” “I was in the military for effectively ten years of my life and it never came up as a topic, either directly or indirectly. From an abstract standpoint there was a time I couldn’t even conceive of the repeal of “Chilean President,” continued from page 1 to terrorism. “We cannot pretend to govern the world with old institutions,” he said, “governments will have to give up part of their sovereignty to advance international governance.” In his speech, Piñera also reflected on the economic gains Chile had achieved in the past few years. He acknowledged that the threat of mid-income traps was real, however, and said that Chile has to keep working hard to not slide back on its progress. According to the International Monetary Fund, Chile’s per capita income at $15000 (based on Purchasing Power Parity) is the highest in Latin America. Its economy is also expected to grow at 6.5 percent in 2011. Owing to such economic achievements, it became a member of the OECD in 2010-- the only country from South America to have managed to do so. “HKS Sails,” continued from page 1 act with people from other programs. According to President Hakimi and Executive Vice President Dragoiu, “The boat cruise was an excellent way to set the tone for how KSSG plans to run this year: fun-filled, inclusive, and organized!” THECITIZEN Like us on Twitter & Facebook! Twitter: #HKSTheCitizen Facebook: https://www. facebook.com/pages/ The-Citizen/96376824154 Also, The Citizen will launch an all new website in November! Stay tuned for content updates, media and many more features to come! NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor 8 THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 CITIZENFEATURE From a Position of Moral Strength Tim McCarthy on the President, the Republican Party, and Life as a Second-Class Citizen Matt Bieber, Features Columnist, MPP/ MDiv ‘13 Timothy Patrick McCarthy is core faculty and director of the Sexuality, Gender, and Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He also served as a founding member of Barack Obama’s National LGBT Leadership Council. McCarthy’s books include: The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition (New Press, 2003), now in its second printing; Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism (New Press, 2006); and Protest Nation: Words That Inspired a Century of American Radicalism (New Press, 2010). In 2010 you pointed out that a range of high-profile Republicans, including Dick Cheney, Laura Bush, Ken Mehlman, and Ted Olson, have come out in favor of same-sex marriage, and you also suggested that we might begin to see the Republican Party courting queer folk more actively – particularly if the Democratic Party continued, in your words, “picking and choosing which portion of our humanity is safe to support at any given moment.” How do you conceive of the relationship between the Republican Party and the LGBT community today? Historians should never predict the future, or try to predict the future. You know, that piece was meant to be very provocative, and it was. And there were a lot of people that gave me a lot of push-back for it. At the end of the day, the Republican Party has got to prove something to us, period. This, “Oh, let’s all come together and have this conversation…” No, you’ve done nothing for us but deny us. You have some gays in your log cabin, or your “tent,” or whatever spatial metaphor you’d like to use. Certainly, we know that there are more than enough queer folks in your ranks, most of them in the closet. Get your act together. That would be my very frank assessment of where they stand. As an openly gay man in America, I have absolutely no faith that the Republican Party, as a political party, will in any reasonable amount of time be described as an ally in the struggle for LGBT rights. They still oppose the struggle for LGBT equality. That said, everyone has to navigate their own political affiliations. I’m still a registered Democrat for a whole variety of reasons, which I can justify, more or less, on any given day. You know, we live in a two-party system, where you can register as an independent or something else. But at the end of the day, if you want to have any kind of traction, feel like you’re part of the political process, you have to choose. It’s an either-or thing. I lament that; I wish that weren’t the case. I wish we had a political system that was far more variegated and homogenous and where there’s more power to be shared among different kinds of interests, but we don’t have that. Heterogeneous. Oh, did I say “homogenous”? Yes. No, I mean “homosexual.” [Laughs] Heterogeneous. Yeah, much more heterogeneous; I would love that. But at the end of the day, the Republican Party has never ever sided with LGBT folks in any kind of formal institutional political way that would suggest that they’re going to assist us in our struggle for equality. That said, I think they have a real problem. One of my biggest pet peeves is when the Republican Party says they’re party of Lincoln. Well, if you’re the party of Lincoln, when it comes to LGBT folks, you’re a house divided, in the sense that you have a whole bunch of people that oppose us who basically run the house, and then a whole bunch of folks who are in your party who are living in the closets in that house. So, you’ve got your own house divided. It’s a very different one than Lincoln had. But at the end of the day, you need to get your house in order, because you have all these toe-tapping politicians and these folks who are voting against