It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year! March Madness: The Best Thing In American Sports
by Chris Arlene, Sports Editor on March 11, 2010 in Sports
Two weeks from now, most of us will be spending our spring break traveling the world, relaxing at home, or cramming to finish a PAE. Whether we are living it up or kicking ourselves for six months of procrastination, we can stay connected through a special event: the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament. Commonly referred to as March Madness, it’s the best thing in American sports.
That’s right: the best, greatest, most exciting, and generally unforgettable event in American sports. As a kid who grew-up dreaming of playing college basketball, but had to settle for a lackluster high school career and sporadic mediocrity during pickup games at the MAC, I’m biased.
For you policy wonks, here’s an excessively long executive summary that explains the nuts and bolts of March Madness:
The NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship is a three-week, 65-team tournament. 31 teams earn automatic bids by winning their conference championships. A 10-member Selection Committee invites 34 at-large teams based on their record, rankings, strength of schedule, signature wins and losses, etc. The Selection Committee ranks the teams 1-65, with the #1 overall seed deemed the best and #65 the worst. The teams are then divided into four regions – West, Midwest, South, and East – with 16 teams, seeded 1-16.
The top 4 teams are given #1 seeds, the next four #2 seeds, so on and so forth (#64 and #65 have a play-in game to determine the final #16 seed). The bracket sets-up so that first-round matchups pit #1 vs. #16, #2 vs. #15, etc. Theoretically, the higher your seed, the easier your road to the championship. Using a single-elimination format, the field of 64 is whittled down to 16 after the first weekend, and then down to four after the second, and eventually a champion on the first Tuesday in April.
March Madness has some specific terminology you need to know. The tournament is also known as the Big Dance. Teams that make it out of the second round head into the Sweet 16. The winners of those games play in the Elite Eight. Winning teams then move to the Final Four, the most prestigious event in college sports. The bracket (keep reading!) is the decision tree platform used to determine the flow of games and is revealed on Selection Sunday. Now that you how what March Madness is, here’s why it’s so important…
First, there’s an endless amount of drama. On Selection Sunday, teams that had solid but unspectacular seasons wait tentatively on the “bubble,” hoping it doesn’t burst. The televised joy of the invited or disappointment of the rejected epitomizes what purity is left in college sports. As the tournament moves on, it feels like every other game comes down to the last shot regardless of the matchup. That’s the beauty of the “one and done” format: at the college level, an inferior team can play harder or smarter than a more talented opponent.
Second, the whole country participates. In offices, schools, and just about any place where people gather, some worthy soul organizes a pool, aka an illegal gambling activity based on picking the winners of each game. Claiming a year’s worth of bragging rights is no joke. Though a guess at best, consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimates that the economy loses $1.7 billion in productivity as the nation’s workforce researches their picks or watches games online. No matter the stakes, there’s just something so American about filling out your bracket. It’s so patriotic, in fact, that President Obama even televised his picks on ESPN last year.
Third, (cliché count) anything can happen (1). Hope springs eternal every year as a new “Cinderella” claims as many upsets as possible before the clock strikes midnight (3). Though major upsets tend to happen during the first weekend of play, every tournament has a David that overcomes long odds to slay Goliath (4). In 1985, 8th seed Villanova became the lowest seed to win the championship since the field was expanded to 64 teams when it beat Georgetown. More recently, 2006 saw 11th seed George Mason beat Michigan State, North Carolina, and Connecticut to reach the Final Four. And in 2008, 10th seeded Davidson beat Gonzaga, Georgetown, and Wisconsin before losing to eventual champion Kansas in the Elite Eight.
The field will be announced on March 14, so I can only provide a few insights that may help you beat that loud, obnoxious friend of yours who thinks he knows everything about sports (should I be doing this?). Pick Syracuse, Kansas, or Michigan State (sleeper) to win it all. Stay away from Kentucky, Duke, and Kansas State. A #16 seed has never beat a #1. At least two #12 seeds will win in the first round. Expect two or three teams from mid-major conferences (think HKS in the Harvard grad school hierarchy) will make the Sweet 16. At least two #1 seeds will reach the Final Four, but not all four. If you finish your bracket and realize you’ve picked the higher seeds in every matchup, start over! While I don’t endorse gambling, a donation in the form of a 3:30 pm coffee would be appreciated if this advice helps. If you don’t win, a “donated” coffee from Executive Education will do.
Citizen Conversation With…Tim McCarthy
by Matt Bieber, News Writer on March 11, 2010 in Citizen Conversation with..., Features
Interview conducted by Matt Bieber, MPP’11
You recently discussed “the future of protest” at Harvard Thinks Big, and you exhorted Harvard students to take up the spirit of protesters past. Could you summarize your views?
The question I asked was, “Does protest have a future?”…I work on the history of social movements, particularly the history of radical movements in the United States, so I’m really interested in…what my colleague John Stauffer calls “passionate outsiders”…
What motivates the specific question about whether protest has a future? What’s special about this moment now?
Well, I think there are a couple of things that are special about it. But…I think that this question—does protest have a future?—should always be posed….[T]he society that we live in has been given to us by people who have had the courage to stand up…and to protest the things that are wrong….Every generation needs to figure out how they will rise to that challenge. And there are a lot of things that are really wrong in the world.
It’s important to remember that the world that we live in is not just shaped by people who are powerful….[I]t is also shaped by people who are powerless in lots of ways….But how do these folks come together to change society?…[P]articularly in democracies.
In this country…a couple of things [are] going on right now. One is the enormous energy that came out of the Obama campaign, which many people thought of as a kind of social movement of sorts (though I would argue that it wasn’t)….[W]hat do we do with that energy?
On the other hand…we also have a situation where we are as divided as a country politically—in institutions of power and way outside of these institutions of power—as we’ve ever been in my lifetime. The animus exists…whether you’re on the left or right. And their frustrations are directed toward those who are in power….But I would also say that these institutions of power…are not functioning properly, or not functioning at all, because of the larger divisiveness in the culture…How do you get out of that?
On the other hand…because of our globalized new media world, we’re connected to one another and aware of each other’s lives in ways that we haven’t been in the past. Look at the great empathy [toward] Haiti or Chile….Because of the global flow of information and images, I think the way we…connect to these kinds of things is probably different now than it was a generation ago.
…Then there’s the future….“What world are we going to give to our kids?” I think that every generation needs to wrestle with and reflect upon that—not just on “What am I going to get right now?”
