HKS Library Speaker Series
The Library is pleased to welcome everyone in the Kennedy School community to the continuation of our popular speaker series. As in the past, this year's series will feature HKS fellows, researchers, and faculty who will be making short presentations on their recent research work. Please join us in these discussions of timely topics relevant to us all. Refreshments will be served!
Recent Speakers
Will Obama’s Recovery Plan Work?
Friday, March 13
The financial crisis–and now the economic crisis–has neither simple origins nor simple solutions. But Washington has already committed $700 billion to TARP and $800 billion to the President’s recovery plan. Little understood, however, is that those two programs are just a small part of the massive $8.8 trillion the government has so far pledged in spending, loans, and deposit guarantees.
And yet all that may well not be enough: all of us need to understand what’s at stake now. Should we simply restore the current financial system–or do we need a new (or in fact, an old) one? Join us for a talk by Richard Parker, Lecturer in Public Policy and Senior Fellow of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy as he discusses what the government should be doing to get us out of these crises–and why.
Related reading
Richard Parker: “Government Beyond Obama,” New York Review of Books, March 12, 2009
Past Speakers
Foreign Policy Challenges for the New American President
November 12, 2008
Join us for a brown bag discussion with Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics. Ambassador Burns served in the U.S. Foreign Service for 27 years until his retirement in April 2008. He has held many impressive diplomatic positions including Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, U.S. Ambassador to Greece, State Department Spokesman for Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher, and White House Special Assistant to the President for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Order of Saint John and Red Sox Nation.
Listen to the talk (HKS only)
The Warping of Government Work
May 8, 2008
The divergent paths of public and private employment have intensified a long-standing pattern: elite workers spurn public jobs, while less skilled workers cling to government work as a refuge from a harsh private economy. In this talk, John D. Donahue, Raymond Vernon Lecturer in Public Policy and Director of the Weil Program in Collaborative Governance at the Harvard Kennedy School, will analyze government's isolation from the rest of the American economy and lay out the choices we have for narrowing, or accommodating, the divide between public and private work.
The Warping of Government Work - John D. Donahue (mp3 file)
The Subprime Saga: What Happened and What's Next
March 21, 2008
The early days of the subprime industry seemed to fulfill a market need—and millions of renters became homeowners as a result. But rapidly escalating home prices masked cracks in the subprime foundation. Join us for a brown bag discussion with Nicolas P. Retsinas, director of Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, as he lays out what went wrong and why.
The Subprime Saga: What Happened and What’s Next - Nicolas P. Retsinas (mp3 file)
Related Readings
Nicolas P. Retsinas: "Building Sandcastles: The Subprime Adventure," Working Knowledge, September 12, 2007
Joint Center for Housing Studies
Trust and Honesty in the Real World: A Case Study
February 22, 2008
Join us for a case study discussion examining the potential conflicts of interest in medical and scientific research. The case, "Managing Conflicts of Interest: The Lead Paint Dilemma," is drawn from Trust and Honesty in the Real World (Fathom Publishing 2006) coauthored by M-RCBG Senior Fellow Mark Fagan. Mark will facilitate a conversation examining the nature of conflicts of interest in scientific research and the public policy, business and legal issues that arise.
Read the case here (HKS only)
Read an outline of the case here (HKS only)
Fixing Elections in Boston
April 27, 2007
In the wake of the 2000 election, notorious for hanging chads, butterfly ballots, and long lines at the polls, David King, Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School, worked with the National Commission on Federal Election Reform. That effort culminated in the 2002 passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was supposed to "fix" many of the problems. Yet nearly every election since has been beset with problems, ranging from poor voter lists and inaccessible polling places, to outright failures of new voting equipment. In this talk, David King will review his recent work with the Boston Election Department in devising a new "top-to-bottom" reform of elections in the City.
Related Readings
David King: " Election Reform as an Unfunded Mandate ," Boston Review, October/November 2001
CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project: http://www.vote.caltech.edu/
Journal articles from the CalTech/MIT project: http://www.vote.caltech.edu/journals.htm
Building an Army that meets our Defense Strategy
March 16, 2007
BG(ret.) Kevin Ryan, Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, will give a presentation and answer questions on the methodology used to establish force size and capabilities in the US Army. Using the current defense strategy, Ryan will explain how Army leaders develop their assessment of the number of troops and units the Army should have. Ryan will discuss the impact of the surge on the US military in general and how expanding the Army will affect operations in Iraq and elsewhere.
There are no required readings but persons interested in this subject are encouraged to read Thomas Barnett’s, The Pentagon's New Map.
So, You've Got a Crisis -- Improving Disaster Response in the United States
December 1, 2007
Arn Howitt, Executive Director of the Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, will be speaking about emergency preparedness and crisis management in the U.S. What exactly is a crisis? Why does the U.S. seem to have difficulty managing events as diverse as Hurricane Katrina and the anthrax letter attacks? How can we do better?
Presentation Slides(PDF)
Related Readings
Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard and Arnold M. Howitt, "Against Desperate Peril: High Performance in Emergency Preparation and Response," forthcoming in Communicable Crises, edited by Deborah E. Gibbons.
Arnold M. Howitt and Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard, "Beyond Katrina: Improving Disaster Response Capabilities," Working Papers 2006 (Center for Public Leadership, Kennedy School of Government, May 2006). Published as a two-part series in the Crisis/Response Journal (June and September 2006).
Privacy - the Personal and the Professional
October 27, 2007
Leigh Williams, M-RCBG Senior Fellow and former Chief Privacy Officer for Fidelity Investments, will lead a roundtable on the privacy issues affecting all of us - as individuals, consumers, employees and citizens. Leigh's opening comments and the subsequent discussion will touch on a variety of topics, including identity theft, target marketing, privacy expectations and government surveillance.
Related Readings
Data Protection and the Commerce Clause by Edward H. Freeman
Stolen Identities by Zach Patton
