Today, Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) announced that it has awarded grants to faculty members from across the School to support new research and programming that respond to the significant policy and institutional changes underway in the United States.
Selected through a competitive process after being announced in the spring by Dean Jeremy Weinstein, the grants support projects that both improve understanding of this moment and set the stage for public policy impact. The projects will focus on a wide range of important topics, including: supporting government performance at the state level, understanding and shaping perceptions of public servants, quantifying the impact in Africa of reductions in foreign aid, reimagining international development, rethinking economic progress in an age of crisis, expanding health insurance coverage, and assessing public understanding of President Donald Trump’s second term policies.
“With the United States and the world at a critical inflection point, questions about how to support economic progress, strengthen democracy, and improve the performance of government have never been more important,” said Jeremy Weinstein, Dean of Harvard Kennedy School. “We are proud to support Harvard Kennedy School faculty members who are answering urgent questions through rigorous and impactful research—and helping us all better understand how public institutions can deliver for people in this moment.”
The following projects and faculty members have been awarded grants by Harvard Kennedy School:
- Matthew Baum’s “Assessing the Implications of Donald Trump’s First Months” will conduct a large 50-state survey to explore the nature and extent of Americans’ understanding of the first year of President Trump’s second term. Baum’s survey will assess a number of high-priority issues, including Americans’ awareness of President Trump’s executive orders, their support for his policies, the economic effects of tariffs on Americans’ everyday lives, the impact of the president’s crackdown on research funding and higher education on communities with colleges and universities, and the effects of the president’s immigration policies, and pronouncements on the attitudes and behavior of legal immigrants and naturalized citizens.
- Asim I. Khwaja and Fatema Z. Sumar’s “From Poverty to Potential: Reimagining International Development to Build a Thriving World for All” will produce new writing projects centered around the idea of reimagining international development, including with Center for International Development Faculty Affiliates. With a goal of sparking new conversations about what development can and should be in the 21st century, the projects will draw on lessons from history and propose bold new ideas and frameworks for global development.
- Jeffrey Liebman’s “Building a State Leaders Program,” a joint initiative of the Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government and its Government Performance Lab, will support state leaders in driving government performance that creates meaningful changes in residents’ lives. The program will create a platform for senior state leaders that connects them to cutting-edge solutions in areas including public safety, economic mobility, and housing. The program will also draw on insights from state leaders to inform cross-partisan efforts to restructure federal institutions to better address pressing social issues facing communities.
- Elizabeth Linos’s “Shifting the Story: Understanding, Measuring, and Changing Narratives About Public Servants” will launch a series of nationally representative “pulse surveys” to track perceptions of public servants over time; design and pilot-test strategies to shift these narratives; and subsequently quantify whether shifting beliefs about public servants has downstream consequences on public servant morale, interest in public sector employment, support for government policies, beliefs about the role of government, and willingness to engage with government.
- Zoe Marks’s “Out of Africa Project” will quantify U.S. divestment from Africa by measuring reductions in humanitarian and development aid funding over the next budget cycle relative to the previous three years, and explore African leaders’ responses to this shift. The project will also document the “Africa agendas” of middle power countries, the EU, and China through secondary source material—including aid and investment data, bilateral and multilateral agreements, public diplomacy efforts, and political statements.
- Mark Shepard’s “Maintaining and Expanding Health Insurance in Challenging Times” seeks to understand “frictional uninsurance.” A growing body of research suggests that various administrative frictions in our fragmented health insurance system play a role in driving health insurance coverage shortfalls. Shepard’s project will use data on health insurance coverage and income/jobs to estimate the prevalence of insurance frictions and their relationship to coverage loss and the “eligible but uninsured” take-up gap. Shepard will also conduct a deep dive into Massachusetts policy, engaging with state policymakers to understand the highest-impact and most feasible strategies to expand take-up.
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