As a teacher, I feel that urgently….I have the privilege…to teach and reflect with and think deeply with the next generation. I’ve been teaching now for fifteen years at three different institutions. I now see my former students who are out there making change in the world, some of them for the good and some of them not so good. Many of them are still struggling to figure out what kind of lives they are going to lead, what kind of change they are going to make.
…I like to call this the “pedagogy of the privileged.” I have the privilege of teaching some of the best and brightest minds in the world. But this cuts both ways. On the one hand, there’s great opportunity there to help people figure out what kind of positive impact they’re going to have in the world….
But there’s another side….If we don’t ask these deeper questions—how we will confront and change the things that are wrong? what kind of lives do we want to lead?—then we will be sending people out into the world…to exercise power and privilege who have never gone through the process of reflecting about the moral and ethical and political dimensions of how they’re going to use their power and privilege.
I think there are two types questions an institution like this should ask. One is, “What are we aiming for, and why? The other is, “How do we get there?” I worry that we spend too little time on the first question and too much on the second. To me, that first question is fundamental. Before we can decide how to deploy policies effectively, we need to ask hard questions about what we value. And we need a spirit that encourages intense grappling with that question.
I agree. But let me put it in a slightly different way….I’m constantly [trying to get] students…to wrestle with two questions: One is, “What do you believe?” And the second is “Why do you believe this?” I want people to articulate what they stand for—what they’re willing to throw down for, what they’re willing to get arrested for, what they’re willing to die for—but also why they believe the things they do.
But we don’t ask these questions as much as we should….When we think about some of the people who inspire us, we see these questions answered. Martin Luther King, Jr., could tell you what he would die for. Gandhi could tell you….Mandela could tell you….Mother Teresa could tell you.
…[W]e need to ask our students these questions more often. If someone said to me, “What would you die for? What would you be arrested for?” I could tell them.
What would you say?
…[A]t the outset, broadly speaking, I would say justice. Ultimately, I am driven by equality, which is one of the reasons why I have such a complicated relationship with the academy….I think that institutions like Harvard are places that privilege hierarchy, because that’s how they function. People have specific roles to play, and those roles are often either privileged or subordinated to one another.
….I find that to be intensely problematic, and I am very uncomfortable with this. I am much more…of an egalitarian, and if I see equality…thwarted in various ways, that’s something that troubles me deeply.
For instance, one of the exhortations I had in my talk was that [the undergraduates] should be less worried about the loss of hot breakfast – which they are totally preoccupied with, which is foolish – and more concerned about the loss of jobs for those people who made hot breakfast. At the end of the day, Harvard laid off hundreds of people last year when the students were complaining about eggs and pancakes and the faculty was complaining that they weren’t getting an annual salary increase.
…Let me be very clear: It’s not a human right to get an annual salary increase. It is, however, a human right to be able to have a job and be…fairly and justly compensated for that job. So when institutions are privileging one kind of complaint over another—whining over the loss of small perks and privileges rather than insisting on full and just employment—that’s something I feel compelled to speak on….
I’m also willing to go to jail for peace. I absolutely am willing to die for peace, which sounds weirdly ironic, right? But I’m a pacifist. I reject war, even so-called “just war.” I have gotten death threats because of the stance that I took in opposition to the Iraq war and…to the Bush administration’s war on terror, and I was “blacklisted” as “short of patriotism” by Lynne Cheney.…But I’m very proud of that. I’m much prouder of the stance I took in opposition to the Iraq war—standing up at that moment in history—than anything I’ve ever written or published. I sleep somewhat easier at night knowing that I was on the right side of history at a time when that stance was not only unpopular but also widely viewed as “unpatriotic.”
That said, I know that’s not going to get me tenure, it’s probably not going to get me a job promotion, and it’s probably not going to earn me the respect of most of my colleagues. But I don’t care. That’s where I feel like I have a complicated relationship with places like this. I hate the silences that institutions like Harvard sometimes require for advancement or survival or “success.”
That said, I also think it’s essential for us to articulate why we believe what we do, to explain and even justify our positions….I’m constantly trying to get my students…to wrestle with the question: “Why do you believe that?”…It’s not simply whether or not you support the death penalty, or whether or not you support welfare reform….These are policy positions that you can believe in passionately. But…why? For instance, if you are opposed to welfare—say, if you believe that poor folks need to get off the dole—I want to know why you believe that welfare creates laziness and dependency?…In other words, what about your experience…supports or undergirds the ideology that leads you to take this particular policy position?
We don’t often think enough about that. At the end of the day, these questions get into your personal experience, your political ideology, your worldview, which is directly shaped by your material and social experiences. I don’t mean to sound like too much of a Marxist – well, maybe I do – but at the end of the day, why you believe something goes to the heart of who you are and how you act in the world. Ideology is at the core of politics.
I was thinking about Jon Stewart recently. Sometimes his analysis is sophisticated; other times, it falls short. But what’s so valuable to me about what he does is that he actually asks questions – and suggests answers - about what’s motivating public figures to do what they do and say what they say.
Well, let me give you two examples of things I care very deeply about. One is welfare reform. I was a graduate student at the time [of Clinton’s reforms] and I was living in New York when Rudy Giuliani was mayor….There were all these moves to cut welfare services and [other] services….
The whole movement for welfare reform was rooted in a discourse that denigrated and stigmatized poor people. Almost nowhere in the debate over welfare reform—at least…among the powers that be in New York City or Washington—was there…any acknowledgement that poor people are complex and valuable human beings, just like all of us.
You never say that we need to get suburban parents off the dole and stop taking their kids to public parks on the weekends. But public parks are tax-supported public offerings that people of all kinds rely on….We never say that middle class people—or rich people, for that matter—are on welfare because we don’t have an underlying sense that these folks are lazy or dependent or corrupt (when, if fact, they can be all of these things). But we do have an underlying sense that poor people are that way, particularly poor people of color, which is often implied in debates over welfare and the like.
And this is amazing, given the other narratives at work in American political discourse. One is the Horatio/Alger bootstrap narrative, and another is the way that politicians regularly make paeans to the hardworking decency of the average American. Now, granted that they’re usually pitching themselves at middle-class Americans…
…Horatio Alger tales were stories, largely, of white European immigrants who came to the United States and divested themselves of all the things that might have dragged them down, imbuing themselves with the so-called “American spirit” of picking themselves up by their bootstraps and moving from poverty to riches.