every gay rights piece of legislation and they’re trying to get a little gay sex on the side. At the end of the day, that’s not my contradiction. That’s not my problem. It certainly has a bearing on my life and the life of my queer brothers and sisters. But at the end of the day, they’ve created this hypocrisy and it’s becoming more and more untenable and embarrassing by the minute. When Ken Mehlman came out and all that happened…I didn’t know what to feel. On the one hand, I felt enormous empathy for this gay guy, who’s lived his entire life as a closet case, and I lived too long that way myself for different reasons. But as a person who is positioned across from him in the culture war, in the positions that he held in the Republican Party, I have nothing but disdain for what he has participated in. I’m not saying he necessarily orchestrated all those anti-gay ballot initiatives in 2004, but neither did he stand up in a vocal way – I mean, he claims to have, but none of us were in that room. He didn’t stop it. So, I don’t have a lot of faith. I do think it’s very interesting that there are more and more Republicans who are coming out in favor of gay marriage, but they tend to be Republicans who are not, you know, deeply invested in this Tea Party-Republican uprising that we’re seeing right now. Those folks tend to be – the politicians, at least – pretty vigorously anti-gay. Let’s talk about the Democrats for a moment. In October 2009, you wrote, “Indeed, when it comes to full LGBT equality, President Obama is more symbol than substance, a lot of talk and not much action.” That was two years ago, and since that time, the President has gotten some things done. The Administration isn’t defending the Defense of Marriage Act anymore. They’ve overturned “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy barring gay Americans from serving openly in the military. How do you see the relationship between the gay rights movement and the President today? My views on the President are constantly in flux, and that’s probably to his advantage, when it comes to my support for him. I still do have a certain amount of faith in him, and increasing faith in him on LGBT issues. He has ordered his Justice Department to stop defending DOMA in court. He has successfully navigated a very complicated repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and signed it into law. He signed into law a comprehensive hate crimes bill, the Byrd-Shepard Act, and has instructed his Department of Health and Human Services Secretary to order that gay and lesbian couples can have full visitation rights and medical access. He convened the first White House conference on bullying, and has certainly empowered his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, who has made anti-bullying an important part of the Administration’s education agenda. I think the President has now—three years into his presidency—shown himself to be someone who will spend political capital on our issue. He has achieved more, in terms of legislation, in terms of LGBT rights, than any other president in the history of the United States. And that’s just a fact. He has not come out in favor of gay marriage. I have very strong suspicions that should he be reelected, that would be one of the first things we’d see – he will out himself, as it were, for gay marriage. There’s very little question in my mind that that will happen eventually, and I think that that moment will be more consistent with what he really truly believes and has believed for a long time – but right now, he can’t be true to that belief because he is President of the United States and we live in a country at a particular historical moment that’s not ready for that. The “My views are still evolving” line. But they’re not. His political courage is evolving. His views are fairly clear, from NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 9 CITIZENFEATURE beings is not negotiable; until then, elected leaders of both parties will continue to treat us as nothing more than a special-interest group to be manipulated or marginalized.” In other words, LGBT folks may have to be patient until they get what they’re entitled to, but they are entitled to these things. Tim McCarthy my perspective, dating back some time. He’s not opposed to gay marriage; he’s on record saying that. He’s never told me that individually to my face, of course, but for a whole variety of reasons, there’s no doubt in my mind where he stands in his heart. In one of your more recent essays, you wrote, “I wish the LGBT community would rethink its relationship with the President.” On one hand, you want him to be a stronger ally for the community and draw firm lines in the sand around certain types of discrimination. At the same time, the movement has to be bigger than him and push him to move? Yeah, it’s got to. And one of the reasons I wrote that piece was because I wanted to be one of those people pushing him. But I also think we have to acknowledge what he’s done. I don’t think it makes any sense for us, in terms of building political will, to throw him out with the bathwater. At the end of the day, he has gotten more done as president, signed more pieces of legislation, and given more orders on our behalf than any president in American history. Part of that’s an accident of timing. We are in a moment where the arc of the moral universe for us is bending pretty quickly, or it seems to be, and he’s riding that wave, in some ways. But he’s willing to go there. He’s not resisting it. He’s doing it piece