Reinstating the ROTC at Harvard
by Mia Zuckerkandel on April 29, 2009 in HKS News
Before a packed crowd at the Forum, which included Dean David Ellwood and U.S. Army General David Petraeus, a Harvard Kennedy School student, Maura Sullivan (MPA/MBA ’09), called on Harvard University to reinstate ROTC, the Reserve Officer Training Corps, which has been effectively banned from campus for 40 years. Read more
Five Questions for Mid-Career Teresa Carrasco-Velez
by Mia Zuckerkandel on December 10, 2008 in Features
Two jobs changed Teresa Carrasco-Velez’s life.
She got the first job when she was 17. While at that job, Carrasco-Velez met her husband. He was the son of a co-worker, and that co-worker encouraged her son to drive Carrasco-Velez to her night school classes. She didn’t like him at first. But over time, that changed. Now they have two children, a 16-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl. Read more
Five Questions with Mid-Career Student Joe Negron
by Mia Zuckerkandel on November 19, 2008 in Features
Joe Negron has a Blackberry, but he keeps track of his schedule on a scrap of paper. There isn’t a lot of free time in that schedule, because in addition to taking classes, Negron is also running for a seat in the Florida State Senate, advising more than a dozen clients at the law firm where he is a partner, and spending time with his family. His wife and his two younger children, who are both teenagers, moved to Cambridge to be with him this year.
This isn’t Negron’s first run for public office. From 2000 to 2006, he served in Florida’s House of Representatives. In his last term, he was the chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
This summer, Negron was a John McCain delegate at the Republican National Convention. Negron was an early supporter of McCain’s bid and says he helped raise a lot of money for the GOP presidential candidate. Read more
Why Study When You Can Watch TV?
by Mia Zuckerkandel on November 19, 2008 in Features
This week’s reason to put down your books: ESPN, cable channel 49. (Even if you don’t have cable, you can find television sets at many bars and restaurants tuned to the channel.)
You probably weren’t watching ESPN on election night. But if you happened to tune in the next day, you might have noticed the sports cable channel devoted a sizeable chunk of time to Barack Obama’s win.
There was LeBron James sporting an Obama t-shirt; there was Kobe Bryant talking about why an Obama victory means so much to African Americans; and there was Brandon Marshall, a wide receiver for the Denver Broncos, explaining why his teammate stopped him from paying tribute to Obama after Marshall had scored a touchdown. And there was the president-elect himself taking on a most controversial topic in an interview taped on the eve of the election:
Risking the wrath of the NCAA, some college presidents, coaches, and boosters, Barack Obama declared he was in favor of a playoff-system to determine the best team in college football.
All of this coverage appeared on SportsCenter, the network’s flagship, super-sized newscast. SportsCenter airs several times a day and usually devotes its time to analyses of games just played, updates on the conditions of players, speculation about upcoming games, and, of course, highlights.
Barack Obama says he loves to watch highlights on ESPN. And he’s not alone. A lot of athletes talk openly about hoping to make a play that gets on SportsCenter. The “web gems,” “the plays of the day” – those are the segments sports fans want to see night after night. And they are well-produced: ESPN almost always uses the best sound, the best pictures, and the most appropriate special effects. Watching the highlights, you get a real feel for what happened in the game, regardless of whether you saw it “live.”
But increasingly ESPN is providing its viewers with more hard news coverage of some of the more difficult issues in sports – criminal investigations involving athletes, steroid scandals, cheating, sexual harassment, college recruiting violations, and mental illness. (Some of that coverage will first appear on its investigative news show, “Outside the Lines.”) In the past few years, the network has hired some top investigative journalists to add to its team of reporters and producers. And they report breaking news: for example, some of the first reports linking Michael Vick, the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback, to an illegal dog fighting ring came from ESPN.
The network has also taken the unusual step of hiring an ombudsman to critique its coverage and act as “the public’s representative to ESPN,” according to its web site. It’s unusual because few news organizations are willing to pay someone to look over their shoulders.
Such oversight is necessary because sports journalism, especially on television, is rife with potential conflicts of interest. Can you be critical of an athlete you want as a guest on your show? How much editorial independence do you have if sponsors’ logos are all over the screen? Can you really ask the tough questions of a player in the Budweiser Hot Seat? And because ESPN is the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports television, it needs to be prepared to answer these questions.
ESPN is often criticized for spending too much time on some sports – e.g., football – and ignoring other sports altogether – i.e., any game played by a woman. And those are valid criticisms. But the biggest challenge facing the network is in its relationship to the games and to the athletes themselves.
