Nation & World

All Nation & World

  • Black belt Lee battles in the arena of world politics

    Born in the United Kingdom, but raised for most of her first six years in Hong Kong, transnational Harvard graduate student Yue Man Lee grew up a fervent lover of reading, travel, and food.

  • Training a physician’s eye on policy

    Three years into his medical school career, Joe Ladapo had a revelation, but it wasn’t in a medical class, it was in economics.

  • Panel addresses effectiveness of NGOs, gives mixed grades

    The world watched recently as the continuing tragedy in Myanmar unfolded. Millions were displaced earlier this month by a cyclone that devastated the country’s Irrawaddy delta, leaving 134,000 people dead or missing.

  • Candidates emphasize hot-button issues

    D. Sunshine Hillygus, Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor of Government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and Todd G. Shields, professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, extensively studied campaign strategy during the 2004 general election, work that may illuminate strategy in the current presidential race.

  • Princess Zahra outlines the work of Aga Khan Development Network

    Princess Zahra Aga Khan ’94 came home to Harvard this week (May 13) to present a hopeful vision of what education in the developing world can be like.

  • Panels contrive job interview for the next president of the U.S.

    If the presidency of the United States were a job one applied for like a job in the business world, what questions should be included in the interview? That question was one of the provocative ideas behind the all-day “Conversation on Leadership and the Next Presidency” presented Monday (May 12) at the Charles Hotel by the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS).

  • Students see AIDS up close

    While her classmates in Cambridge were shivering through a New England February, Sandy Bolm was sweltering in the heat of a Botswana summer, staring her future in the face in the labs of the Botswana-Harvard Partnership.

  • AIDS: Finding answers

    Ampheletse Medupe’s headaches just wouldn’t go away. Living in her small, neat home outside the African nation of Botswana’s capital, the mother of four kept on as best she could until sores broke out on her face.

  • AIDS and hope

    The man and woman grin down from the large billboard overlooking the road to the hospital in Mochudi, a small town outside Botswana’s capital of Gaborone.

  • Speakers talk about the ‘renaissance’ taking place in Native nations

    Three was the magic number when the founding fathers established the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the United States government. Today, for thousands of Americans rewriting their own constitutions, there’s a fourth area of power and oversight.

  • CES hosts talk on integration of Islam into contemporary France

    Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse visited Harvard’s Center for European Studies (CES) last Friday (May 2) to speak about the “realities” of life for the nearly 5 million Muslims who make their home in France.

  • Genuine debate illuminates knotty ethical questions

    Should students receive financial compensation for high test scores? Would a market for organ donation make saving lives more efficient? Should a nation be permitted to buy the right to pollute? These questions represent just a few of the many ethical issues that Harvard professors Michael Sandel, Amartya Sen, and visiting professor Philippe van Parijs from the University of Louvain (Belgium) have been considering this semester.

  • Where science and religion meet, from an Islamic perspective

    Where and how science and religion intersect is a debate that dates back centuries; it’s also a regular part of contemporary discourse. The discussion took center stage at the 2007-08 Paul Tillich Lecture on Monday (May 5) in the Science Center’s lecture hall B, where a noted astrophysicist and religious scholar explored the deeper dimensions of science’s relationship to Islam.

  • Joint Center for Housing sees mortgage turmoil hitting rental market

    The current mortgage turmoil reaches deep into rental markets. New research on rental housing market dynamics from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies finds that the current housing debacle not only adds to the number of households competing for low-cost rentals but also threatens renters living in foreclosed properties with sudden eviction.

  • ‘Asia: The Next Ten Years’

    Despite the rain and drear outside, inside at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, participants in a two-day conference marking the first 10 years of the Harvard University Asia Center were given a notably hopeful and positive survey of likely developments in Asia over the next 10 years.

  • Discussion pivots on worker protection in a global economy

    Ethical employment practices and safeguarding workers’ rights in a global economy were the focus of discussion April 29 at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.

  • Rothschild explores economics’ human side

    Blackmail and attempted murder are not typically studied as part of economic history. However, a credit crisis among 18th century French silk and brandy merchants led to just such dramatic incidents, the accounts of which piqued the interest of Emma Rothschild, a historian of economic life, empires, and Atlantic connections.

  • Ash Institute names top innovations in government

    The Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) recently announced the Top 50 programs of the 2008 Innovations in American Government Awards competition.

  • Excellence in teaching is recognized

    Allan M. Brandt acknowledged the pedagogical achievements of Harvard’s graduate students, as well as preceptors, lecturers, and undergraduate course assistants at the biannual Teaching Excellence Awards Reception last Thursday (April 24).

  • HKS students present ideas to City Hall

    On Tuesday (April 29), students from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS) met with the mayor of Boston to discuss several projects they hope might help make the city a better place.

  • Mexican energy controversy addressed

    Raymundo Riva Palacio, editorial director of El Universal, a leading Mexican newspaper, discussed the details and the political ramifications of Mexico’s energy reform proposal designed to encourage private investment in the oil industry at the Center for Government and International Studies.

  • Faux terrorist exercise proves fruitful

    At Harvard, the half-day terrorist attack exercise played out in a truncated version for 90 tense minutes Monday evening (April 28) at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, the chief public venue of the John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS).

  • Cronin takes long view of Boston schools, from busing to the MCAS

    Joseph Cronin ’56, MAT ’57, came to Harvard on April 16 to examine the Boston Public Schools system’s struggles and successes over the past 76 years, detailed in his new book, “Reforming Boston Schools, 1930-2006: Overcoming Corruption and Racial Segregation” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

  • Kim Dae-jung has ‘sunny’ advice for U.S.

    Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung told an audience at Harvard Kennedy School’s John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Tuesday night (April 22) that the United States should allow the sun to shine on its relations with the world’s fastest growing economic power.

  • South Africa: Edendale Hospital

    On a hill in South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal province, near the hall where Nelson Mandela delivered his last speech before prison and the station where Mahatma Gandhi was tossed off a train to begin his life’s work, stands Edendale Hospital.

  • Scholarly journal reveals precious gems; marks major milestone

    One of the oldest scholarly theological journals in the country, the HTR celebrated its 100th anniversary last Friday (April 11) at the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) with a day of talks by several HDS scholars.

  • Surgeon describes horrors that ensue when rape is a ‘weapon of war’

    Denis Mukwege, a recent visitor to Harvard, is slow-spoken, weary, and grave. And well he might be. For nearly a decade, Mukwege has been doctor to thousands of women raped in the course of a long civil war in south central Africa — in effect, that continent’s World War II — which has so far claimed 4 million lives.

  • Sachs insists new technologies essential

    Jeffrey Sachs, the internationally renowned economist, returned to his alma mater Monday (April 14) to give his prescription for saving the world. Sustainable development, he said, is the “central challenge of our time.”

  • Money spent on others can buy happiness

    New research by one Harvard scholar implies that happiness can be found by spending money on others. Michael Norton, assistant professor of business administration in the marketing unit at the Harvard Business School (HBS), conducted a series of studies with his colleagues Elizabeth Dunn and Lara Aknin at the University of British Columbia (UBC).