by piece. I think that he’s being smart and strategic in the way that he has gone about this, given the fierce political opposition he’s up against. But at the end of the day, he is not our leader. He is the President. And so, we are always going to have a contentious relationship with him, as we should. The minute that we all start sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom with our same-sex partners and thinking that everything is good is the minute we lose our political edge, to say nothing of our moral integrity. We also have to say, “Thank you, Mr. President, for being on our side, on the right side of history.” But we shouldn’t be bowing to him, saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.” What we should be saying is: “Good, you did what was right, Mr. President. Thanks. Next slide.” There is a preoccupation with Obama which comes from a number of places. One is that he is President right now in this historic moment. He is also the first African-American President, so I think that some people feel like he probably “gets it” more than other leaders do, because he grew up being discriminated against. And he’s spoken powerfully about that in the “It Gets Better” video he recorded. He said, “I know what it means to be an outsider.” And he does. And because of that, because of his own experience growing up as a bi-racial kid with a funny name and big ears, the things he talked about all the time on the campaign trail, I think there’s a widely held sense that he probably has a somewhat deeper reservoir of empathy for other kinds of people that have been discriminated against. I think that’s probably true on some level. Last year you wrote, “For our part, queer folks need to demand that our full acceptance as citizens and human Yeah. We need to operate from a position of moral strength, one that says: ‘The fact that we live as second-class citizens is your problem, not ours, and you need to fix it.” If we make progress towards that goal of realizing what already should be true, what already should be the case, then cool! Celebrate that! But all the while, let’s understand that we should already be there, though we’re not. So, I’m not going to kiss anybody’s ass because we’re getting closer to where we should already be. Right. And the President gets cranky about the Left critiquing him or the gay rights folks yelling at him, and this and that. But he wanted to become President! Mr. President, this is what you wanted to do with your life, so suck it up. You’re the most powerful man in the world. And he should want it. And he should want it. He sometimes rhetorically says he does. He tells us, “Yeah, you’re going to push me, and I’m willing to be pushed. Keep pushing.” You know, every time he speaks to us, he says that. And I think, “Okay, fine, we will. Don’t worry about that.” But I think it’s really important for us to not get so caught up in the political game that we end up bargaining away our humanity by piecemealing everything. At the end of the day, you know, I’m going to fight for marriage equality. But I’m already married. The fact that they don’t recognize that at the federal level is not my problem. Yes. It’s really not my problem. I mean, practically speaking, it is my problem. Of course it is. In a real, experiential way, of course it’s my problem. I am a second-class citizen, but not because I think of myself—or any of us—this way. That reality has been created by someone else, by a system that continues to discriminate against us. But I think that that’s where our power comes; the moral power comes in the political struggle for people who can see the big picture. You know, James Baldwin talked about this all the time. He talked about the fact that you need to figure out how to love the white man, even though you sometimes hate him. At the end of the day, it’s our responsibility to force others into recognition... they aren’t going to realize this on their own. And you’ll be destroyed if you don’t. And we’ll be destroyed if we don’t. “Financial aid,” continued from page 4 “If the goal of financial aid is to bring people to HKS so we can have a more robust learning community, I think they’re doing that well,” he said. “It must be an incredibly difficult job. I have seen very little here to say that I am personally more deserving than anyone else.” One student who asked not to be identified for this article told The Citizen that because he’s borrowing the full cost of his degree, his future employment options are limited. He wonders whether the lack of need-based aid is in fact restricting the diversity of the student body in a different way. “We talk about diversity and how important it is, but socio-economically I’m not sure it’s that diverse,” he said. “We’re discussing the effectiveness of welfare in class, but how many of us come from families that have ever received a welfare check?” Streletz cautioned against borrowing the full cost of an HKS degree, suggesting that there are many external resources available to students who do not receive funds from the school. She added that student financial services also offers a variety of programming to help students with budgeting, tax preparation, and paying off their loans after graduation. “Yes, we disburse funds and manage aid, but more than that we are here for counseling,” added Streletz. “It’s about making sure that every student here understands what commitment they’re making, and being comfortable with that.” NE W S 1 –7 | FE AT URE 8 –9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor 