KSSG Passes Resolution to Increase International Student Aid
by Sayce Falk, News Asst. Editor on April 29, 2010 in HKS News, News
As MPP ’10 Jonathan Faull began school in the fall of 2008, there were only a few signs that the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression was about to erupt. Because he hadn’t received a great deal of aid from HKS, Faull had lined up other funding sources, including a private scholarship and a loan through a Kennedy School-associated program known as CitiAssist.
For most students entering the Kennedy School, the timing of the crisis could not have come at a more fortuitous moment – two years of intellectual stimulation within the ivory towers of the world’s most prestigious university as friends and colleagues were laid off in droves. The tuition costs would be high, but at least they were stable. Compared to those faced with unemployment and sudden decisions about how to care for children or pay the bills on a drastically lower budget, the anticipated safety of school was an inviting idea.
But Faull was coming from South Africa – an open economy with a floating currency – and the downturn in the global economy meant that his carefully laid financial plans now lay in ruins. From late August to November of 2008, the rand fell more than 31 percent, from 7.75 to the dollar to more than 10.
“The money we had put aside to come here,” said Anna York, an MPP’10 from Australia who faced a similar situation, “was, in some cases, worth up to a third less than it had been a day before.”
Making matters worse, the financial recession pulled the rug out from under CitiAssist, a six-year old joint venture between Citigroup and HKS. The program allowed Harvard University and Citigroup to jointly underwrite loans to Harvard graduate students; it also allowed international students to obtain a loan without an American co-signer, a key requirement of virtually all other American financial institutions.
After CitiAssist folded, HKS administrators stepped in with a new program run through the Harvard University Employees Credit Union, holding the maximum loanable amount to $10,000 for international students without a co-signer. In its session earlier this month, the KSSG passed a motion urging the HKS administration to double the maximum amount of the loan, to $20,000.
“We want credit union loans to cover at least 30% of [international students’] tuition,” said Dave Baumwoll, MPP ’10 and KSSG President. “We want to enhance the financial options for international students. If you’re here, the Kennedy School should be able to find ways to allow you to stay here.”
“Ideally I would have liked to take up more than double [the 10,000 maximum],” said Faull, “but I’ve had to essentially loan against my parents’ mortgage in South Africa to cover my tuition costs.”
Other graduate schools on campus allow international students to take out loans covering their entire tuition burden, while the current $10,000 limit only covers about 10-15% of HKS’ anticipated annual expense. In addition to the benefits of dollar-denominated debt and generally lower interest rates than private lenders offer, Credit Union loans also qualify as part of HKS’ Loan Repayment Assistance Program, which assists graduates who go into public service by defraying part of the costs of their student loans.
“It is definitely a consideration that HKS students have lower expected incomes than HBS or HLS,” said Stephanie Streletz, Associate Director of Student Financial Services. “The Harvard Credit Union’s loan program is a wonderful addition, but we deem it as gap funding, not a primary resource for students.” Administrators also expressed concerns over the inability of the school to collect on students who default on their loans, as well as the higher likelihood of international student default, given the exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and many developing country currencies.
“We may need to consider taking on additional risk,” said Chris Fortunato, the new Dean of Students, “[but] if we do cover it, where do we pull the funding away from?”
HKS administration is currently discussing the issue of student aid, though administrators refuse to discuss the level or growth of the HKS endowment. A number of current international students received increased financial aid for their second year, though the administration has not said whether that aid came as a result of student government pressure.
Though the short-term crisis has passed, the KSSG’s resolution is part of its effort to institutionalize some of the solutions that students and administrators used last spring. In the meantime, the consequences of the lack of funding linger on. “I am interviewing for some management consulting positions,” said Faull, “which I would have never considered doing before coming to the Kennedy School.”
HKS Hosts Black Policy Conference
by Lena Benson on April 29, 2010 in HKS News, News
April 16th and 17th marked the 6th Annual Black Policy Conference at HKS. This year’s theme was “A Call to Action: Empowering the Individual and Mobilizing the Collective,” and keynote speakers included Angela Glover Blackwell, CEO and founder of PolicyLink and Anthony Williams, former Mayor of Washington, D.C. and HKS Lecturer in Public Management. This year’s conference co-chairs, Rasheba Johnson and Naima Green, both MPP ‘10s, aimed to inspire participants to not only discuss how policies are currently effecting black communities but also to use opportunities provided by this conference to take steps towards developing a strategic plan of action. Such opportunities included a community organizing workshop, a networking reception, and numerous panels to choose from on topics not traditionally featured at HKS or Harvard conferences.
