Governance

Millions of Americans have served in the U.S. military and returned to civilian life since our nation was attacked on 9/11. Many more will join them in the years ahead. By 2019, America’s post-9/11 veterans population will exceed three million people.

Our nation owes an enormous debt to these new veterans. Indeed, they have earned recognition as America’s “New Greatest Generation.” And our universities need to support them to the fullest extent possible, including through the Yellow Ribbon Program, which removes financial barriers that often stand in the way.

As a Belfer Center International and Global Affairs (BIGA) student fellow, Orga Cadet sees every international affairs issue from two perspectives. Instead of right or wrong, prudent or risky, he sees the policy side and the law side: Cadet is a dual degree candidate, pursuing his Master of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, while also spending this semester in Beijing finishing his Juris Doctor degree through a study abroad program with Georgetown University.

Fredrik Logevall is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs and professor of history at Harvard Kennedy School, based at the Belfer Center. An expert on the history of international affairs, he was until recently a professor of history at Cornell University. He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (Random House, 2012). In 2014, Logevall served as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

Atiyeh Vahidmanesh became inspired to focus her research on the inequality of educational opportunity after hearing her Virginia Tech advisor and former Belfer Center Visiting Scholar, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, speak on the issue at a seminar. Salehi-Isfahani also introduced her to the Belfer Center, where she then applied for a research fellowship with the Middle East Initiative through its new Emirates Leadership Initiative. Vahidmanesh, a PhD student in economics at Virginia Tech, describes her research as somewhat interdisciplinary between economics and education.

Will higher education the next big bubble to pop? Niall Ferguson, a noted historian and member of the Belfer Center's Board of Directors, thinks so. In a new op-ed, Ferguson argues that despite the United States having 22 out of the top 30 world universities, "all is far from well in the groves of American academe."

The Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) has given $8.1 million to Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) to support the continuation of the Kuwait Program at HKS Belfer Center's Middle East Initiative. The gift will be used to develop leaders with the capacity to address the many challenging public policy issues facing the region. It will also fund research issues of vital importance in the region, such as education, energy, and water.

Calestous Juma, director of the Belfer Center’s Science, Technology, and Globalization Project, played a central role in creation of the Lagos Innovation Advisory Council, the first of its kind in Africa.

"As Harvard celebrates its 375th birthday and America celebrates its 235th, it is worth considering what they have in common. Both have proud traditions of great accomplishment. Both lead the world. Both are widely envied and even more widely observed," writes Lawrence Summers. "Both face a future quarter century as challenging as any in their long history....Both have powerful traditions and strong and loyal constituencies.... [and] both must overcome the besetting sin of the long preeminent - complacent self regard protective of present comforts and averse to disruptive innovation," the former president of Harvard writes.

"Critics of the role of universities in economic transformation argue that higher education takes too long to show results and that its focus is usually too academic. However, the evidence suggests that practically oriented universities offer the fastest and most durable ways to incubate new states. With the right vision, universities can confer their attributes to a new state."

"Nowhere is the missed opportunity to build human capacity more evident than in the case of women and agriculture in Africa. The majority of farmers in Africa are women. Women provide 70%–80% of the labor for food crops grown in Africa, an effort without which African citizens would not eat. Female farmers make up 48% of the African labor force. This work by women is a crucial effort in nations where the economy is usually based on agriculture."