One of the reasons why Booker T. Washington, the great African-American leader of the late nineteenth century, called his autobiography Up from Slavery is because he was trying to intervene in this highly racialized discourse of upward mobility that presumed that European immigrants could rise from rags to riches but black folks couldn’t.
In a school of public policy, we need to interrogate our positions on particular policies by asking: “Why is it that you believe this?” What kinds of assumptions are you making based on your experiences—or no experience….[M]any people who favor welfare reform, or abolition, have never met a person on welfare, or a poor person, or a person of color….For the last nine years, I have run this program in Dorchester, a college humanities program for low-income adults. Most of the students in my program….live at or below the poverty line.
There’s nothing in my experience with any of these folks…that would ever support a narrative of laziness to characterize them – not one. Resilience, courage, faith, love – all those things. Laziness? Not a person, in nine years, and hundreds of people have come through this program. So I would challenge anyone who would base support for welfare reform or abolition on the premise that poor people are lazy, dependent, and corrupt.
So that’s one thing. The other issue is same-sex marriage. I just got engaged to my partner, and we’re getting married next year.
Congratulations.
Thank you….I’m not as preoccupied with the gay marriage issue as some other queer people are. Still, I do worry that the debate over marriage has crowded out other important LGBT issues….[M]arriage equality should not be the only, or even top, priority for the movement, but that’s another conversation. That said, I should have the right to marry to my partner anywhere I damn well choose. I love him, I am committed to him, and I want to spend the rest of my life with him. Just like my parents and grandparents.
…There are people who are opposed to gay marriage. Okay, fine. My response to them: “Why? You and your wife have a relationship. I have no authority or right to intervene in it…other than to say, ‘Congratulations. I’m happy for you. You found someone that you love and want to be with the rest of your life and you want to make that commitment….’”
And that’s all we want: congratulate us on our loving commitment and step aside. But if you don’t think that we have the right to the same thing that you have—if you want to stand in the way of our human rights—then I want to know more about why you think that. I want to know what it is about my partner and me that makes you think you need or are entitled to a kind of “super citizenship.” Why do you think it’s your democratic or regulatory duty to intervene in our relationship in a way that denies us the joy and love and recognition that you have? That is arrogant and discriminatory, plain and simple….
In class, it’s unsettling to me when people say things like, “Well, I like XYZ strategy because I like market mechanisms.” It seems to me that if you’re going to seek to influence policy, you’ve got to do more than just ‘like’ one policy over another. You have to be able to say why.
And it’s deeply personal. That’s why my good friend Marshall Ganz’s work is so important. We all have stories, and those stories are what allow us to articulate and really put into words what we believe….
When it comes to markets, people take for granted that capitalism…exists and it always will. Very few people ever challenge the logic of capitalism any more….Adam Smith challenged the logic of capitalism more than most people do today….To paraphrase, he said, “The wealth of nations is determined not by the wealth of those at the top but the lack of wealth of those at the bottom.” He was talking about how capitalism produces economic inequality and how we need to recognize that as a way to critique capitalism from the inside. Nobody does that any more.
So [you hear that] the market [will fix] education, the market will fix social services, the market will fix health care and the media. Maybe that’s true, but there’s a lot of evidence – data, if you will – to suggest that it’s not true. Capitalism can be a very bad thing.
We learn early in API-101 that markets aren’t always particularly good at providing public goods.
…[I]n the health care debate, the thing that has driven me craziest is that the public option is seen as “socialism.” But the public option actually helps to make the free market more fair….[T]he public option is a government alternative within the free market of choices for health care. So it actually…increases competition by creating a public option among the range of options for health care that will help to drive down prices….
But the Democrats didn’t fight the socialism battle because they lack courage. Once the Right said, “It’s socialism,” or “liberal,” or whatever the bad word of the day is, [the Democrats] ran for the hills. They said, “Well, we have to figure out another way to do this.” Democrats love to run from a fight.
Right. And the response is so easy. It’s, “If you think that the public option constitutes socialism, then I assume you also oppose Medicare and public education.”
Or public parks—and schools and sidewalks and subways and snowplows.
Right. Yeah. That should be an easy argument to make.
…But again, it’s an argument that would require you to articulate a worldview about the role of government in our lives - particularly in the lives of people who are struggling - that the Democrats are unwilling to make, for the most part. I’m glad to see the President – who I like and admire very much, but am frustrated with at times – I’m glad to see that he is starting to talk about this. But the Democrats need to be able to say, “Look, there are millions of people who can’t afford health insurance. That is a reality that has been created largely because of the influence of capitalism on our health care system.” Let’s just say that—period—in public with people watching and recording it.
That is the reality. So we have to figure out how, as a government, which is supposed to be something that is collective and protective of the common good, we can pull together resources collectively to provide things for the most number of people who need them.
…But the Democrats are largely unwilling to say that….The Republican Party and conservatives are much, much more articulate about saying why they believe something. The Democrats have a harder time with this, because they are always running away from labels, from the battle. That’s why [the Republicans] win even when they are in the minority.
It can’t be a discussion in which we just throw ideologies at one another.
Because then it gives the Republican Party the ability, which they do now, to claim that they care about poor people. They’re claiming that they care about the uninsured. I mean, I’m sure there are Republicans who do care about the uninsured and poor people and people who are struggling, but many of them don’t. And the reality is that many Democrats in Congress don’t, either, which is another reason why they aren’t able to make the case as strongly as it needs to be made….
…I loved last week…when Nancy Pelosi…said, “Look, [Democrats] need to get behind this because this is the right thing to do, regardless of whether or not it hurts your reelection prospects.”
That’s it.
…[W]e should remember that people who have been most…radical and most courageous in taking a stance didn’t [always see their goals] come to fruition in their lifetime. For instance, there was not one person [at the first Women’s Rights Convention] at Seneca Falls in July of 1848 [who was] alive in 1920 to vote. We don’t always benefit in the short-term from being part of the long-term struggle.
Right. I can’t speak knowledgeably about the details of the current health care bill, but in general, it seems like this is the sort of issue that’s worth staking your career on. This is one of the big ones. I’m amazed that the Democrats haven’t been able to muster a stronger rhetorical case. The Republican solutions – cutting corruption, tort reform – still only address a small fraction of the problem, as I understand it. Why aren’t the Dems dominating the rhetorical landscape here?
