Nation & World

All Nation & World

  • Electric cars, ‘cap and trade,’ and more

    R. James Woolsey Jr., a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has a favorite personal strategy for ensuring U.S. domestic security: his Toyota Prius hybrid, upgraded with an A123 conversion kit that allows it to run largely on a battery rechargeable by house current.

  • McCain’s, Obama’s education platforms on view at Kennedy School

    It was standing room only at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) as a former governor and a Harvard Law School (HLS) professor took on the issue of education.

  • ‘Likemindedness’ can be stultifying

    Cass R. Sunstein, the Felix Frankfurter Professor at Harvard Law School and a former attorney-adviser in the Department of Justice’s Office of the Legal Counsel, spoke at the fourth annual Constitution Day lecture (Sept. 17) sponsored by the Office of the Provost.

  • Faculty experts to explore financial crisis in Webcast panel

    Harvard President Drew Faust invites students, faculty, and staff to a special panel discussion Thursday, Sept. 25, on the current turmoil in the financial markets. “Understanding the Crisis in the Markets: A Panel of Harvard Experts” will begin at 4 p.m. in Sanders Theatre.

  • HLS student makes journey back to Iraq

    Those looking for a relaxing summer break may have opted for somewhere other than Iraq. But for one Harvard Law School (HLS) student, the visit to the country in August was about work — and duty.

  • U.S. v. Microsoft, 10 years later

    At the time, some considered it the trial of the century. The weight of the U.S. government pitted against one of the most influential companies in the world accused of abusing its power and crushing the competition.

  • Candidates’ advisers talk health policy

    With an estimated 47 million Americans lacking health insurance, the subject of health care in the next administration has taken center stage as presidential nominees John McCain and Barack Obama approach election day. Senior health care advisers to both nominees hashed out the similarities and differences between the candidates’ stances at a jam-packed “great debate” at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) last week (Sept. 12) that filled Snyder Auditorium, two overflow rooms, and part of the Kresge Cafeteria.

  • Boston Public School teachers go back to class

    What do ancient Rome and the reign of Queen Elizabeth I have to do with the development of the United States government? A lot, according to Harvard government professor Daniel Carpenter.

  • Business School, China Fund open office in Shanghai

    Harvard Business School (HBS) Dean Jay O. Light and William C. Kirby, T.M. Chang Professor of China Studies and chairman of the Harvard China Fund, announced the opening of a Harvard office in Shanghai on July 2.

  • Attacking the ties that bind poverty, illness

    Jim Yong Kim remembers the drive home from the airport with his father, a dentist in the small Iowa city where Kim was raised. His dad asked Kim, who was on a break from Brown University, what he’d decided to study.

  • Confronting tuberculosis

    In the shadow of a hill where lepers once lived, a tuberculosis hospital designed for those infected with deadly, drug-resistant strains of the disease is giving hope to a new generation of medical pariahs in the tiny African nation of Lesotho.

  • After years of talk, time for action

    It was a tough assessment for a health clinic, and Jim Yong Kim was standing in the middle of one when he made it. “A lot of these are known as places where you go to die.”

  • A pandemic’s front lines

    Jim Yong Kim walked out of the small cinder block room where an underweight boy of 5 lay, his heart rate down to 115 from the dangerous 150 beats per minute at which it had been racing moments earlier. Kim stripped rubber gloves from his hands. “That was incredibly gutsy,” he said flatly…

  • Shelter amid a health care storm

    South Africa’s Valley of 1,000 Hills is a broad and breathtaking natural contradiction, an enormous valley whose floor is crowded with hills large and small, as if nature wasn’t quite sure what it was making.

  • Fighting AIDS now and in the future

    In the heart of the South African AIDS epidemic, at a medical school named for the nation’s legendary anti-apartheid leader, a fight against a different sort of oppression is being waged.

  • What makes terrorists tick?

    Not long before the Sept. 11 attacks, Harvard-trained political scientist Louise Richardson gave up the full-time pursuit of her scholarly specialty — the origins of terrorism.

  • Bernanke touts nation’s economic resilience

    Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said Wednesday (June 4) that education is both the best hedge against economic uncertainty and a student’s greatest asset, and urged Harvard College’s Class of 2008 to use their education to live rewarding lives and make the world a better place.

  • Nasredeen Abdulbari: ‘Lawyers are the cement of society.’

    Nasredeen Abdulbari identifies no particular “aha!” moment when he knew what his life’s work would be.

  • Precocious pundit Alexander Burns is off to D.C.

    While still an undergraduate, Alexander Burns already had an impact on political discourse in the United States. Beginning in 2005, the history and literature concentrator has been a principal contributor to a political blog sponsored by the history magazine American Heritage. The job has allowed him to explore the pros and cons of contemporary issues, and to joust in print with some of the country’s most prestigious historians.

  • Black belt Lee battles in the arena of world politics

    Born in the United Kingdom, but raised for most of her first six years in Hong Kong, transnational Harvard graduate student Yue Man Lee grew up a fervent lover of reading, travel, and food.

  • Training a physician’s eye on policy

    Three years into his medical school career, Joe Ladapo had a revelation, but it wasn’t in a medical class, it was in economics.

  • Panel addresses effectiveness of NGOs, gives mixed grades

    The world watched recently as the continuing tragedy in Myanmar unfolded. Millions were displaced earlier this month by a cyclone that devastated the country’s Irrawaddy delta, leaving 134,000 people dead or missing.

  • Candidates emphasize hot-button issues

    D. Sunshine Hillygus, Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor of Government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and Todd G. Shields, professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, extensively studied campaign strategy during the 2004 general election, work that may illuminate strategy in the current presidential race.

  • Princess Zahra outlines the work of Aga Khan Development Network

    Princess Zahra Aga Khan ’94 came home to Harvard this week (May 13) to present a hopeful vision of what education in the developing world can be like.

  • Panels contrive job interview for the next president of the U.S.

    If the presidency of the United States were a job one applied for like a job in the business world, what questions should be included in the interview? That question was one of the provocative ideas behind the all-day “Conversation on Leadership and the Next Presidency” presented Monday (May 12) at the Charles Hotel by the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS).

  • Students see AIDS up close

    While her classmates in Cambridge were shivering through a New England February, Sandy Bolm was sweltering in the heat of a Botswana summer, staring her future in the face in the labs of the Botswana-Harvard Partnership.

  • AIDS: Finding answers

    Ampheletse Medupe’s headaches just wouldn’t go away. Living in her small, neat home outside the African nation of Botswana’s capital, the mother of four kept on as best she could until sores broke out on her face.

  • AIDS and hope

    The man and woman grin down from the large billboard overlooking the road to the hospital in Mochudi, a small town outside Botswana’s capital of Gaborone.

  • Speakers talk about the ‘renaissance’ taking place in Native nations

    Three was the magic number when the founding fathers established the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the United States government. Today, for thousands of Americans rewriting their own constitutions, there’s a fourth area of power and oversight.

  • CES hosts talk on integration of Islam into contemporary France

    Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse visited Harvard’s Center for European Studies (CES) last Friday (May 2) to speak about the “realities” of life for the nearly 5 million Muslims who make their home in France.