10 THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 CITIZENOPINION Celebrating our past, envisioning our future Dean Ellwood shares his thoughts on HKS at 75 David T. Ellwood, Dean and Scott M. Black Professor of Political Economy Nearly three-quarters of a century ago, 18 students and a handful of faculty began an experiment that provided professional training for public servants at a time when no such program yet existed. The notion was borne of the then nearly radical idea that those dedicated to serving the public good warranted the same level of professional training as those serving in medicine, business, or law. What began as the Graduate School of Public Administration launched a new vision of public service at Harvard and around the world. The rise of this once small school has been remarkable, reflected in the global contributions of our 46,000 alumni, the impact of our research, and the dedication and caliber of our students. Yet ironically perhaps, as we recognize our 75th anniversary, the challenges of public leadership seem particularly acute. We have seen a courageous push for greater self-governance by citizens of many countries during the Arab Spring. Yet in nations across the globe, our capacity and will to tackle our hardest challenges, from economic recovery and growth to climate change, seems very much in doubt. And so it has never been a more important time for all of us connected with this school to intensify the bold commitment to exceptional public service that inspired our beginning and has guided generations. We must accel- erate and deepen our impact, building on our enduring desire to learn, innovate, and improve. As we face the challenge and responsibility of providing extraordinary public leadership, I envision four broad strategic directions for the school. Reaching the very best leaders The single most powerful tool for attracting superb students and supporting their ability to serve is reducing the cost of a Kennedy School education. In the past seven years we have doubled our annual student financial aid from $11 million to $22 million even in the face of financial turmoil. We must continue this effort and find additional ways to attract the very best students from across the globe. Equipping our students to drive positive change Public leaders today must be champions of new ideas, capable of working across sectors and geography. They must be technologically savvy and effective managers in the complex political and economic arenas. For 75 years, the Kennedy School has been the standard for public policy education. While we believe our curriculum provides exceptional preparation, it must evolve with transformations in information technology, the shifting nature of public problems, and emerging research as to how students learn in the classroom and beyond. We are committed to innovative and engaging pedagogy and methods. These include a greater emphasis on fieldbased, experiential learning, and over the long term, the creation of “incubators” and “accelerators” to help support and advance the most promising ideas, from technological innovation to social entrepreneurship. Generating powerful ideas that address our most pressing problems The Kennedy School has long been a source of new ideas that help shape public policy. From the creation of community policing in the 1980s to nuclear threat reduction and welfare reform in the 1990s to energy and economic policy today, HKS faculty have contributed essential ideas that produce viable solutions. The school can and must continue to provide an environment that supports such efforts. In addition to our ongoing intellectual work, we will be emphasizing three broad themes to help shape the focus of scholarship at the Kennedy School and offer talented minds the opportunity to make a meaningful difference on the ground. These include: Making Democracy Work; Achieving Shared, Sustainable Prosperity; and Understanding and Harnessing the Global Forces That Are Reshaping Our World. Graduate School of Public Administration faculty members and students on the Littauer Center steps in 1946. Photo Courtesy of Chester Holbrook. Creating a campus that amplifies our mission The Kennedy School is reexamining its campus to ensure that our physical and technological infrastructure is capable of supporting the transformed curriculum, experiential learning, innovative pedagogy, and greater engagement across Harvard that we envision. In this way, we hope to better enable and amplify the aspirations of our students and faculty. The first step in this process is a campus master plan that will likely reflect a longterm horizon of fifteen to twenty-five years as well as a capital plan with a fiveyear horizon. We are still in the formative phase of many of these initiatives, and I look forward to sharing more news with you in the coming year. It is an extraordinary privilege and a great pleasure to serve as Dean of the Kennedy School. I am truly inspired by the wonderful combination of idealism, intelligence, and capability exhibited by each member of the HKS community. I look forward to working with all of you to meet the challenges and rise to the many opportunities ahead for the next generation and continue with you the Kennedy School’s long-held tradition of public leadership. The Littauer Building under construction in 1977. Photo Courtesy of Daisy Agee. NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 11 CITIZENOPINION Happy Fighting Corruption in India 75th HKS! A movement for change collides with principles of democracy Alexi White, Opinions Editor, MPP ‘13 Great Moments in HKS History 1936 – Lucius N. Littauer, a graduate of Harvard College, gives $2 million to found the Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration. 