Well, it’s a rhetorical strategy…to seize on the [minutiae]. Take “reconciliation”….Reconciliation is going to fix some small debates within the bill. Reconciliation is not how [the Democrats] are going to “railroad the bill through the Congress.”
Most people don’t know these things. Most people don’t understand why we have a Senate bill and a House bill, why one is bigger than the other, why one bill has a public option and the other one doesn’t, or even what “reconciliation” [is]. I mean…people are too busy working their jobs or trying to get a job and trying to figure out how they’re going to pay for health care or how they’re going to get it if they don’t have it.
[The Republican] rhetorical strategy [is] related to magnification—which is to take something that’s little—for instance, Japan, in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s declaration of war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. That speech was all about taking Japan, an island nation, and turning it into an “empire,” a colossal threat to the United States. When we look at the language and the rhetorical strategies in that speech, it’s all about…magnifying [a] threat.
And that is what the Republicans are doing with health care – taking some of these small things and magnifying them, so that they’re so overwhelming we can’t possibly [address them]. They are making mountains out of molehills to ensure that everything will fall apart.
If that’s what Republicans are doing with regard to reconciliation, it seems like a really risky rhetorical strategy to me, particularly given their incessant threat of the filibuster. Again, the response could be, “Oh, you mean fifty-one votes shouldn’t be enough? You mean a majority isn’t adequate?” It was amazing to me how the Republicans at the health care summit simultaneously tried to argue that the American people are opposed to the health care bill AND that passing the bill would represent a tyranny of the majority. How can you have both?
Well, that’s the thing. Democrats need to turn [it around and say], “That’s [not] American. Tyranny of the minority, that’s the threat to our system.” But…they don’t have the courage to do that.
And there’s all this imprecision, these ad hoc standards invented on the go. Using reconciliation twenty-one times for legislation you like is apparently okay, but using it to restructure a large portion of the economy isn’t. No one articulates a principle as to why this case is different. They just say so. Well, why is this different? What principle distinguishes this case from last time?
Exactly….[T]hat’s why a deeper historical and ethical understanding of our politics is necessary, beyond just focusing on policies and messaging. I know these things are important. But at the end of the day, we need to have a deeper context for understanding our politics, to pierce through the surface and go to the root of things. That’s what “radical” means—to go to the root of things. And that’s why I am a huge advocate of…ask[ing] the question, “Why do you believe what you believe?” Ultimately, the future of protest—hell, the future of the world—will depend on how we answer this.
German Conference Highlights Global Issues
by Sebastian Litta on March 10, 2010 in HKS News, News
From East German resistance to defense of the arts, the Harvard German conference held from Feb. 19-20 offered a unique chance for students to think about global challenges of the coming decade with new perspectives.
While the conference was originally founded to make use of Harvard’s vast amount of intellectual resources to discuss solutions to German policy challenges, Lukas said he and his fellow organizers strived to make the 2010 conference “relevant not only to Germans studying across the US but to students from all over the world united here at Harvard.”
This combination of global issues and German approaches was visible in a panel organized by Kathrin Bimesdörfer and Joe Aylor, MPP2s, on the lessons of Berlin 1989. They moved beyond just having German politicians recount their role in the peaceful revolution by inviting Kelly Golnoush Niknejad, an Iranian-American journalist whose blog follows current events in Iran.
Vera Lengsfeld, one of the leading figures of the East German resistance, mostly tried to canonize the role of civil society activists in the Fall of the Wall. Charles Maier from Harvard’s history department embedded 1989 in the context of global events. Golnoush Niknejad, meanwhile, focused mainly on Iran. The discussion ended with a somewhat dissatisfying sense that all revolutions are different, but it offered one common lesson: For any peaceful revolution to be successful, it needs support from the outside.
Other panels covered the situation in Afghanistan, the role of innovation, the future of science and research, the design of health care systems, and renewable energy. The German Ambassador to the United States outlined ten priorities on the transatlantic agenda, and the former head of McKinsey Germany discussed various global challenges for the next decade. Claus Kleber, Germany’s Tom Brokaw, gave a vibrant dinner speech on Friday, talking about misunderstandings between Germany and the US. He was thanked with a Harvard tie, which he wore a week later during his daily news broadcast.
Saturday night brought a bit of Berlin club life into Cambridge. A German DJ and fine electronic music turned the Faculty Club into a bizarre version of a Berlin-Mitte underground lounge. And if you considered the time zone difference, ending the party at 1 am was actually 7 am in Berlin, adding to the realism.
Before the party, Kent Nagano, conductor and artistic director of the Bavarian State Opera, and Jürgen Partenheimer, one of Germany’s leading visual artists, discussed the relationship between “the artist and the state,” highlighting the many differences between the state-funded German model and the philanthropic model in the U.S. For Christopher Vorwerk, a German research fellow from Yale, this was the best part of the conference. “It gave an insight on how a global language such as visual art or music is faced with different structures of support not only on both sides of the Atlantic but also in other countries [like] China.”
Maestro Nagano gave an elaborate answer defending the arts, but left it to policymakers to decide how to prioritize arts funding over reducing poverty, improving education or providing health care. For Caroline Blanch, a first-year MPP from Australia, the arts talk was an unexpected feature of the conference. “Even though I’d come to hear about the hard-edged realities of technological and commercial innovation, I thought that Kent Nagano’s eloquent and deeply heartfelt reflections on the arts were the highlight of the day. At the Kennedy School we are so busy trying to solve problems that I think we sometimes forget there are people out there who genuinely live for art for art’s sake.”
Lukas Streiff and his co-organizers are now turning to other tasks, including their PAEs, but Lukas is already thinking ahead: “Hopefully the word will spread that the German Conference features an innovative program and great speakers so that even more of our friends here at Harvard will join us next year.”
Changing the Campaign (and reporting?) Game
by Kevin Miller on March 10, 2010 in HKS News, News
On March 2, the JFK, Jr. Forum sharpened its focus on the 2008 presidential campaign with an evening featuring Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, noted journalists and authors of Game Change - Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime.
The discussion, moderated by Boston Globe reporter Susan Milligan and co-sponsored by the IOP and Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy, delved into the method and impetus for crafting an election narrative whose research and writing spanned from 2007 to early 2010.
HKS alum John Heilemann and Spring 2007 Visiting Fellow Mark Halperin cited their urge to answer unanswered questions about the campaigns and the captivating personalities of the candidates as catalysts for writing ‘Game Change.’
