Speak now or forever be a bureaucrat
by Roya Wolverson on May 7, 2007 in Opinion
This year’s Citizen editorial board came in with a mission: to make this paper more relevant and interesting to Kennedy School students. The editors have worked hard to improve the quality of writing and to become a more pertinent and credible source of information. And while we believe we’ve made progress, one of our most difficult tasks has been trying to convince students, faculty and administrators to go on the record about controversial issues. Read more
Being a Baby’s Daddy
by Jim Armstrong on May 4, 2007 in Opinion
“I have no idea how you do it!”
So goes the common refrain following someone’s discovery that I have a four-month-old son. Since fatherhood is the state of my existence these days, I guess I really haven’t had much time to reflect on what it’s like to be both a graduate student and a newly minted daddy.
The Debate: Who REALLY won?
by The Editors on May 2, 2007 in Features
On April 12, students from KSG and the Harvard Business School (HBS) strapped on their figurative boxing gloves and sparred in one of the most entertaining forum events of the year. The debate, in traditional British Parliamentary format, focused on the following resolution: “Most of the world’s problems are created by governments (and then solved by businesses).” Battling for the rights to the river, Rupert Simons (MPA/ID1) and Peter Kim (MPP2) were the rookies on the KSG team, accompanied by last year’s veteran debater Sarada Peri (MPP2). Read more
The view across from Imus
by Nik Steinberg and Roya Wolverson on May 2, 2007 in Features
Don Imus, the infamous radio host recently fired by CBS and MSNBC for calling Rutgers female basketball players “nappy-headed hos,” enjoyed a regular stream of prominent intellectuals, politicians and pundits while on air. Evan Thomas, Editor at Large at Newsweek and Visiting Professor of the Practice of Press and Public Policy, was a regular commentator on “Imus in the Morning” and appeared on the show following Imus’s controversial comments and before CBS’s decision to fire him. The Citizen (TC) asked Thomas (ET), who taught PPP 358 Mass Media and Public Policy this fall, about his views on the controversy. Read more
Policy beyond the classroom: The Guadalupe Challenge
by Ejaj Ahmad, Rebecca Haessig, and German Sturzenegger on May 2, 2007 in Features
Many of us are frustrated at times by the perceived gap between public policy school and public policy reality at KSG. Removed from the working world, we’re inundated with abstract tasks. We sometimes question the utility of our degree. Are these two years worth it? What are we really learning? Read more
New joint degrees: hybrid MBA or subordinate MPP?
by Katie Connolly on May 2, 2007 in News
On April 3, KSG Dean David Ellwood announced the creation of a new joint degree program with Harvard Business School (HBS). While The Boston Globe lauded the announcement, it raises questions about the future of stand-alone degrees at KSG.
KSG and HBS are collaborating to offer two new degree programs – a joint MPP/MBA and a joint MPAID/MBA – commencing in the 2008 academic year. Joint degree students will commence studies at KSG, fulfilling the core requirements of either an MPP or an MPAID. They will spend their second year at HBS, and the final year between both campuses. An integrated teaching approach will distinguish the new programs from existing concurrent degrees. Read more
Media adds to Virginia Tech’s pain
by Lymari Morales on May 2, 2007 in Opinion
The overwhelming sadness I feel for the people of Virginia Tech just keeps multiplying. It comes at me from all directions: as a student, as a Virginian, and as a journalist. Sitting in class, my heart breaks over and over again for the 32 innocent people murdered doing exactly what we do every day. They died because they showed up to teach and to learn. And they died as defenseless as we are, sitting in rooms with doors open to the world. Read more
Letters to the Editor
by The Editors on May 2, 2007 in Letter to the Editor, Opinion
To the Editor:
While visiting Boston last week I stopped by the Kennedy School and, being a former writer for this paper, picked up a copy of the Citizen. I found the lead article “New joint degrees: hybrid MBA or subordinate MPP” to be very interesting from an alumni point of view. Working now as “a McKinsey consultant with a more humane image” I wanted to weigh-in on the issue.
Specifically, two points come to mind: one, that there is nothing to fear from a joint degree program and, two, that this program does not put in jeopardy the kind of impact that KSG most desires from its alumni. Since graduation I have consistently been impressed and honored with how well respected the Kennedy School degree is viewed and received in the professional workplace. Whether you are graduating with joint degree or with and MPP/MPA this will not change. Offering the opportunity for someone to study business as well as policy should not in any way dilute (1) the mission of the Kennedy School or (2) its worldwide reputation.
Which leads me to my second point. The joint degree leads to at least two ends - the public servant who leaves the program with greater business acumen and the businessman who graduates attuned to public policy, its issues and paths towards solutions. Both of these have the high-potential to lead to greater public value and impact than either alone. The Kennedy School should not forget or neglect the vast potential to make a real positive difference even when working “on the dark side.” At McKinsey I have had fantastic opportunities to make real policy change on a world-wide scale with the resources of a global private sector firm behind me. If this is where the future MPP/MBAs land is this something we should fear? I think there is indeed a strong case for this program to at least identify, if not lead students to, these positions.
Giles Whiting, MPP ‘05
To the Editor:
When I saw the front-page article, “Student parents at KSG criticize lack of support” (April 18), I was as excited as my toddler gets when I let her use my laptop. What was not emphasized in the piece, though, is how this issue is primarily about gender discrimination. Last fall, as I adjusted to being in school after being a work-at-home mom, a KSG administrator advised me not to “advertise” the fact that I have kids. No, this didn’t come from a sexist old guy, but a mother herself who had internalized the discrimination that moms face on the job. It was dreadful advice. As mothers, we are forced to choose between being “out of the closet” mommies or denying part of our identity to survive in a professional environment that’s unfriendly to families. When I asked the administrator what the school did to support parents, she paused and then said there was a highchair for use in the forum.