1988 – A. Alfred Taubman gives $15 million to fund the Taubman Center for State and Local Government. Not So Great Moments In HKS History 1914 – Lucius Littauer convicted of smuggling and sentenced to six months in jail. 2002 – A. Alfred Taubman convicted of anti-trust violations and spends ten months in jail. Sujoyini Mandal, Opinions Columnist, MPP ‘13 For the very first time, India has witnessed an outburst of citizen protests chiefly via social media, including Facebook and Twitter. Anti corruption campaigns led by the hunger strike of social activist Anna Hazare have captured the Indian imagination within and outside the nation’s borders in the past few months. Riding on a popularity surge, ‘Anna’ seeks the triumph of people power and to override Indian democratic institutions. Days into his hunger strike, this hitherto unknown social activist became an overnight media sensation. His charm offensive is similar to that of Gandhi, who successfully used non-violence as an agent for peaceful reform during the heady years of the Indian independence !"#$%&'$%()*&%)+%,)-.% /)00$1$%,$".* 2+).%0$**3 !"#$%&'()*+'$",'(-.*&$# 4)00$1$%5&-6$7&* /%$(012(344("55(6+557.&,8%(!)-9(:&"';(,$%<#( "';(=>2(344("55(6+557.&,8%('"$,*'"5(:&"';(,$%<#? ()+#$(#@*A(B"5,;(8*55%C%(DE?(!F85+#,*'#(<"G("..5GH(B,#,$(#$*&%(6*&(;%$",5#? Harvard Square 1 Brattle Square Second Floor 617-864-2061 movement. Half a century later, Anna wants to replicate the same principle. Not everyone, however, buys into his philosophy. As Suhit Sen of The Guardian righty points out, Anna’s appeal is restricted to the middle classes and capitalist entrepreneurs—hardly a recipe for an inclusive political reform movement. Secondly, while his means may be Gandhian, Anna Hazare’s demands are certainly not. Contrary to Gandhi’s ideas about the decentralization of power, as social commentator Arundhuti Roy explains, the Jana Lokpal Bill (or the citizen ombudsman bill) is, contrary to popular belief, an anti-corruption law in which a chosen set of representatives, headed by Anna, will “administer a giant bureaucracy … with the power to police everyone from the Prime Minister … to the lowest level of government.” The controversial law would give Anna powers of investigations, prosecution and surveillance. In essence, it serves to create an independent administration, a watchdog over every government component, including the judiciary. Two oligarchies instead of one. The secondary consequences of Anna’s hunger strike are of no less consequence. Taking advantage of ‘brand Anna’ and the resultant mobilization of the middle and upper classes that are the primary supporters of the movement, political parties have jumped on the bandwagon. LK Advani from the opposing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to go on a “rath yatra” to support Anna, while the Gujarat Chief Minister has initiated a similar hunger strike to join the mass anti-corruption voice against the ruling Congress Party. While free riding Anna Hazare on his third day of fasting – April 7, 2011. to gain airtime and political mileage is nothing new in Indian politics, this event is particularly significant in the amount of international attention and press it has garnered. With the Indian government ceding to Anna’s initial demands to initiate the process of creating the bill, the role of the judiciary and the justice system are now in question. Is the Anna movement constitutional, such that the judiciary would be acting against the Indian people if they struck it down? If the judicial review process does strike down the bill, the consequences would be far reaching for the Indian constitutional democracy. Pro-democracy activists will likely fight for free speech and liberty, claiming that the process is a dangerous liability to democracy relying on outmoded concepts of human rights that disenfranchise common citizens. Constitutionalists, on the other hand are expected to favor the powers that be and to point to the system of checks and balances built into the Indian democratic institution. The answer will be played out in the next few months as India debates who should be framing the bill. For now, the largest democracy in the world continues to look for innovative ways to fight endemic corruption. NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor 12 THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 CITIZENOPINION Growing Pains Students critique President Obama’s jobs bill and offer an alternative President Obama addresses Congress – September 8, 2011. Andrew Kurtzman, MPP ’12 and Bryana Tucci, MPP ‘13 In an honest discussion of policy to promote economic growth, Obama’s jobs plan cannot be regarded as a feasible solution. It was rebuffed by no fewer than six Senate Democrats on the day following its introduction and for good reason, as we will discuss. However, it did allow the President to deliver several extra speeches, two of which (conveniently) coincided with GOP debates. We will begin by outlining three primary objections to the President’s proposal, followed by three of our own suggestions. First, “you don’t raise taxes in a recession,” Obama said in August 2009. It was for this reason that John F. Kennedy signed the largest tax cut (as a percentage of GDP) in modern history during a recessionary period in the 1960s. And