“We joke all the time that if you’ve got a presidential campaign where the 7th most interesting candidate is Rudy Giuliani, you know you’ve got a really interesting race on your hands,” said Halperin.
Early introduction of 2008 campaign-nostalgia was the unintended consequence of the more than 300 interviews with 200 campaign insiders, from aides and advisers to candidates and their spouses.
These interviews, many spanning six to seven hours each, created in-depth oral histories. Susan Milligan took Halperin and Heilemann’s choice to leave their sources unnamed head-on, asking whether directly quoted and paraphrased conversations should be believed.
Heilemann placed Game Change in the context of the established convention of ‘deep background’ interviews, utilized by such journalists as Bob Woodward and Richard Ben Cramer.
“It turns out to be essential,” he said. “The only way you’re going to get [the story behind the story] is to give people the protection and the anonymity to get the candor you want …to get past what the public has already seen.”
While the flow of the discussion hit snares when treading into topics that straddle the public and private tensions intrinsic to contemporary political figures, the two authors rooted the discussion in revealing and broadly applicable insights.
“If you’re going to run for president or vice-president, don’t look like Tina Fey. You won’t get that from most academics, but it’s a pretty important [point],” Halperin noted blithely in reference to the lampooning of Palin on NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
As if on cue, Heilemann added, “Two years at the Kennedy School and nobody ever said that to me.”
Halperin and Heilemann’s banter framed the more substantive insights unearthed by their extensive research. The whimsy of their presentation may have come from realizing the informational vacuum in which that both reporters and campaigns operate while in the moment, admitted Heilemann.
“There are moments when you realize, ‘Man, I was covering this campaign with a bag over my head.’ I think [this] is true for a lot of the campaigns…Some of the feedback we get is that they got an insight into their opponents that they didn’t get before reading the book,” he said.
Both Halperin and Heilemann referred to the central role played by candidates’ spouses in their campaigns, from the “gung-ho” attitude of Bill Clinton, to reservations of Michelle Obama and flat-out opposition by Cindy McCain.
Heilemann said that Cindy McCain’s campaign apprehension fueled John McCain’s initial ambivalence to running, which was further hindered by his opposition to being paraded as “the edifice of front-runner-dom [sic].”
According to Heilemann, McCain only regained his vigor for the campaign when his campaign was beginning to totter and the public began writing him off in the summer of 2007.
“McCain prefers to run as this loner, as this outsider, as this guerilla candidate, close to the ground living off the land, that’s where he’s happiest. That’s when he finally finds the actual conviction and fire in his belly to want to win,” he said.
Halperin observed that the main stumbling block and weak link of the Obama campaign was Barack Obama himself.
“[Obama] had real frustrations about going out and campaigning,” said Halperin. “One of the things he felt was that every time he gave a speech, people basically expected it to be a reenactment of [his keynote address] at the 2004 DNC.”
Anecdotes shared by the authors hinted at the deep, interpersonal undercurrents filling in the gaps of a campaign storyline whose focus was blurred by a newsmedia beleaguered with a deficit of attention.
“John McCain picks Sarah Palin, and for 48 hours the press is obsessed with the question of, ‘How did she get on the radar?’… Then 48 hours later you’re on to Sarah Palin’s address to the RNC. Then a few days after that the nation is gripped by the important public policy of what Barack Obama meant by lipstick on a pig, and so you move on to that,” said Halperin.
Therein, implied Halperin, lies the beauty and luxury of reflection preceding reporting.
Both authors expressed their gratitude to the IOP and Shorenstein Center, whose pre- and post-campaign symposia facilitating gathering information from sources closest to the candidates in the same Forum they addressed that evening.
Both Heilemann and Halperin expressed their gratitude to the IOP and Shorenstein Center, which had helped the authors organize panel discussions featuring campaign managers and operatives across the political spectrum both before and after the election – all of which provided good material for their book.
“We should thank the Charles Hotel for all the room service that we ate, because it was a big bill,” he said with a smile.
HKS Visit by Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson
On February 22, former U.S. treasury secretary Hank Paulson sat in front of a crowded audience in the forum to discuss his views on the financial crisis with HKS Professor David Gergen. Affectionately known as “The Hammer” while a star offensive lineman at Dartmouth, Paulson graduated from Harvard Business School in 1970. He then served in the Department of Defense under David Packard and the White House under President Nixon until 1973 before joining and rising to chairman of Goldman Sachs. In 2006, Paulson joined the Treasury Department where he became, according to Professor Gergen, “the epicenter of one of the most important events of our lifetime.”
Paulson asserted that when first appointed as Treasury Secretary, he had told President Bush that the U.S. economy was “overdue for a financial crisis.” Paulson admitted that he would not guess the cause of the crisis until it became painfully obvious after the fact. Excesses had been building up in the financial system, according to Paulson, and the regulatory system was too fragmented to oversee the markets and enforce market discipline. During the financial crisis, Paulson led an unprecedented intervention by the Treasury Department to use hundreds of billions of Treasury dollars to help financial firms stay afloat. He pushed for the conservatorship of government mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and an $80 billion credit line to prevent insurance giant American International Group (AIG) from filing for bankruptcy.
According to Paulson, the reason that the economy did not go over the brink was that the Treasury Department was given unspecified authority by the Bush administration and full support from both presidential candidates. Paulson added that it was critical that the Treasury Department was able to get Congress to act before the system collapsed. Paulson had lobbied for the bailout even though, at that time, 93 percent of people were against the bailout and, he added wryly, only 60 percent were opposed to torture.
Unlike Greenspan, Paulson did not believe that markets were self-correcting and, during the financial crisis, quickly realized that the U.S. regulatory system was outmoded and outdated. Paulson added that although the U.S. is the strongest and richest economy in the world, “there’s no economy that doesn’t have more difficult economic issues than we do.” The most important lesson going forward, asserted Paulson, is to build a regulatory system that has the information and ability to eliminate business practices that threaten the system.
When asked by a student as to the role of greed during the financial crisis, Paulson claimed instead that it was not greed but rather the profit motive. According to Paulson, “the profit motive will not go away, but it needs to be harnessed.” The fiscal deficit is the biggest challenge that the U.S. faces, added Paulson, and any deficit means that the older generations are stealing from the younger generations. He emphasized that Americans need to “make some adjustments … we as a nation need to save more and consume less.”
