STM-106M: Acting in Time

Semester: Not Offered

Credit: 0.5

Faculty: David Ellwood, Christopher Stone

Schedule

Day Time Location
First Day
Meet Day
Review

Description

This course invites students to join a Kennedy School effort to develop practical lessons about how governments can more reliably act in time to avert disaster. The Acting in Time Initiative — inspired in part by the failures of the U.S. government’s preparation for, and response to, Hurricane Katrina — harnesses the capacities of faculty and students across the university to better understand the qualities of analysis, governance, policy design, democratic institutional structure, information, political mobilization, and leadership that can lead to effective and timely action. The course draws on research projects currently underway as part of this initiative, focusing on topics such as  preparation for landscape-scale disasters like Katrina, efforts to end pandemics that threaten public health in developing countries, and  the looming crisis in long-term health care. A paper or briefing book is required.

Not offered in 2008–09.