Newsmakers

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

Public Servants Prized The inaugural winners of the Richard E. Neustadt and Thomas C. Schelling Awards took home $25,000 each in May from the Kennedy School for their public service work. Richard Posner, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, was awarded the Schelling prize. Judith Gueron, past president of the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, was awarded the Neustadt prize. The David Rubenstein Fund for Kennedy School Excellence provided funding for both.

The fund was established in 2004 by a $10 million gift from David Rubenstein, cofounder and managing director of the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms.

“The Kennedy School could not have picked more appropriate inaugural winners for the Neustadt and Schelling Awards,” Rubenstein said. “The public policy world is very much in their debt for extraordinary work over many years.”

“These awards are designed to recognize people who achieve the highest standard of excellence and public service,” said Dean David Ellwood. “We honor people who use reason, exceptional wisdom, and evidence to understand and solve public problems.”

Marshall Carter, a senior fellow at both the Center for Public Leadership and the Center for Business and Government, was elected chair of the New York Stock Exchange in April. He has served on the exchange’s board of directors since December 2003.

In June, Professor John Holdren became the director of the Woods Hole Research Center, an environmental research group in Woods Hole, MA. He succeeds the center’s founder, George Woodwell.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences elected Calestous Juma, professor of the practice of international development, a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences in May. Elections are based on recognition of distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Stephen Walt, professor and academic dean, and Robert Rotberg, director of the Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution, were selected in the spring as members of the 2005 class of fellows and foreign honorary members by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Members are nominated and elected to the academy by current members. According to academy President Patricia Meyer Spacks, fellows are selected through a “highly competitive process that recognizes individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large.”

NEW HIRES AND PROMOTIONS

Former three-term New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen IOP 2003 became the new director of the Institute of Politics in July. Shaheen was the first woman to hold the governor’s title in the “live free or die” state and served as the national chairperson for John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power and economists Jeffrey Liebman and Alberto Abadie have been named professors. Power, whose book “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, will become professor of practice. Liebman, who teaches public sector economics and American economic policy, will become professor of public policy, and Abadie, whose main areas of research are econometrics, labor economics, and public finance, has been named professor of public policy.

Christine Atwood was named senior associate dean for External Affairs. Atwood succeeds Holly Taylor Sargent, who was recently named Harvard University’s senior associate dean for Advancement and senior director for University Women’s Initiatives.

Peter Zimmerman MPP 1977, longtime director of Executive Education, has taken a new job at the school as senior associate dean for strategic program development. Lecturer Christine Letts, formerly of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, became the new associate dean for Executive Education.

In June, Melodie Jackson MPA 2001 became communications director, overseeing the publications and press offices. Since 2001, she was senior vice president and director of public affairs at Citizens Bank.

Kathy Eckroad, former senior director of global programs in the Executive Education Program, took over the reins as director of the Mason Fellows Program in July, following the departure of Paula Jacobson, who left to pursue a PhD in political science, with a focus on Latin America, at the University of California at San Diego.

John Noble, director of Career Services for the past eight years, left the Kennedy School in August to become director of Career Services at Williams College in Williamstown, MA.

Kim Williams, professor of public policy, Sue Dynarski, professor of public policy, and Mathias Risse, professor of public policy and philosophy, were all promoted from assistant to associate professor.

STUDENT NEWS

Voices Carry Masuda Sultan MPA 2005, featured in the spring 2005 issue of the Bulletin, recently loaned her voice to the audio book version of The Story of My Life: An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky by Farah Ahmedi. The book was the winner of a nationwide contest held by Good Morning America and Simon and Schuster.

Swipe for Darfur In May, students around Harvard, including the Kennedy School, started donating money from their Crimson Cards to support peacekeeping efforts in Darfur. The plastic debit cards, introduced a few years ago, are used by students to make copies, buy snacks at vending machines, and pay for food in the Forum.

Winners Three Kennedy School students, Sanjiv Kaura MPA 2005, Yeng Felipe MPA 2005, and Vishal Sehgal MPA/ID 2006, were part of India Info Village, the student team that won the social enterprise track prize in the 2005 Harvard Business School Business Plan Contest. Kaura donated his winnings to the Kennedy School’s Dean’s Fund.

ALUMNI TO WATCH

Iowa Workshop Director Lan Samantha Chang MPA2 1991 was selected as the new director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, considered to be the premier writing degree program in the country. Program alumni include Chang, Flannery O’Connor, and John Irving. Chang, the first woman and the first Asian American in the position, starts the job in January 2006. See In Print for details about her new book, Inheritance.

Time of Transition In April, Nasreen Sideek-Barwari MPA, SMG 1999 was reappointed minister of municipalities and public works in the new interim Iraqi government. The transitional government is scheduled to run the country until December, when elections will once again be held. She continues to work with groups to influence the writing of the new constitution.

Networking Lawrence Wong MPA 2004 was appointed principal personal secretary to Hsien Loong Lee MPA 1980, the prime minister of Singapore. Wong had been working in Singapore’s Ministry of Health.

Kennedy School Meets Hollywood Hill Harper MPA2/JD 1992, who plays the chief medical examiner, Dr. Sheldon Hawkes, on the hit television show CSI: NY recently starred as Junior in the HBO film Lackawanna Blues produced by Halle Barry. The film was adapted from the critically acclaimed, off-Broadway one-man show by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. In April, Harper returned to the Kennedy School as a panelist for the student-initiated Black Policy Conference.

Hong Kong Appointments Donald Tsang MPA 1982, the new chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, appointed Raphael S. Y. Hui MPA 1983 chief secretary, the second most powerful position in the region. As part of its staff training plan since 1982, the Hong Kong government has been sending mid-career administrative officers to the Kennedy School. Tsang and Hui were the first two to attend. In the intervening years, the two worked together in various government positions.

Fly Him to the Moon — Some Day In less than seven years, he’s been to nearly 50 countries. He’s dived with sharks in Fiji and walked on volcanoes in Hawaii. So what possibly could be left for thrill seeker Per Wimmer MPA2 1998? Space. In 2006, Wimmer hopes to be on the next private, suborbital space flight. In preparation, he has been training, including exercises that expose him to high, G-force pressure. After that, says Wimmer, a Danish native, there’s always the moon.

Bolivia’s Top Dog Eduardo Rodriguez MPA 1988, former chief justice of the Bolivian Supreme Court, was sworn in as president of Bolivia in June. The country's previous president, Carlos Mesa, resigned after only 19 months in office.

NEW INITIATIVES

A Better Fourth Estate Journalism programs and research centers from five of the nation’s top schools, including the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, united in May to kick off a three-year, $6 million effort to elevate the standing of journalism in academia, develop national investigative reporting projects, conduct research on media issues, and find ways to better train journalism students. The effort is also sponsoring students to work on a substantive project with major print, broadcast, and online news outlets. (This summer, 10 students worked at ABC News on a project about homeland security.)