Since leaving the Treasury Department, Paulson has joined the School of Advanced International Studied (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University as a distinguished visiting fellow. He recently published a memoir, “On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System,” earlier this year. Paulson is also an avid conservationist along with his wife, Wendy, and has already donated $100 million to an environmental charity and plans to give away the remainder of his $800 million fortune to charity.
What’s Next?
by Lena Benson on March 10, 2010 in HKS News, News
Despite unemployment rates and the current hiring climate, graduating HKS students have much to be optimistic about as they begin their job quest.
Many two-year degree students entered the Kennedy School in 2008 expecting to be courted by numerous employers after they graduate. But they are now experiencing a rude awakening as they watch their friends and even parents search for jobs following layoffs.
Despite the change in domestic and international employment markets in the last two years, not all hope is lost, though, especially at HKS. Although it looked like last year’s HKS graduating class had much to be concerned about getting jobs, data from a post-graduation survey conducted by The Office of Career Advancement (OCA) found that these students secured employment at almost exactly the same rate as graduates in past years. Of the 86% of students who completed the survey, 50% were settled (meaning had a job, were continuing their education, or were taking time off) by graduation and 90% were settled by October.
What was different, however, was where jobs were found. More students entered the public sector as federal job opportunities increased and private sector jobs like international development consulting and non-federal public finance became scarce. “What we are seeing is that an HKS degree is resilient in a down economy because of all the diverse skills you acquire during your time here,” said Mary Beaulieu, Interim Director of OCA.
But even with news this promising, who has the time to search for a job between SYPA and PAE work? It’s a matter of individual initiative, really. Actually the Kennedy School is full of promising job search resources once you really find time to devote to it. Some students begin by brushing up on their interview skills, meeting with a career coach, and revising their resume – all of which are services provided at OCA. Next, many continue their quest by tapping into old networks like their previous employers, their undergraduate institution, or their summer internship.
Others look to HKS faculty, alumni, the research centers, and fellow students (especially Mid-Careers) for leads and insight. MPP ‘10 Brendan Rivage-Seul recently received an offer to join the U.S. Foreign Service at the State Department after graduation. “As I was going through the selection process I found JACK to be an incredibly useful tool for helping me prepare for the written and oral exams. I also spoke with two HKS alumni who had gone through the process and Professor Nick Burns generously met with me on multiple occasions to talk about the exams and the realities of the life in the Foreign Service.”
But most students are still on the lookout out for that next step. Beaulieu tells students not to let anxiety ruin the final months of school. Over 250 new jobs are posted in JACK (Jobs and Careers at the Kennedy School) each month and the OCA estimates that over 100 more employers will come to HKS between now and May. By setting up a “Job Search Agent,” jobs posted on JACK that fit your criteria are immediately emailed to you. But the task of finding a job can be a bit harder for those not looking in Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., where the majorities of these jobs are found. “I am specifically dedicated to going back to Philadelphia to serve my hometown,” says MPP ‘10 Chris Arlene, “I decided to find a PAE client in Philadelphia in hopes of turning the process into a vehicle for my job search. I’m also planning on tapping my established network back home.”
Letter to the Editor
by Elliott Prasse-Freeman, Dalia Al Kadi, Marcos Ferreiro on March 10, 2010 in Letter to the Editor, Opinion
Dear Editors of the Harvard Kennedy Citizen,
The earthquake in Haiti has shocked and saddened us all. We have been inspired, though, by the outpouring of support from the Harvard Community. At the same time, relief and reconstruction are currently entering a critical stage: while concerned actors must continue to mobilize support, the challenge becomes to utilize donations and efforts in the most efficacious ways. The task is not as easy as simply giving money: experiences during natural disasters have taught harsh lessons – namely that financial donations that are forthcoming in the immediate aftermath of a disaster often pour in and overwhelm local systems, yet, after the initial deluge, monies are not sustained long enough to address longer-term challenges. Facilitating disaster-stricken countries’ abilities to address such challenges, including the rebuilding of critical infrastructure and security systems, social service investments, and institutional capacity building, is an essential component of humanitarian relief strategies and greatly impacts the degree to which disaster-stricken countries are able to rebuild themselves. The 2004 Tsunami is an iconic example of the ill-effects of uneven funding flows that are solicited and allocated without in-depth – or any – capacity and needs assessments; it is essential that we not reproduce these same mistakes.
With this in mind, we raise the following issues based on our respective experiences assisting in crises in Somalia, Burma, Lebanon, many places affected by the Tsunami, etc – arguing that citizen donors are ultimately responsible for maximizing the impact of their donations:
1. Money is often not the limiting factor: Coordination (interagency and with governments), logistics, human resources/capacity, and security are often larger constraints; excessive funds often exacerbate these problems;
2. High-Impact Short-term Funds: Given these constraints, funds designated for immediate use should be allocated strategically, contributed to NGOs based on each organization’s absorption capacity. Even organizations with great capacity and may face legal restrictions that limit the amount of funding they can carry over from one fiscal year to another. For this reason, many organizations opt to disburse funding hastily on endeavors of limited impact. The donor community should emphasize transparency in aid monies received, so that funds can be allocated in the most effective ways (see below).
3. Sustained Long-term Funding for long-term Institutional Capacity Building: Funding that exceeds current absorptive capacity can be better utilized by:
a. Disbursing funds to organizations that have the legal and administrative capabilities to manage and spend the funds over a longer time period, as well as the competency and experience to engage in post-natural disaster redevelopment work;
b. Placing funds with organizations that will have the long-term scope, organizational reach, and capacity to disburse funds to viable but capacity-constrained NGO’s on the ground;
c. Build on previous models (in Pakistan, for instance ) that encourage donors to make long-term incremental pledges rather than one-off donations.
Funding distributed this way is more likely to contribute to the development of civil society institutions (educational, associational, market-based/cooperative, and political) that can continue to utilize and amplify the impact of contributions for years to come. This may allow Haiti to emerge from this tragedy with greater capacity to improve the long-term social welfare of its citizens.
