"Your appointment is especially heartening in that it confirms that the issue of corporate responsibility, and the challenge of reconciling public priorities with private interests, are of central importance to society today."

-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a letter to John Ruggie

December 20, 2004

Dear CBG Faculty, Staff, Fellows, and Friends,

As the first semester draws to a close, I want to share with you some recent developments at CBG.

Dean David Ellwood has announced the establishment of the Hefner China Fund to support the work of CBG's China Public Policy Program. Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Hefner III are generously providing $1 million to expand and enhance the School's China-related initiatives, under the direction of the Program's Faculty Chair, Anthony Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs. The Hefner China Fund will help China meet its public policy challenges through a combination of research and training.

Cary Coglianese, Chair of CBG's Regulatory Policy Program, led an effort to bring together more than fifty of the nation's leading scholars of regulation behind recommendations on the design of a new regulatory information system that the Bush Administration is developing. The system will for the first time make all public information pertaining to government regulation available via the Internet. The recommendations advanced by Coglianese seek to ensure a high level of quality of the information stored in the new system, while stressing the need for effective search and downloading capabilities. The American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice recently endorsed the recommendations, and one of the key administration officials developing the new system responded that "it was particularly helpful to us to have recommendations obviously backed by so much knowledge, research, and intelligence about how the government, and rulemaking in particular, actually operates."

To see Professor Coglianese's recommendations, click here.

On December 13, the Regulatory Policy Program hosted a dinner with Peter Fisher, Managing Director of BlackRock, Inc. and former Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the U.S. Treasury. Fisher spoke on "Financial Challenges for the Next Four Years," commenting on a range of changing economic conditions affecting public and private investments. He highlighted the importance of policies for both the public and private sector that would encourage greater savings and investment in the future.

The Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative recently wrapped up its Socially Responsible Investment Week. On December 7, Amy Domini of Domini Social Investments and CBG Senior Fellow Simon Zadek of AccountAbility discussed key trends and future directions in socially responsible investing. On December 9, Kennedy School Lecturer in Public Policy Henry Lee and Mindy Lubber, Executive Director of the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies, hosted a question-and-answer session on the risks and opportunities that climate change poses to the financial sector.

Finally, please join me in welcoming Scott Leland to the CBG team as our new Associate Director for Strategy, Finance, and Program Development. In this position, Scott supports the Center's research programs, general administration, and strategic planning. He also backstops KSG's largest research project, the CBG public finance reform project in Ethiopia. Scott comes to us from KSG's Center for International Development, where he worked as Administrative Director. Scott is a graduate of Stanford University and has an MPP from the Kennedy School. We are very pleased to have him on board.

I wish you all a very happy holiday and a happy new year.

Cheers.