Such panels included “Prisoner Re-entry: Building Bridges Between Ex-Offenders and Their Communities” and “Investing in Human Capital in the South: Strategies to Cultivate Young Black Leaders”. Aly Spencer, MPP ‘11 and co-founder of the HKS Southern Caucus, attended the panel on the South and remarked, “The panel was a good reminder that when we think about the South we aren’t just talking about Atlanta and Charlotte and New Orleans. The panelists emphasized the breadth and depth of the lingering problems in the region and the dramatic surge in leadership that will be needed to address them. I left feeling really challenged to ask what I am doing and what I can do.”
This year, the conference organizers also pushed the entire HKS community to recognize that topics highlighted at the Black Policy Conference are policies that affect us all, not just black students or people working in black communities. E-mails, flyers, and one-on-one conversations leading up to the event encouraged students to consider that leaders should understand the needs of diverse constituent groups, since many polices in the US disproportionately impact communities of color.
“We are extremely pleased with how the conference turned out. It is still a young tradition, but each year the aspirations for it grow and we are very fortunate to have so much support from the administration, our classmates, and alums in putting it together”, said Johnson. Many members of the African and Africa-American Diaspora Collaborative (AADC), Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy, and The Community Development Project spent months assisting with the conference by sponsoring panels, publicizing the event, and organizing logistics.
The conference was founded in 2004 by Nicole Campbell, MPP ’05, and now serves not only as an opportunity to highlight the impact of numerous policy issues on black communities, but also as a much anticipated annual event that brings together diverse students from graduate and undergraduate institutions all over Boston. Many alumni like Campbell also return to HKS each year specifically for the conference, seeing it as an opportunity to reconnect and give back.
Time to Create a DNA Testing Law for Prisoners
by Carmen Burbano on April 29, 2010 in HKS News, News
For some people, Marshall Ganz’s Organizing: People, Power, and Change class is the high point of their HKS experience, providing a practical opportunity to answer the HKS call: “ask what you can do.” For others, it is a nightmare of self-doubt and imminent failure with the capacity to consume time like no other class at HKS. For most, it is both.
For one group of HKS students, however, Organizing provided something unexpected: the discovery that in ‘liberal’ Massachusetts, innocent men and women are at risk of imprisonment because they lack statutory access to basic rights.
Matt Bieber, MPP ’11 and President of the HKS Innocence Group, explained: “Massachusetts needs a post-conviction DNA access law. That’s a mouthful, I know. But it’s far from being a dry legal issue – it’s a matter of justice.”
Bieber pointed to the case of Dennis Maher, who in 2003 was freed from a Massachusetts prison after serving 19 years for three rapes he didn’t commit. As Maher wrote in The Patriot Ledger on Jan. 25, “I requested DNA testing for years. The judge in my case blocked DNA testing, and I spent an extra six years in prison waiting for him to retire. Finally, the testing was conducted because the judge had retired and the prosecutor agreed to it. He didn’t have to, since there was no law on the books to make it clear that I had a right to DNA testing.”
47 states have post-conviction DNA access laws, but Massachusetts isn’t one of them. The other outliers are Oklahoma and Alaska. “While these laws vary state to state, the idea is similar everywhere – to use DNA evidence to eliminate as much of the guesswork as possible in criminal proceedings, ” explained Bieber.
Several bills to create a post-conviction DNA access law have come before the Massachusetts State Legislature in recent years, but none of them has been passed. There is no clear philosophical objection: nobody wants to see innocent people in prison. And the chorus of support for a post-conviction DNA access law in Massachusetts is beginning to grow. In 2009, a Boston Bar Association task force – comprised of police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, former judges, and other stakeholders – issued a public call for lawmakers to move on the issue. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis has chimed in with his support.
There may, however, be financial obstacles to overcome. In order to ensure that post-conviction DNA testing can take place, relevant evidence has to be preserved. This raises some questions: exactly which evidence should be stored? For how long? And should local municipalities pay to preserve evidence, or should it be the state’s responsibility?
