A message from Dean Jeremy M. Weinstein
Dear Faculty, Staff, Students, and Fellows of Harvard Kennedy School,
Welcome to the spring semester.
Since starting my tenure as Dean last summer, I have had the opportunity to connect with many members of our community and to learn about what brought them to Harvard Kennedy School. Almost every conversation came back to mission. Every day, we are working together to understand the world around us, to forge collaboration across different perspectives and disciplines, to activate the next generation of public leaders, and to find new and creative ways of solving public problems. This mission is deeply meaningful to me personally, and it has been a great privilege to learn about what brought you to this special place.
Through my recent travels, I have seen how the Kennedy School’s mission resonates beyond Cambridge. Over the past six months, I have met with alumni and friends of HKS across the United States and while traveling abroad to Norway, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Israel, and the West Bank. In each place, I found extraordinary alumni who carry the lessons they learned here about service and leadership into their current work. It was a particular joy to visit the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, which was modeled on the Harvard Kennedy School, and to share reflections with the leadership of a university in Abu Dhabi that is designing a new school of public policy for the Middle East. The work that we do here continues to serve as a blueprint for public problem solving around the world.
We enter this new semester against a backdrop of significant policy and institutional change. The pace of change, in the United States and many other countries around the world, spurs many questions—what’s driving these policy changes, what impacts they will have, how institutions will evolve and respond, and how developments here will affect other countries and reshape geopolitics. I feel lucky to be at the Kennedy School as we pursue answers to these questions together, rooted in our enduring mission. At this moment, the world needs HKS to continue serving as a convener for experts and leaders to engage across difference; a generator of rigorous, quality research; an incubator for policy innovation; and a launching pad for leaders who strive to leave the world better than they found it.
As President Garber stated earlier this afternoon, in the months ahead we will continue to lean on our values. For the Kennedy School, that means staying true to what has long guided our work. We value the pursuit of knowledge. We are dedicated to excellence. We are committed to open inquiry, rigorous debate, and academic freedom. We embrace a full range of perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds. And we welcome both the rights and the responsibilities that accompany membership in a community of learning and scholarship. My hope is that all of us can strive to fully live out these values in our classrooms, research, programming, and public engagement.
To that end, I hope you will explore the important questions of this moment through programming across our research centers over the coming semester. On Thursday at noon in the Forum, we will host the next Democracy 2024/2025 community conversation on the Trump administration’s efforts to transform the federal government. On February 5th, the Institute of Politics will bring together three faculty experts to discuss some of the domestic and foreign policy implications of President Trump’s return to the White House. More broadly, you can find conversations hosted by centers on democracy and populism in Brazil, LGBTQI+ rights, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., presidential powers in South Korea and the U.S., ranked choice voting, the legacy of the Holocaust, strengthening European competitiveness with the outgoing Prime Minister of Belgium, and more. And we will continue to host clinics and programming through our Candid and Constructive Conversations initiative to provide spaces for community members to build their skills in navigating contentious issues, having productive dialogues, and solving tough problems. Finally, stay tuned for opportunities to engage with our incoming class of Fellows at the Institute of Politics, who will have valuable insights on the political and policy questions of the coming year.
As I reflect on the wonderful community I feel so honored to have joined, I am filled with a profound sense of gratitude for each of you. Thank you for doing your part to uphold our values and advance our mission. Welcome back!
Best,
Jeremy