The Kennedy School’s mission, to train leaders “to
strengthen democratic governance at home and abroad,” has, since
the school’s founding, been global in scope. In an increasingly restless
and needy world, the “abroad” part of its mission in recent
years has taken an urgent sense of gravitas.
Today students from 80 foreign countries are represented
among the Kennedy School’s international students, who make up 45
percent of its student body. Not only is the Kennedy School the most international
school at Harvard, it is also the most internationally focused school
of public policy in the United States. And, more and more, its reach and
influence are effecting change and democratic reforms throughout the developing
world and transitional-economy nations.
At the Kennedy School, international students find a sanctuary,
a refuge, a time out where they shed their official titles and uniforms,
sling book bags and backpacks on their shoulders, do the readings, write
papers, and tackle problem sets just like every other student. But they
also bring something extra to the classroom that many of their American
counterparts don’t yet have: years (at least 10 on average) of practical
experience in nation-building, sometimes from the ground up, and often
in situations where they have put their very lives on the line. For the
American student, a large part of the magic of the Kennedy School experience
is sharing the classroom with a former head of state, a cabinet minister,
an ambassador, or a revolutionary, and realizing that the case study on
the page pales in comparison to the one seated at the desk next to you.
The breadth of the Kennedy School’s reach is impressive. Roughly 100 international alumni in more than 40 countries in Asia, Latin America, South America, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East are currently running ministries, advising presidents, getting elected to congresses and parliaments, governing central banks, and serving as ambassadors.
For instance, Canada’s Reg Alcock MPA 1992 is known
as the most technology-progressive member of the House of Commons; Fred
Mitchell MPA 1980 is minister of foreign affairs for the Bahamas and an
elected member of its House of Assembly; and Jamil Mahuad MPA 1989, who
was the president of Ecuador from 1998 to 2000, and who is currently a
Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership, is one of several heads of
state elected to their countries’ top office after their Kennedy
School training.
In fact, Jose Maria Figueres MPA 1991 announced his intentions
to run for the presidency of his native Costa Rica when he was still a
student here and fulfilled that pledge when he was elected in 1994 to
a four-year term. After leaving office, Figueres spent two years as managing
director of the World Economic Forum and now chairs Kofi Annan’s
information technology subcommittee at the United Nations.
The Kennedy School also appears on the CV of the current
premier of Bermuda, Jennifer Meredith Smith, who attended the Program
for Senior Executives in State and Local Government in 1984. Smith was
the youngest person ever to run for a seat in Bermuda’s Parliament
in 1972, and in 1980, was the first woman appointed to its Senate. She
won the general elections in 1998, and became premier.
Like Smith, many of the Kennedy School’s international students come to Cambridge already seasoned politicians and public servants, accustomed to the glare of public scrutiny, and the perils and pitfalls of running a country. Costa Rica’s Figueres, for instance, had held two ministry positions in the government of Nobel Prize-winner Oscar Arias before becoming a student. The Reverend Frank Chikane MPA 1995, now director-general of the Presidency of South Africa and chief advisor to South African President Thabo Mbeki, was a leading anti-apartheid activist in the 1980s, who endured imprisonment, torture, exile, and several attempts on his life before the apartheid regime was ultimately dismantled in 1995. Ambassador Avi Gil MPA 1992, was a long-time confidant of Nobel Peace Prize recipient and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and was most recently the director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Donald Tsang MPA 1982, who currently holds the number-two
position in Hong Kong’s “One Country, Two Systems” government
as chief secretary for administration, had started his public service
career in 1967, after attending local schools in Hong Kong, and held a
variety of posts in trade and finance before enrolling in the Mid-Career
program as a Mason Fellow. Upon returning to Hong Kong, Tsang was appointed
finance secretary — the youngest person and the first Chinese ever
to hold the position, breaking a 153-year tradition of British finance
secretaries. Tsang entered office shortly before Hong Kong was returned
to Chinese rule, and was instrumental in shepherding Hong Kong through
the Asian financial crisis of 1997 to 1998, when foreign hedge funds were
destabilizing the country’s financial markets. Now, in his present
position, Tsang heads the 190,000-employee civil service and is the principal
advisor to Hong Kong’s chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa.
The Philippines and Singapore are two of the biggest success
stories of the Mason Fellows Program, which allows public officials from
developing nations to come to Cambridge to study economic development.
Sixteen Mason Fellow alums currently occupy some of the highest offices
in the Philippines, in President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s government.
They include five cabinet secretaries, six members of Congress, two chiefs
of the Armed Forces, the director of the National Bureau of Investigation,
General Reynaldo Wycoco MPA 1980, and more than 10 undersecretaries.
Singapore’s government has also long tapped the Mason
Program’s vein. One-third of the cabinet of Singapore’s former
eight-term Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew —
himself a onetime Fellow at the Institute of Politics — was comprised
of Mason Fellow alums, and the school’s influence still extends into
the upper reaches of that country’s current government. Alumni hold
two seats in the Parliament, serve as ministers for health and for education,
and as the deputy prime minister for finance.
The Kennedy School also maintains close ties with Israel
through the Wexner Fellows Program, which sponsors up to 10 Israelis each
year to participate in the Mid-Career Program. More than 130 former Wexner
Fellows presently serve in Israel’s government ministries and public
agencies. Among them are Ohad Marani, the current Finance Ministry director-general;
Judge Danilea Cherizli MPA 1993, the Magistrate at the Tel-Aviv Magistrate
Court; and Colonel Noam Tibon MPA 2002, who heads security forces in the
West Bank.
Twenty-five years along, the Kennedy School’s mission
hasn’t wavered. Yet, in an increasingly globalized world, the problems
of individual societies transcend traditional geopolitical boundaries,
and demand multilateral cooperation in solving them. In training the next
generation of leaders, the school is taking a more expansive, regional
focus in its recruiting and instruction. The Kokkalis Fellowship Program,
founded in 1997 by high-technology entrepreneur Socrates Kokkalis, exemplifies
this shift by bringing to the Kennedy School public servants from Southeastern
and East-Central Europe who are committed to “building bridges and
networks for peace” across the Balkans.
Building that network is, after all, the central goal of
the Kennedy School mission. As Hong Kong’s Donald Tsang observed,
his Kennedy School experience was “an intellectual stimulus, a sanctuary
for rediscovering myself and mapping my career ahead, and most of all,
an unrivaled source of enduring friendships.”
Jeanie Barnett MPA 2002 is a communications consultant living in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Illustration: Bill Jaynes