yet, Obama’s bill proposes to raise taxes on the “rich,” most of whom are actually small businesses filing taxes as individuals. Other groups that would pay more include air travelers, federal workers, military retirees, wealthier Medicare beneficiaries, and people taking out new mortgages. Second, the bill centers on yet another stimulus proposal to support “shovel ready” jobs. But governments have a poor track record picking winners. Ask the Japanese. Ask Solyndra. While spending millions on impractical solar investments, the government (via the EPA) is over-regulating proven and potential viable technologies, such as natural gas and shale oil, respectively. Each could be produced domestically, employing thousands. Third, the bill introduces costly new employment regulations. A littleknown provision allows individuals to sue a prospective employer if they are discriminated against for being unemployed. Essentially, this allows any job seeker to sue a business that rejects his application. Our alternative to Obama’s jobs bill has three primary components. First, we must restore faith in dollardenominated assets. This means curtailing spending growth. Non-defense discretionary spending has increased by 24 percent since President Obama took office, and the Democrat-controlled Senate has not passed a formal budget resolution in three years. Commercial banks sit on trillions of dollars in liquid capital assets, which they would gladly invest if not for the uncertainty in the legislative and fiscal environment. Second, fix the tax system and keep rates low. Tax increases now will only mask exponential growth in entitlement spending for a few more years, at which time the rate of growth in entitlement spending will be much faster and all the more difficult to abate. Real job growth will come when the tax system is fundamentally re-worked, rather than re-weighted. The current tax system has been heavily lobbied to favor large corporations over smaller start- ups through special deductions – the complexity of which sucks billions in tax-administration costs from the economy every year. This is compounded by Obama’s health care plan, which requires small businesses to provide expensive and unnecessary full-coverage plans for all employees. Remove the deductions, reduce and flatten rates, and make everyone happy. Third, address structural unemployment. The present administration uses a poorly construed version of Keynesianism to justify wasteful government spending. But the problem is far more about structure than cycle. The US economy has shifted toward new areas of comparative advantage—areas for which employment often requires significant retraining and realignment of skills. As Speaker Gingrich argues, unemployment benefits must be contingent upon participation in training programs, preferably privately run. This will require the government to return to its proper role: a bulwark for a system in which private capital competes to create wealth and opportunities for gainful employment. Andrew Kurtzman is Chair of the HKS Republican Caucus. Bryana Tucci is a member of the HKS Republican Caucus Executive Board. THECITIZEN Got an opinion? Share it! Submit an op-ed or a letter to the editor The Citizen accepts unsolicited opinion pieces from students, staff, faculty and alumni. Op-eds should be 600-700 words. Letters should be no more than 350 words. Email: opinions.harvardcitizen@gmail.com to submit or to find out more. Opinions in the Forum The Citizen solicited feedback from students in the forum on the following question: What’s your reaction to the Massachusetts House passing a bill licensing casino gambling? “I see no problem. There will be regulations to minimize the negative effects.” Manuela C. Faria “There are pros and cons. It’s a huge source of revenue, but must be regulated.” Hermi Lokko “I’m against it. The difference between the image of a casino and real life is stark. Most people are there because they feel like they need to win money, not because they’re having fun.” Jose Soegaard “I’m against. Slot parlors attract people who can least afford it.” Paul Thomas “On the face of it, having more casinos sounds like an okay idea. It does bring in revenue for the state.” Melissa Galvez “I’m divided. I’ve seen personally the devastating effects gambling can have on people’s lives. But there’s something to be said for free will.” Matt Mabe “Executed,” continued from page 3 ward unless there was ‘no doubt’ about guilt, a vow that has now been rendered meaningless… Allowing a man to be sent to death under an enormous cloud of doubt about his guilt is an outrageous affront to justice.” Ratz expects to see renewed interest in anti-death penalty activism among Cambridge’s student community, and hopes that Davis’s death will galvanize change elsewhere in the nation. “The tragedy of his case, I hope, will serve as a wake-up call to policymakers to abolish the death penalty once and for all.” NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 13 CITIZENCULTURE PAEasy Christopher Gustafson, Humor Columnist, MPP ‘12 Folks, have you ever seen a commercial where a random person performs a feat of learned skill, only to then say that his/her only qualification to perform said feat of learned skill was that (s)he “stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night”? Needless to say, I have always assumed that that person worked for McKinsey. So, I was in the bath one day, and I said to myself, “C-Gus, if the PAE is a consulting project, and consultants give unqualified, simplistic