Arnold M. Howitt has been a faculty member and administrator at Harvard University since 1976. He is the Founder and Faculty Co-Director of the Program on Crisis Leadership, which began in 1998, at the John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS), Harvard University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the HKS Center for Public Leadership.
Dr. Howitt was previously Executive Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation (2008-2016) and Executive Director and Associate Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government (1984-2008), both at HKS.
From 2017-2025, Dr. Howitt served part of each year as Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Schwarzman Scholars program at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, teaching crisis leadership to graduate students from several dozen countries.
Dr. Howitt is also a lifetime Global Fellow at Iwate University in Japan. Previously, he held short-term visiting positions at Keio, Kyoto, Kansai, and Tokyo Universities in Japan.
Dr. Howitt earned his B.A. at Columbia College, Columbia University, and M.A. and Ph.D. in political science in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.
Research on Crisis Management
Dr. Howitt has worked extensively on emergency preparedness and crisis management issues in the US and other countries. Among other topics, he has researched and written about crisis management and communication during the COVID-19 pandemic; the 2019 Notre-Dame cathedral fire; medical management of mass casualty events; Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes; the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks; the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Japan’s response to and recovery from the 2011 earthquake/tsunami/nuclear accident; implementation of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) in the United States. In addition, he has developed several dozen teaching case studies on crisis management and disaster recovery issues.
Teaching
At Harvard Kennedy School since 2002, Dr. Howitt has worked extensively in executive education for senior officials from the United States and other countries. Over the years, more than 3,500 senior officials have participated in more than 65 four-six-day intensive HKS programs that he co-founded and co-chaired.
From 2003-2015, Dr. Howitt was also deeply involved in several HKS executive education programs for senior Chinese officials from the central government, Beijing and Shanghai municipal governments, and other subnational jurisdictions. In addition, he served as a strategic adviser and trainer-of-trainers for China’s National Institute of Emergency Management (2010-11, 2015).
Dr. Howitt has taught graduate-level courses at the Harvard Extension School since 1980. Internationally, he has taught or conducted research in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Nepal, Bangladesh, Singapore, Indonesia, Mexico, France, and Canada.
Transportation and Environment Research
Earlier in his career, Dr. Howitt conducted research at HKS on behalf of the US Department of Transportation and the US Environmental Protection Agency. Among other projects, in the 1990s he directed a multi-year study for DOT and EPA of how 15 states and their major metropolitan areas were implementing US laws regulating motor vehicle air pollution in transportation planning and construction.
Publications
Dr. Howitt is co-author/editor of Public Health Preparedness (American Public Health Association Press, 2017), Natural Disaster Management in the Asia-Pacific: Policy and Governance (Springer, 2015), Managing Crises: Responding to Large-Scale Emergencies (CQ Press, 2009), Countering Terrorism: Dimensions of Preparedness (MIT Press, 2003), and Perspectives on Management Capacity Building (SUNY Press, 1986), and author of Managing Federalism: Studies in Intergovernmental Relations (CQ Press, 1984). He has also contributed to several task force projects, including Role of Transit in Emergency Evacuation (National Academies Press, 2008), Air Quality Management in the United States (National Academies Press, 2003), Preparing for Terrorism (National Academies Press, 2002), and Air Quality in the Mexico Megacity (Kluwer, 2002).