“There are some legitimately tricky questions here,” said Bieber. “But this month, a group of legislators, law enforcement officials, and other stakeholders are trying to work out a compromise on these issues. If they’re successful, post-conviction DNA access legislation has a shot at passing this year.”
This is where Marshall Ganz’s Organizing class comes in. Bieber and his team are keeping out of the back-room bargaining on the questions of finance and focusing their efforts instead on the principle that everyone deserves proper access to justice. “Even if the financial issues get resolved,” said Bieber, “Legislators need an added push to get this bill out of committee and onto the floor of the legislature.”
The HKS Innocence Group is mobilizing supporters within the school and across the Harvard campus to act as concerned citizens and to make their views known. So far, the response has been positive.
The organizers’ tactic? To get fellow students to call legislators on the State Judiciary Committee urging them to do everything they can to bring the bill to a vote. 150 calls have been made already, but the Group is aiming for 300 before the end of the semester.
“We are looking for HKS students – U.S. citizens, Massachusetts voters, and foreign nationals – who are prepared to take a few minutes over the next week to make phone calls,” said Bieber. “This is urgent: if we don’t get that bill out of committee in the next few weeks, more people will suffer the same injustice as Dennis Maher.”
HKS Class Sends Students to Haiti, Sierra Leone
by Natalie Black on April 16, 2010 in HKS News, News
Contributing authors: Pedro Henrique Fernandes de Cristo, MPP’11, and Ian Mills, MPA’10
CCJ-201 ‘Criminal Justice in a Global Context’, running for its second year, remains one of the best-kept secrets at HKS. Focusing on criminal justice reform across the world, the class actually sends students all over the world to contribute to projects being undertaken by the HKS Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management. Over this year’s spring break, students conducted fieldwork in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Haiti, Jamaica, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Kenya.
Haiti
Prior to the devastating January earthquake, which killed over 200,000 people and made more than 1 million homeless, Haiti was renowned for its inefficient justice system and severe prison overcrowding, with over 75 percent of inmates still awaiting trial (some for over 5 years). During Spring Break, Natalie Black, MPP’11, visited Port-au-Prince with two classmates to help the United Nations with a rapid, preliminary assessment of how the justice system had been affected by the earthquake.
The devastation is difficult to comprehend: the Ministry of Justice and the Supreme Court are in ruins; many of the key figures in the court system are dead or missing; the police training school currently houses the Parliament because it, too, collapsed; and the main prison is overflowing even as the police try to recapture the nearly 5,000 prisoners that escaped. The team splits its time between the police, prisons, and courts, meeting senior Haitian officials, U.N. teams and local non-governmental organizations (usually in tents) to evaluate the extent of the damage and what this means for justice processes and priorities.
None of the data collected spoke to the extent of the challenge Haiti now faces as much as the personal stories of the Haitians themselves. On a visit to the main prison, a young man who had been arrested for vagrancy admitted he knew he was unlikely to see a judge in the near future as there are still virtually no justice activities in the capital; in a police station in Cité Soleil, a woman told how she had just evaded a fourth kidnapping attempt; and in an internally-displaced person (IDP) camp, an amazing group of female U.N. police officers were working with female Haitian police officers to tackle the rise in rape.
The Post Disaster Needs Assessment compiled by the Haitian government estimates that $350 million will be required over the next three years to restore and modernize the justice system. It will be a long and difficult process, but also one with immense prospects to address long-term underlying issues.
Los Angeles
After the 1991 Rodney King Los Angeles police brutality case and the 1992 riots, even though valid efforts such as the Christopher Commission took place, rampant problems of accountability and oversight were still present at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) – issues which became evident with the Rafael Perez corruption scandal at Rampart District in 1999. This pattern of misconduct brought about the intervention of the federal government to maintain oversight of the LAPD. The mechanism adopted was a Consent Decree, which established a series of regulations towards policing activities with the aim of improving police service. It was agreed to in 2000 and started in 2001.
Following up on a previous LAPD HKS report spearheaded by Professor Christopher Stone, the goals for the HKS students involved were to find out if the reduction of violent crimes (more than 40 percent), property index crimes (33.5 percent), the improvement in terms of public perception (a drop of 20 percent in citizens perception of crime as a big problem for the city from 2002-2008) and the decrease in categorical use of force (8.1 to 6.2 for each 10,000 arrests from 2004-2008) had continued after the decree ended in mid-2009. The students were also tasked to find out if the changes that took place under the leadership of Chief William J. Bratton (2002-2009) had become institutionalized.