Finally, we would also encourage all members of the Harvard Community to go beyond disaster relief support to consider the deep and enduring problem of Haiti’s underdevelopment. Poverty exacerbated the effects of the earthquake, something made clear in Chile just last week: a quake some one hundred times more powerful there killed only hundreds, rather than hundreds of thousands who have perished in Haiti. And yet some who focus on Haiti’s underlying poverty, such as columnist David Brooks of the New York Times (“The Underlying Tragedy” Jan 14, 2010), have distorted the issue by advancing an argument that it is Haiti’s ‘culture’ that has determined its poverty. Harvard Professor Paul Farmer, who as a physician anthropologist has navigated Haiti’s cultural nuances for 20 years, reminds us that “systemic studies of extreme suffering suggest that the concept of culture should enjoy only an exceedingly limited role in explaining the distribution of misery…’Culture’ does not explain suffering; it may at worst furnish an alibi” (Pathologies of Power (2003), pp 48-49). Here that alibi – Brooks’ idea that one should blame voodoo for Haiti’s underdevelopment (also demeaning a value system, while apotheosizing Judeo-Christian ethics as the standard bearer) – encourages an elision of the far more relevant political and economic variables that helped contribute to Haiti’s underdevelopment. To wit, Haiti’s 20th century has been characterized by direct and indirect U.S. military occupation and domination. In the 1910s, the US invaded and occupied Haiti directly for twenty years, at which point it literally rewrote the country’s Constitution, allowing ownership and exploitation of Haitian resources by foreign capital, and in which document it refashioned the police in order to put down peasant resistance to these policies, killing thousands in the process. Throughout the rest of the century, the US supported Haitian military coups and presided over unsustainable extraction of natural resources by transnational corporations. These realities contributed to and compounded Haiti’s economic and political decline, leading to a collapse of the country’s agriculture sector, the onset of massive emigration, political coups, and the rampant spread of diseases such as AIDS (see Farmer’s AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, 1992: pp 178-190). These historical events also explain, in ways that no myopic or culture-based analysis can, why it is that Haiti’s latest – and perhaps greatest – challenge yet, the 2010 earthquake, has exacted the toll it has. The “underlying tragedy” of the challenges that Haiti has and will face is neither an accident of history, nor the result of unique cultural traits; it is the result of geopolitical and global economic machinations that we have the capacity and obligation to change if we want to support Haitians in their quest to fashion a brighter future.
Therefore, fighting reactionary and opportunistic discourses such as Brooks’, both in our Harvard Community and beyond, is the responsibility of those committed to justice. Indeed, speaking back is a critical aspect of ‘what we can do to help’ – provided that it duly leads to a deeper interrogation into the ways in which we are complicit in the political-economic foundations that exacerbate disasters like these, and to the extent that such an interrogation spurs a commitment to work to alter systems and structures that allow such exploitation to endure (from unequal trade laws, to militarized ‘development’ schemes, and beyond). To truly assist Haitians in their long path to recovery, and the millions of people elsewhere who experience similar states of vulnerability, we must not only commit our money – we must also commit our voices to demand fundamental changes.
Sincerely,
Elliott Prasse-Freeman, Dalia Al Kadi, Marcos Ferreiro
MPA-ID-1
Scholar’s Unacceptable Call to Curb Palestinian Births
by HKS Palestinian Caucus and HKS Arab Caucus on March 9, 2010 in Opinion
Several weeks ago, a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs sparked outrage with comments that have reverberated across the university and beyond. Speaking to a conference in Israel, Martin Kramer said that Western nations ought to halt food aid to Gaza in order to stem population growth. Lest there be lack of clarity, he later spelled it out online: UNRWA, the UN agency in charge of services for Palestinian refugees, “assures that every child with ‘refugee’ status will be fed and schooled regardless of the parents’ own resources”—an offense which, in Kramer’s mind, amounts to a pro-natal subsidy encouraging the birth of “superfluous” Gazan youth.
In response to the criticism that followed, the Weatherhead Center defended Kramer and said it would be inappropriate “to pass judgment on the personal political views of any of its affiliates.” Calling Kramer’s comments appalling, Professor Stephen Walt of HKS pointed out the irony of invoking academic freedom given Kramer’s own “past efforts to bring external pressure to bear on academics”—Walt included—“who made arguments about the Middle East that he found objectionable.”
Mr. Kramer’s stance in favor of halting humanitarian aid to refugees as a means of population control would be morally atrocious whatever the context. But in Gaza, it is particularly lethal. Gaza is under a near-total blockade: despite its obligations as an occupying power to ensure the basic welfare of the people there, Israel severely limits the import of basic materials and bans nearly all exports out of the Gaza Strip.
As a result, Gaza’s trade and food production are at a standstill. Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem estimates that 80% of Gazans would starve without food aid. To advocate halting that aid as a tool of population control is not only hateful, it is homicidal. What’s more, such a move would do nothing to curb the extremism that Kramer deplores: radicalization is the product not of excessive education and sustenance but rather of the very besiegement, deprivation and dehumanization that has characterized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, and which Kramer now advocates deepening.
The Weatherhead Center has responded to criticism of Mr. Kramer’s remarks by saying it “takes no position on any issue of scholarship or public policy.” This stance does a disservice to any legitimate notion of academic freedom. Advocating for starvation, sterilization or any other means of forcibly diminishing the size of a persecuted and impoverished population is not academic discourse. It is not diversity. It is hate speech, and were it to be perpetrated against any other group on the basis of race, religion or nationality, Harvard would surely consider it a gross misuse of the University’s institutional platform.
As Walt wrote on his blog, “What if a prominent academic at Harvard declared that the United States had to make food scarcer for Hispanics so that they would have fewer children? Or what if someone at a prominent think tank noted that black Americans have higher crime rates than some other groups, and therefore it made good sense to put an end to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other welfare programs, because that would discourage African-Americans from reproducing and thus constitute an effective anti-crime program?”
Such speech would likely garner a far weaker defense from the Weatherhead Center, though it is no less reprehensible. Harvard should welcome no group or individual who proffers racist, repugnant views under the guise of scholarship.
The Weatherhead Center needs to act on its mission to promote global knowledge by taking a stand against unproductive hate speech of this nature and disassociating from Mr. Kramer immediately.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Olympics
It is February 12, 1980. Over the past decade, the United States has seen stagflation, gas lines, a president resign in disgrace, a catastrophic war end, and, exactly one hundred days before, 53 Americans taken hostage in Iran. The 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid began the next day. The U.S. Olympic Hockey Team, a squad of amateurs, defended the U.S. at home against the Soviet juggernaut and prevailed, 4 to 3, on their way to gold in perhaps the greatest moment in sports history. It marked the dawn of an era of neon leggings, Reagan optimism, and a Top Gun love of country.