ESPN loves sports and players. Its reporters, its producers, its anchors – everyone is a fan. Even its very funny, award-winning campaign, “This Is SportsCenter,” is a paean to the biggest names in sports. But good sports coverage is a lot more than highlights and post-game interviews. It’s about money and race and sometimes politics, too. It remains to be seen if ESPN’s love of the game and its financial arrangements with sports leagues will limit its ability to be the worldwide leader in sports journalism.
Five Questions for Mid-Career Student Naye Bathily
by Mia Zuckerkandel on October 29, 2008 in Features
Naye Bathily describes herself as a “global citizen.” She was born in the U.K., grew up in Senegal, studied business in the U.S., and, until she came to the Kennedy School, lived in Paris while working for the World Bank as a parliamentary liaison. Bathily speaks four languages fluently: Wollof, French, Soninke, and English. And she is proficient in Arabic. Read more
Why Study When You Can Watch TV?
by Mia Zuckerkandel on October 28, 2008 in Culture
This week’s reason to put down your books: “Chocolate News” on Comedy Central (Channel 61), “The Hills: According to Me” on MTV (Channel 28), and “Mad Men” on AMC (Channel 59).
Television is a risky business. Every year, the networks listen to hundreds of pitches and fund a dozen or so pilots, only to pick a handful of new shows to put on the air. Read more
Five questions for Mid-Career Student Ichiro Motozawa
by Mia Zuckerkandel on October 15, 2008 in Features
[Editor’s Note] In an effort to bridge the perceived “divide” between mid-careers and other programs at HKS, the Citizen is debuting a new feature that will introduce mid-careers to the community.
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It’s not unusual for someone to recognize Ichiro Motozawa on the streets of Tokyo. Often, they say he looks like a famous Japanese comedian. But in fact, he’s a news anchor for one of NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) television’s satellite channels.
Before he came to HKS, Motozawa woke up at 3:00 a.m., got to the studio at 5:00 a.m., worked for twelve hours, then went to sleep at 9:00 p.m.
So which is easier? Life at HKS or your job as a news anchor?
I was exhausted when I was in Japan. In the morning, I anchored the news. Then, in the afternoons, I covered [Japan’s] Parliament, the Diet. When the Diet wasn’t in session, I narrated a science program for junior high school students. I had to study, science, politics, everything. But here, there are so many readings in English, so that is difficult for me. Here, I have the difficulty of cultural differences and language differences.
What’s the biggest challenge for you at HKS?
Class participation. There is a Japanese proverb that says “Silence is gold. Eloquence is silver.” When I am on television, I can use just a facial expression – an implicit expression – to make a point. But here in the U.S., we have to express ourselves in discussion style. Always talking, talking, talking. Speaking, speaking, speaking. That is tough work for me.
What has surprised you about living in the U.S.?
I was surprised to see America’s globalization, the interdependence of country and country, people and people. In Japan, we can understand internationalization, which is different than globalization of America. Because we are a homogeneous society, foreign people are a minority. In the U.S, this is a country that is a mixture of various cultures, peoples, and religions. People who are different from me are right beside me. When we want to meet different people in Japan, we have to search them out. We tend to think the next person is similar to me, the next person thinks as I think. But in the U.S., the next person thinks totally different things – and acts freely. The Japanese people care about what the surrounding people think. They see each other through mutual observation. American people do not care so much about other people’s views and act freely.
Which U.S. news anchor do you like the best? And the least?
Jim Lehrer. He’s seems more neutral, more impartial than the other anchors. Fox News is biased, I believe. But the U.S. is a country that has a free market for ideas. So, I think it’s good that right wing channels, such as Fox News, exist.
What have you been doing for fun since you’ve been here?
I’ve been to Walden Pond, like Henry Thoreau. I imagined Walden Pond was isolated, apart from crowds. But when I visited, there were a lot of people swimming in it and boating. I thought, “Oh, my gosh. This is my sacred place. Why are there so many people here?” My holy image of Walden Pond was destroyed. [Laughs]. But it is still a beautiful place. The foliage – the yellow and red leaves. I really like that.
Why Study When You Can Watch TV?
by Mia Zuckerkandel on October 13, 2008 in Culture
This week’s reason to put down your books: “Pushing Daisies,” Wednesday, 8:00 p.m. on ABC, Channel 5 on your local cable system.
Love without sex.
Without a single kiss.
Without even the slightest touch of a hand.
Unless that hand is made out of wood – and attached to a back scratcher. Read more