The students found that a high degree of alignment among all levels of the Police Department, the Office of the Inspector General (its civilian oversight body), and the communities were delivering effective changes in the policing production function based on the much greater integration and interaction with local communities, both for service and evaluation. The LAPD’s Broken Window theory approach has been nurtured into the idea of ‘constitutional policing,’ meaning reducing crime without committing crimes and continuously providing results while reframing police relations with the communities. This has resulted in an LAPD where officers now provide an effective and satisfactory law enforcement role.
Sierra Leone
Dostoevsky once commented that “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” The largest, most secure prison in Sierra Leone, Pademba Road, has one part-time doctor, no computerized records and approximately 1,100 inmates, which is four times over-populated – and growing.
During spring break, two students from CCJ-201 explored Pademba Road as part of a data gathering exercise designed to complement an existing United Kingdom Department for International Development project in the field. The students were sent to learn and understand, empirically, what happens to people through the process of arrest, trial, and detention in the criminal justice system – with a view to providing feedback on how data might best be gathered going forward. Moving between prison and court, the students sampled 100 cases and identified the usual problems – capacity constraints, insufficient funding, inadequate training, and inefficiencies in process design. But there was also a degree of local impetus for change in a country reestablishing its democracy after a civil war, despite struggling with enormous poverty challenges. Students on all of the trips gained an appreciation for on-the-ground capacity constraints and the importance for realistic framing of criminal justice interventions. There is a lot to learn from entering prisons, and students in the class highly recommend it to everyone.
Baptist Town One Year Later
by September Hargrove on April 16, 2010 in HKS News, News
Kennedy School Students Committed To Public Service In Mississippi
As public service week wraps up at the Kennedy School, members of the Community Development Project (CDP) are gearing up for another trip to Baptist Town, a historic African American neighborhood in Greenwood, Mississippi. CDP began as a two-year project in 2009, but these student volunteers say that they are now committed to working with the Baptist Town community for as long as there is a need.
A Mississippi Delta community, once famous for notable residents like blues legend Robert Johnson, actor Morgan Freeman, and civil rights leader Arance Williamson, Baptist Town now struggles to shake its reputation of persistent poverty, dilapidated housing, and chronic unemployment. Despite the problems, Baptist Town has a strong, proud community that has collaborated with CDP to make a change.
Guided by the principles of participatory planning and the importance of community empowerment in creating sustainable change, CDP believes that community redevelopment must begin with and be supported by the community. Through its work, CDP has assisted the Baptist Town in developing a united vision for its future. In January 2009, during their first visit to Baptist Town, CDP hosted community visioning workshops which identified that the community wanted more activities for youth, safer and cleaner neighborhood, and improvements to the physical infrastructure, including public spaces. CDP is currently supporting Baptist Town residents towards realizing this vision.
Since the project started, members of CDP have visited Baptist Town over five times to conduct research, provide technical assistance to neighborhood residents, and develop local leadership. Some of CDP’s work has included facilitating community meetings, offering continued support to a fledgling community organization, developing asset maps and infrastructure surveys, and offering continued support to a fledgling community organization by assisting residents with grant-writing and application for 501c(3) status.
CDP, comprised of thirteen members representing the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard Law School, and MIT Sloan School of Management, receives significant support from Harvard affiliates. Financial support from the Ash Institute for Democratic Governanceand Innovation, the Center for Public Leadership, KSSG, Taubman Center for State and Local Governance, and the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African-American Research have all helped sustain CDP’s operations in Boston as well as Mississippi. In addition, CDP has worked closely with atalented faculty advisory board comprised of Professors Marshall Ganz, Julie Wilson and William J. Wilson.
“Our work, though far from complete, gives me hope that people in our position of privilege at great institutions can remember that our knowledge is only worth what we use it for,” said graduating CDP member Babak Mostaghimi, (MPP ’10), looking back over his experiences since his first trip down to Baptist Town. “For me, CDP embodies why I came to the Kennedy School – to make a real difference in the world around me.”