answers to difficult questions, why can’t I just do the same with my PAE? For that matter, why can’t I perform a public service and do this for everyone’s PAE topic?” I moseyed around OCA’s PAE topic database, put my McKinsey hat on and solved the world’s problems in one sentence of less. Here are some of the highlights: Topic: How to eradicate pesticides in Central American coffee farmland. Stage CIA orchestrated coup against the leftist pesticide regime and impose a rightwing pesticide dictatorship that will do the U.S bidding in the coffee field. Topic: How to reduce inequalities of service at Boston Regional Hospital. Stop giving people good hospital service so that everyone will have equally bad Romneycare. Topic: Find a sustainable funding structure for the U.S National Park Service. Eliminate national parks in red states and pillage resources. No one will notice or care, except the tree huggers. Further PAE topic: How to eradicate tree huggers. Topic: Appropriate performance metrics to measure teacher quality. 1. Must have blind loyalty to Michelle Rhee. 2. Must hate making a livable wage and collective bargaining. 3. Must be planning to apply to Kennedy School within next two years. Topic: Effective performance manage- ment for the Massachusetts Housing Authority. Huge salary for director + Teamsters + Cost Overruns + one unexplained crew death= Effective Topic: Reduce Human Trafficking. Carpool! (The actual topic did not lend itself to humor, so I made a slight modification.) Topic: How to improve international sports security. Make sure teams in volatile countries don’t lose! How do you stop World War III? Make North Korea the next World Cup Champ. Topic: How to improve Cambridge Police performance. Don’t arrest prominent AfricanAmerican Professors at Harvard. Topic: Iran/US Nuclear Negotiations. Pray!!! Topic: Creating a user-friendly web portal to find health care specialists in the San Francisco/San Jose metropolitan area. I’m stumped on this one, too bad there’s no company based in the San Francisco/ San Jose metropolitan area that specializes in internet searches. Topic: Initial Planning for Regime Change in Mozambique. Form party planning committee tasked with finding adequate supplies of balloons and party hats. So remember, when the Cristobel P. Gustafson Center for Consulting Excellence is dedicated in the Taubman building, know that it was at this moment where a visionary was born. “Microfinance,” continued from page 5 gratitude that the borrowers feel towards Akhuwat is genuine, unforced, and has been translated into voluntary contributions by clients who have fared well due to these loans. This system has been formalized, where voluntary contributions taken from borrowers now cover sixty percent of the operating costs. There is no compulsion in these contributions, and those who give are not treated any differently from those who don’t. The other end of this brotherhood lies with civil society – Akhuwat has relied so far entirely on donations by civil society to distribute these loans, with no funding from ‘official’ sources or interna- NBA League Lockout Alex Remington, Sports Writer, MPP ‘13 Kevin Durant is making a movie. Deron Williams is going to play in Turkey. The D-League, prohibited from employing NBAers during a lockout, is planning for a season with a much smaller talent pool. Training camp, which was supposed to start yesterday, was indefinitely postponed. All over the league, players are chewing their fingernails, mulling over contract offers with foreign leagues, and trying — for the first time in their adult lives — to ponder what they can do with their lives if not playing professional basketball. This is the fourth lockout in league history, but during the first two the league was able to resolve the dispute without missing any games, and during the third, in 1998-99, the league was able to return in time to play a 50-game regular season. There has been only one occasion in American pro sports in which an entire season was canceled by a labor dispute, when the NHL canceled the 2004-05 season. If that happens, few teams will be hurt more than the Boston Celtics. They’re one of the oldest teams in basketball. Last year, there were only 24 players age 33 or older who logged 1000 minutes in the league. Exactly one-eighth of that total is the Celtics’ Big Three: Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, and Kevin Garnett. (The Spurs and Raptors are the other two tional organizations. The credit pool for operations has been furnished through donations from individuals, clients and well-wishers. This translates to little or no capital costs which allows the organization to extend interest free loans. In addition, senior staff members work as volunteers or are paid salaries far below market rates. But is this source of funding sustainable? Dr. Amjad Saqib, the Executive Director of Akhuwat, is aware of the concerns raised by many regarding the sustainability and scalability of an organization working on donations, voluntary contributions and voluntary efforts. “We do not view Akhuwat as a short term experiment nor are we teams with three such players, but neither stands to lose quite as much ground as the Celtics. The Raptors are one of the worst teams in the league, so the layoff can’t hurt them, while the Spurs lost in the first round of the playoffs last year and faced much-reduced expectations for 2011-12.) If you’ll pardon my quoting the Lemonheads, it’s a shame about Ray Allen: he just set the all-time three point record last