Fast forward thirty years to February 12, 2010. The U.S. is again emerging from a difficult decade. Two wars, a near-depression, and political gridlock have exhausted the country and left citizens and columnists questioning our leaders, culture, and political system and admiring those of China. The 2010 Winter Olympics at Vancouver began that day, and I eagerly hoped to see the U.S. regain some of its swagger and optimism.
Throughout the next two weeks, I watched the U.S. hockey team capture the nation’s attention by beating the heavily favored Canadians in the preliminary round, prevail against long odds to reach the gold medal game, silence a raucous home-town crowd by forcing overtime in the last half-minute against the locals, and…lose.
There was no miracle this time. The game ended and brought us all back to reality. Yet, despite the loss, the bad conditions, terrible coverage, and nonstop glitches, I’m happier than ever with the Olympics.
Is it wrong to imbue the Olympics with such importance – as a test of country? Maybe I should be content with appreciating the athletic feats and moving on. Plenty of reasonable people, including former Olympians, feel the geopolitics of the Olympics hurt the Games. Charles Banks-Altekruse, a former Olympic rower, wrote an op-ed this week in the New York Times (“Give the Olympics a Home”) saying just that.
Banks-Altekruse was forced to settle for a Congressional Gold Medal instead of an Olympic Gold because he honored the U.S.’ boycott of the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow. Yes, Olympic politics are frustrating, trivial, and a nuisance. Yes, cities build unnecessary venues, lose money, and sometimes – as we saw with these Games – don’t have the weather conditions to properly host the Games. A permanent site for the Olympics, he argues, would insulate the Olympics from geopolitical and financial excesses.
But he misses the larger point of the Olympic Games. The Olympics are more than just a venue for international athletic competition. They are more than a site for cultural exchange. The Olympics present a chance for a country, particularly the host country, to make a statement to the world through its athletes.
Canada made such a statement by owning the ice – and the Games in general – and showing the world it is more than just our nice northern neighbor. China made a statement in 2008 by announcing its arrival on the world stage with its Olympic size and dominant performance. The Cold War boycotts of 1980 and 1984 were statements of protest. The 1980 Miracle on Ice was a statement to the American people that there would be brighter days ahead. I was hoping for that same statement in Vancouver.
I’ve moved on from the loss, and I am comforted by the fact that one in three Americans watching TV at the time tuned to that game. It was the highest rated sports event after the NFL season and BCS National Championship Game. A hockey game, of all things.
The beauty of the Olympics is that it simplifies a complex world into wins and losses, where I root relentlessly for the U.S. against anyone else, and where the measure of success is how many times one’s national anthem is played. The U.S. didn’t get a new miracle on ice, its anthem played, or a rebirth of hope after its overtime defeat, but there is enough cause for optimism that the entire country was watching and cheering on the underdog Americans that day. For a day, it was fun being the underdog again.
The SIF Scandal
by Jesse Lava, Opinions Columnist on March 9, 2010 in Heresies, Opinion
The auction held recently to support this summer’s Student Internship Fund (SIF) was a fun affair. Attendees competed for classy stuff, and first-year MPPs Casey Osterkamp and Meaghan Jennison did a great job as organizers. By all appearances, the auction went off without a hitch.
Except for one. A big one.
Almost every person bidding was a Kennedy School student. Not alumni. Not donors. Not faculty. Students.
Sure, a few professors and staff members wandered around the silent auction area to make small bids. But in the live auction, which featured the big-ticket items, students were doing most of the bidding. So the very people the SIF is supposed to help — you know, poor grad students who are knee-deep in debt and live off of bad pizza — were the ones putting money into their own assistance fund. As a result, virtually every item garnered significantly less than it should have.
Take, for instance, a weeklong stay for 15 at an Orcas Island vacation home in Washington State. The top bid was $1300. Retail value? $6000.
Or how about a Harvard commencement week stay for a whole family in executive education housing? That one got $575. You can’t get two nights in the Charles Hotel for that.
A nice lunch for 10 with three big city mayors? $225. That’s less money than 10 people would pay for a nice lunch without getting to chat up political bigwigs.
Et cetera, et cetera, ad infuriatum.
By the end, the auction had grossed just over $17,000. The cost of putting it on was $10,000. So all told, the net benefit was $7000 — not counting whatever costs donors are incurring to make their gifts. That was the end result of Casey and Meaghan putting in 20 hours a week of unpaid, quality work for months.
So what happened?
The answer seems to lie with the HKS administration, particularly the Alumni Relations Office. Casey and Meaghan wanted to contact alumni and donors, but the school’s top brass said no.
“We’d have meetings with the administration, and they’d come in and say they want us to succeed but we can’t contact the big ticket donors,” said Casey. No one ever told her why.
The KSSG tried to help. But it, too, was stymied. “They asked us not to contact alumni,” said one KSSG representative on the condition of anonymity. “They didn’t want to impair their own fundraising efforts.”
Casey, ever the gracious Midwesterner, speculates that the administration was trying to look out for the best interests of the school. “With the economic downturn, a decision was probably made to target donors in a different way. On the one hand, this makes sense: they want big donors giving $10,000-20,000, not coming to an auction and spending $3000.”
But then there’s the other hand. Asking Casey, Meaghan, and several other volunteers to do months of work — and then ask the student body and faculty to donate valuable items — is a big deal. People’s time and effort matter. Why should all of that energy have been expended for a four figure gain?
Perhaps administration officials didn’t realize the final tally would be so low. But what exactly did they think would happen when they excluded everyone with a bank account from the auction?
To be sure, HKS gave a $50,000 donation to the SIF. So there’s that. But if it had just given a little bit more it could have canceled the auction, saved everyone the time, and let the SIF fare better anyway.
The real losers, of course, are HKS students. At a public policy school, not everyone does fancy schmancy internships at consulting firms that pay thousands of dollars. Many of us want to invest time in nonprofits that offer a great experience but can’t pay interns. Financial assistance from HKS is sometimes the only thing that allows us to participate in such internships. And this year, there won’t be very much assistance to go around.
Some of the auction’s most competitive bidding was over a Venezuelan brunch for six with Professor Dan Levy and his family. Levy, the most popular professor in the history of the universe, raised $350 with this one. But the brunch could have raised more.
“Imagine if we’d been able to invite alumni who love Dan Levy and get them back here to bid on that,” Casey said. “That would have gone for big bucks.”