In just one year since CDP arrived in Baptist Town, much in the community has already changed for the better. With the support of CDP, the Baptist Town Community Organization (BTCO) was established with the ambitious objective to mobilize and improve their community. BTCO Co-Chair Dash Brown said expresses, “CDP has shown me how to make the impossible possible, and how to repurpose our skills to change what was once a useless skill to a powerful tool.”
Recognizing the important role that youth will have in revitalizing Baptist Town, the BTCO has organized events such as a “Back to School” celebration, and a donation drive is in the process of establishing a community technology center to offer after-school services for community youth. In partnership with CDP, they have already secured five computers and created a strong computer skills curriculum.
While everyone may not have the time to venture down to Baptist Town, students at the Kennedy School can still support the Baptist Town community and the fellow CDP students by attending the upcoming Chili Cook Off later this month and the annual BBQ and Blues Night in the fall semester.
Putting the Kennedy School motto “Ask what you can do” into action, CDP’s commitment to public service has helped the community of Baptist Town to be able to look back over the year and answer their own call of “Look what we can accomplish.”
HKS Students To Spend Summer in Afghanistan
by Carolyn McGourty on April 16, 2010 in HKS News, News
As the United States pursues its strategy to achieve stable governance in Afghanistan, a number of Harvard Kennedy School students will be headed there in the summer to help advance the country in other capacities.
From political rights to drug policy, MPP candidates will spend their break to help improve the complex, war-torn nation.
“I’ve studied Afghanistan extensively this year, and really wanted to see it in person,” said Afreen Akhter, MPP1, who secured an internship with Shuhada, a woman-led NGO based in central Afghanistan. “We’ve been flooded with so many critiques of Afghanistan at Kennedy, however, I don’t feel comfortable supporting any of those positions without having seen it myself.”
Akhter will work on the ground for women’s rights with Shuhada, taking part in community outreach through surveying program participants in several of their field offices. Putting her newly acquired econometrics skills to use, she will try to determine the effectiveness of their initiatives and whether or not they enhance community security.
“If I enjoy working in Afghanistan I’d like to apply to work as a civil servant for the State (Department) upon graduation,” Akhter said.
Akhter will be working in Bamyan, the site of the desecrated Buddha statues infamously destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Home to the Hazaras, a minority Shiite population in Afghanistan, it is also the country’s only province with a female governor, Habiba Sorabi.
Katy Peters, MPP1, will be working with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission on a survey of political rights. Though her exact regional assignment and role are still being determined, she said she will most likely be stationed in Kabul.
“First and foremost, I hope to be useful in making fall parliamentary elections free and legitimate,” Peters said. “I think that representative governance will matter a great deal for long-term stability in Afghanistan, and this is an area in which I can contribute to that end.”
Peters said that she too hopes to better understand a country that she has been studying at school.
“This is a country very much in the news and of particular relevance right now,” Peters said. “I’ve heard it discussed by Rory Stewart and Nick Burns, the fellows at the Carr Center and any number of visiting speakers. I want to see first-hand an effort I’ve already spent hours writing about with pseudo-authority.”
Peters, whose core interests are elections, election systems and democratic governance, said she hopes the experience will also help her build requisite skills for future work in these areas. She is interested in possibly turning the AIHRC into a client for her policy analysis exercise when she returns as an MPP2.
Natalie Black, MPP1, will also be headed to Kabul to work for the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime.
Black, who spent her spring break in Haiti assessing aspects of the country’s criminal justice system after it crippled in the devastating quake, will be examining a different facet of crime.
“This is the first time I will work for the UN so I am looking forward to learning more about how it functions and its work with the Afghan government in tackling the drugs trade,” Black said.
The students have applied for fellowship support to fund their summer internships through Kennedy School funding.
Akhter, Peters and Black will travel to Afghanistan via commercial airlines from Dubai to Kabul. Though acknowledging they may be put in harm’s way, the students don’t think security will be a serious concern during their time there.
“Come visit! Seriously,” Akhter said. “Bamyan is really trying to build up a tourism industry.”
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.
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.”
Read This if You Want to Earn $10,000 More
by Michael Zakaras, News Asst. Editor on February 25, 2010 in HKS News, News
Think about the whole benefits package, not just the salary. Develop a personal scale weighing the value of each component. Kill off a bad offer as soon as possible. These were some of the tips Professor Brian Mandell had on negotiation compensation.