year, but now he won’t get any chance to widen his lead any time soon. And Garnett and Allen are already pushing the upper echelon of historical playing time: they are already 13th and 20th, respectively, on the all-time NBA minutes played list. Meanwhile, backup Celtic center Shaquille O’Neal, who retired in June, is 17th on the list. Blame the owners or the revenue structure if you like – no one’ is blameless but everyone’ is hurting. As Maury Brown of The Biz of Basketball writes, “According to the most recent Forbes valuations, the league has 17 clubs shown as running at an operating loss.” But there might be at least one silver lining for Kevin Durant, and for basketball fans. It will give Durant the time to work on making a movie better than Shaquille O’Neal’s awful star vehicles, “Steel” and “Kazaam.” (While he’s at it, maybe Durant could remake “Space Jam”… or maybe that’s the one movie in Hollywood that no one will reboot.) interested in gaining some sort of permanence through profit alone. Instead through a spirit of volunteerism, the principle of low operational cost and dependence on generosity of the community, Akhuwat has not only sustained itself but is also expanding and being replicated.” With a recovery rate of 99.85%, Akhuwat is a challenge to conventional MFIs, to exorbitant interest rates, and traditional usurious practices towards the poor. Akhuwat, in Malcolm Harper’s words “takes us back to the early days of innocence, when poverty alleviation was what microfinance was for, and this reminder is healthy, and necessary.” NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor 14 THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 CITIZENCULTURE From left to right: Back row: Federico Cuadra del Carmen, Danny Newman, Raul Duran Galicia, Ryan Johnson (HGC), Lucas Shuler, Bryce McKibben, Ben Goldsmith, Azum Ali (HGC), Adam Segal Middle row: Natalie Fabe, Nima Tshering, Ryo Watanabe, Laila Ashtan, Claire Szabo, Salmon Hossein, Ahmed Moor, Patrick Boateng, Kevin Chen, Diane Chang, Kanoko Kamata, Maribeth Black, Rohit Malhotra Front row: Max Two, Shrihari Prabhu, Cristina Garmendia, Sherry Hakimi, Georgeta Dragoiu, Quinnie Lin, Divya Dhar (HGC), Victoria Tan, Zhen Liu, Elsa Sze Not pictured: Jaime Loucky, Umar Shavurov, Jennifer Tutak, Chad Troutwine (HGC) Get to Know Your KSSG Call for Nominations for KSSG Committees! The KSSG Vice Presidents are in the process of forming their committees. Nominations are being accepted until Friday, October 7. We encourage you to join a KSSG committee and make a difference at HKS. We all share common concerns and goals; we need your input, creativity and cooperation in shaping the HKS student experience. Committee membership is year-long. Committee members are not required to attend KSSG meetings and are non-voting positions within KSSG (however, they are voting positions within the committee). Please contact the Vice President of the committee(s) you are interested in by Friday, October 7. If you have any questions about committee roles and responsibilities, please contact the respective committee’s Vice President. We are looking forward to hearing from you! Committee Vice Presidents Academic Affairs Committee VP: Danny Newman KSSGVPAcademicAffairs@hks.harvard.edu Communications Committee VP: Diane Chang Email: KSSGVPCommunications@hks.harvard.edu Finance Committee VP: Kevin Chen KSSGVPFinance@hks.harvard.edu Internal Affairs Committee VP: Adam Segal KSSGVPInternalAffairs@hks.harvard.edu International Student Affairs Committee VP: Max Teo KSSGVPInternational@hks.harvard.edu Professional Development Committee VP: Natalie Fabe KSSGVPProfessionalDevelopment@hks.harvard.edu Student Activities Committee VP: Rohit Malhotra KSSGVPStudentActivities@hks.harvard.edu Student Affairs Committee VP: Ahmed Moor KSSGVPStudentAffairs@hks.harvard.edu The KSSG Executive Team: Back row: Natalie Fabe (VP, Professional Development), Kevin Chen (VP, Finance), Rohit Malhotra (VP, Student Activities), Danny Newman (VP, Academic Affairs), Diane Chang (VP, Communications) Front row: Max Teo (VP, International Student Affairs), Sherry Hakimi (President), Ahmed Moor (VP, Student Affairs), Georgeta Dragoiu (Executive Vice President) Not pictured: Adam Segal (VP, Internal Affairs) NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8 –9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 15 CITIZENCULTURE The KSSG body listens intently as VP of Academic Affairs, Danny Newman, presents the academic affairs agenda. The MPA-ID Class Representatives: Back row: Nima Tshering (MPA-ID’12), Zhen Liu (MPA-ID’12) Front row: Raul Duran Galicia (MPA-ID’13), Srihari Prabhu (MPA-ID’13) The MC-MPA Class Representatives: Back row: Umar Shavurov, Kanoko Kamata, Lucas Shuler Front row: Claire Szabo, Laila Ashtan, Ryo Watanabe The MPP Class Representatives: Back row: Elsa Sze (MPP’13), Bryce McKibben (MPP’13), Salmon Hossein (MPP’13), Patrick Boateng (MPP’13), Maribeth Black (MPP’12) Front row: Cristina Garmendia (MPP’13), Victoria Tan (MPP’13), Quinnie Lin (MPP’12) Not pictured: Jaime Loucky (MPP’12) The MPA Class Representatives: Ben Goldsmith (MPA’13) and Federico Cuadro del Carmen (MPA’13) Not pictured: Jennifer Tutak (MPA’12) NE W S 1 –7 | FE AT URE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor 16 THECITIZEN | Tuesday, October 4, 2011 Artwork by Irene Shih, Editor-in-Chief, MPP ’13. NE W S 1 –7 | FE ATURE 8–9 | OP I NI ONS 10 –1 2 | CULTURE 1 3 –15 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor
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