CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —Today, the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston announced that it will be awarding $2 million in grants to fund faculty-led projects that will address Massachusetts’ biggest challenges. Led by faculty from across Harvard, these projects will involve collaborations with private and public leaders to design, test, and scale solutions to urgent local issues including education, housing, transportation, climate resilience, and infrastructure.
To begin the award process, the Rappaport Institute is hosting three convenings of local policymakers and practitioners throughout the course of this year focused on education, health care, and building housing and infrastructure. These convenings will help identify challenges that need urgent attention, areas where faculty expertise and state and local needs align, and opportunities for projects that would otherwise be difficult to start or sustain. Grants will be awarded on a rolling basis throughout the year.
This initiative is championed by Dean Jeremy Weinstein as a part of Harvard Kennedy School’s broader efforts to put rigorous, empirical social science research to work for the public good. Dean Weinstein will work with Rappaport to engage with faculty and policymakers, shape project ideas, and elevate the work and its impact.
“This initiative embodies the best of what public policy research can do: bring world-class research to bear on the real problems facing real people in our own region,” said Jeremy Weinstein, dean of Harvard Kennedy School and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy. “By putting faculty alongside the policymakers and practitioners who shape Massachusetts every day, we can generate insights that change lives in our community.”
“Massachusetts is home to some of most pressing and complex governance challenges in the country — and a strong academic research community that has the capacity to play a part in solving them,” said Jeffrey Liebman, director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Social Policy. “This project will connect those two worlds and fund research that answers pressing questions for Massachusetts residents.”
“This effort builds on the Rappaport Institute’s longstanding legacy of driving change in our community,” said Kathryn Carlson, executive director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. “By connecting faculty to local policymakers from the start of this new initiative, we will identify bold, ambitious research questions that can make an immediate impact in the region.”
Founded in 2000, the Rappaport Institute has spent more than 25 years working to strengthen governance in the region. The Institute supports groundbreaking research and policy briefs, gives Harvard Kennedy School students experiential learning opportunities and provides fellowships to Boston-area graduate students to work in MA state and local government, and provides full-tuition scholarships to elected and appointed officials from Greater Boston to attend the Harvard Kennedy School’s Mid-Career Master in Public Administration program.
This $2 million grant investment is made possible through a gift from the Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Foundation.
More information can be found on the Rappaport Institute website.