Mandell, who teaches a highly popular negotiation course at HKS, illustrated strategies that could help prevent a job taker’s version of buyer’s remorse in a seminar organized by the Office of Career Advancement on Feb. 17.
The seminar was a mix of more general advice about job interviews and specific suggestions about how to maneuver through the dreaded salary conversation. While he acknowledged that job interviews are largely spontaneous, Mandell also said that a certain level of “self-scripting” is important for developing an “anticipatory stance.” Such a stance is key for walking away with compensation to be happy about.
Part of being anticipatory is being prepared to answer the kinds of statements or questions you’ll frequently hear. Such “squeezing” tactics might include: “It’s a very tough economy now,” “I’m sorry, but this is company policy ” or, “By the way, do you have an MBA or JD?” Each is a subtle – or not so subtle – way of telling you that you need to lower your expectations.
According to Mandell, the ability to respond properly to such questions can make up to a $10,000 dollar difference in salary offer between two otherwise identical candidates. “You have the power in the interview to shape their expectations just as they shape yours,” he said.
Mandell began the seminar by reminding listeners about the importance of the first few minutes after you sit down for the interview. “You’re largely getting the job in the first 3-5 minutes or you’re not,” he said. “It’s like the starting pistol at the Olympics.”
How exactly are employers evaluating you in those early moments? Mandell walked through his “6 Cs” – Credibility, Competence, Collaboration potential, Commitment, Congruence, and Confidence. These form what he believes are the basis of what will become your salary.
Credibility is essentially whether there is a clear connection between your narrative, your CV, and the job you are applying for. If you’re applying for a “stretch position” – like in a sector you’ve never worked in before – your credibility will appear a bit thinner. Competence, meanwhile, is about coming across as articulate, focused, and engaged. Mandell was careful to distinguish between being smart and signaling competence. “People want to know, ‘Can I trust your judgment’?” he said. “Do not assume that graduating from this 375-year old institution is a substitute for competence.”
Collaboration potential and commitment are largely self-explanatory, while congruence refers to whether or not there’s a gap between your verbal and non-verbal communication. Looking and sounding committed, in other words, is as important as the level of commitment displayed in your CV and cover letter. Mandell referred to Confidence as the “sniff test” about one’s “ability to be able to persevere under conditions of turbulence and uncertainty.”
Then Mandell got into the nitty-gritty of compensation negotiation. He began by reminding students that compensation is about more than just salary, but rather the full package of salary and benefits such as health care, vacation, bonuses, training opportunities, etc. When considering an offer, he stressed the importance of taking these factors into consideration – perhaps even of developing a 100-point scale to weigh the value of each component. For some, a strong health care package might be nearly as important as the salary figure itself, and many companies are more willing to budge in these areas than on salary.
When should salary come up in the interview? Some employers might try to discuss it early on, but Mandell said discussing compensation later in the interview, gives you a better chance to present your value proposition to the company.
If you feel confident and want to bring up the topic of compensation yourself, Mandell recommended setting an anchor at 20 percent higher than you want. Meanwhile, if they bring it up first, Mandell stressed the importance of quickly “de-anchoring” a bad offer. Otherwise, the longer a figure is on the table, the more likely it is to solidify. “It’s like drying cement,” he said.
What do you say if you don’t feel comfortable with an offer? If only a few thousand short, you can use the “yes, but” tactic. If the offer seems way off the mark, you can politely say, “This doesn’t sound reasonable given my value proposition,” or “Frankly I’m a bit surprised” and give two or three reasons why you think the offer is unreasonable.
Finally, for anyone feeling overwhelmed or flustered, there’s the ultimate get-out-of-jail card: “Excuse me, can you direct me to the bathroom?” Taking a couple of minutes to gather your thoughts and come back in prepared is perfectly acceptable and much smarter than agreeing to something you wish you hadn’t.
Among the participants was Wade Barnes, MPP’11, who found the scenarios Mandell played through to be especially beneficial. “Professor Mandell did a good job demonstrating how employees preserve their leverage during compensation negotiations – and that the amount of leverage you control is dictated by the strength of your performance at the negotiating table” said Barnes.