The Citizen article raised the question of why KSG should make more accommodations to parents than others struggling with personal and financial challenges. It shouldn’t, but like racial and class inequality measures, failing to accommodate mothers is a form of gender discrimination. On top of our breeding and breastfeeding responsibilities, women still do most of the childrearing. Next fall I’ll begin a doctoral program at the University of California at Berkeley. One of the reasons I chose Berkeley was their mommy-friendly policies and support. How many women do not come or even apply to KSG because of the absence of such support? Is this one of the reasons why the mid-career program is only 1/3 women?
Mothers who come to KSG also have less opportunity to develop social networks with classmates and visitors than their childless cohorts. Most happy hour and evening events are during our bewitching hours – childcare pickup, dinner, baths and bedtime stories. I have fantasies of bringing my 4-year-old son, Liam, and my 22-month-old daughter to an evening forum event. I would breastfeed Kalian in the front row in front of some bigwig. Liam would be melting down and start screaming for dinner. Then, I would unleash my toddler (from the donated high chair, of course) to run up and down the aisles and onto the stage. Protests like this at Harvard in the 1970s generated day care centers. Is this what it will take to finally close the gender gap?
Jen Schradie, MC/MPA
KSG Eavesdropper
by The Editors on May 2, 2007 in Culture
Heard something that is
a) funny ha-ha b) funny-awkward,
c) funny-wtf? or d) funny-only-at-ksg?
Send it to KSGeavesdropper@gmail.com.
“I tend to favor the legumes.”
—An MPP1 referring to the salad bar in the Forum Café
“I have to confess, the only reason I got the socio-meter was because I realized I was wearing a low cut top and had nothing else to cover my cleavage.”
—An MPP1, referring to the electronic machines worn around the necks of MPP1s for a study in social networking conducted by MIT
“They have this forum where like all these important people come and say stuff.”
—A Harvard undergrad referring to IOP Forum events
“He’s like me. He’s cool. He’s a halfie.”
—An MPP2 referring to a classmate of common heritage
Student 1: “Of course, coming from the south, I’d have preferred a Confederate victory.”
Student 2: “You mean slavery.”
Student 1: “Um, no…that’s not what I meant at all.”
Imagination 101
I used to be a comedian. For ten years I devoted my life to thinking about how to make people laugh. Sometimes the ideas were elaborate and required choreographed dance routines, ridiculous costumes and film crews with trucks full of equipment. Other times the task was accomplished with a line of
dialogue or a single image that captured a truth I thought my audience would find familiar (and funny).
As my year at the Kennedy School comes to an end I am beginning to appreciate how well this training prepared me for a career in public service. I don’t mean that I’ll wear an enormous foam cowboy hat to my next local government job interview (though I think that would be droll), rather my understanding of what good policy looks like turns out to resemble my conception of successful art.
At its core, art is an individual expression of a universal feeling. Whether the artist is an impressionist depicting an idyllic Sunday in the park, or a stand-up comedian cracking wise about bad drivers, the work of art succeeds or fails because of its capacity to link our shared experiences. The effect can be comforting or confrontational; it can surprise or shock.
The pedagogy at KSG is rooted in a rigorous commitment to learning the environment in which actors from a wide constellation of policy areas will engage. This is important and akin to an artist’s education in the fundamentals of a formal discipline. What KSG needs to improve is cultivating the other component of successful art: imagination. While there are plenty of imaginative people here and presentations that have displayed wild creativity, the school doesn’t teach people how to dream.
The utility of dreaming may seem anathema to realists who are constantly working within resource constraints, but a mandatory class in imagination for future KSG students might help even this supremely rational constituency appreciate what artists understand in their bones. Artists, like policy creators, are almost never wholly original; the good ones are able to conjure a picture of reality that others are not able to see (in the world of politics, we call these people “visionaries”). They are influenced by the work of predecessors and contemporaries, but instead of merely using the same ingredients in different combinations they inject their own special sauce (their “dream”) without which their work might still be striking and powerful but ultimately derivative.
In the policy arena the inability to privilege imagination costs us dearly. The 9/11 Commission concluded that among all the failures of those charged with keeping us safe was a cataclysmic failure of the imagination. There simply was not capacity to envision the nightmare that played out on that day; without such vision we were left vulnerable. Our own curriculum is littered with case studies of policies that reveal an inability for decision-makers to approach an old problem with a fresh perspective.
Educators at KSG continue to endorse clichéd “out of the box” thinking, but perhaps there should be instruction on how to get out of the metaphoric box. Creating innovative policy does not have to be too different than coming up with a good joke. It flows from a facility with the particular tools of the trade, an appreciation of what’s been tried before, and a method for getting to that mental space in which the original, radical, revolutionary, brilliant, just-so-crazy-it-might-actually -work ideas can grow. A willingness to risk failure also helps.
What would a class in imagination look like? It might include drawing visual representations of what a positive
policy outcome would look like for a person or community. It might require students to get on their feet and act out the dysfunction they’re trying to address (as the group who attended the recent seminar on Augosto Boal did – see “Acting out Conflict” on previous page). It might involve movie watching, fiction reading, a trip to a museum, and exposure to artists who live the highs and lows of having an original thought every day.
Teaching students of government how to imagine the future, understand the creative process and most importantly, dream, might sound light years away from the diligent training required to implementing an effective policy or run a country. But from the dissident-playwright turned president Vaclav Havel to the nation’s most essential dreamer Martin Luther King, the virtue and political necessity of a vital imagination is made clear. After all, King didn’t go to Washington to declare: “I have a policy recommendation today!”
