The primary campus of the Harvard Kennedy School is on John F. Kennedy Street in Cambridge. The main buildings overlook theCharles River and are southwest ofHarvard Yard andHarvard Square, on the site of a formerMBTA Red Line train yard. The School is adjacent to the public riverfront John F. Kennedy Memorial Park.
The Harvard Kennedy School was founded as theHarvard Graduate School of Public Administration in 1936 with a $2 million gift (equivalent to roughly $43 million as of 2023) fromLucius Littauer, an 1878Harvard College alumnus, businessman, former U.S. Congressman, and the first coach of theHarvard Crimson football team.[5]
The Harvard Kennedy School's shield was designed to express the national purpose of the school and was modeled after theU.S. shield.[6] The School drew its initial faculty from Harvard's existing government and economics departments, and welcomed its first students in 1937.
The School's original home was in the Littauer Center, north ofHarvard Yard, which is now home toHarvard University's Economics Department. The first students at the Graduate School were called Littauer Fellows, participating in a one-year course listing which later developed into the school's mid-careerMaster in Public Administration program.[7] In the 1960s, the School began to develop its current public policy degree and course curriculum associated with its Master in Public Policy program.
In 1966, concurrent with the school's renaming,[8] theHarvard Institute of Politics was created with Neustadt as its founding director.[10] The Harvard Institute of Politics has been housed on the school campus since 1978, and today sponsors and hosts a series of programs, speeches and study groups for Harvard undergraduates and graduate students. Along with major Harvard Kennedy School events, the Institute of Politics holds the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, named in honor ofJohn F. Kennedy Jr., in Harvard Kennedy School's Littauer Building.[citation needed]
By 1978, the faculty, including presidential scholar and adviserRichard Neustadt, a foreign policy scholar and later dean of the School,Graham Allison,Richard Zeckhauser, and others consolidated the school's programs and research centers at the present Harvard Kennedy School campus. The first new building opened on the southern half of the formerEliot Shops site in October 1978.[11] Under the terms of Littauer's original grant, the current campus also features a building called Littauer.[citation needed]
In late 2007, the Kennedy School of Government announced that while its official name was not being altered, it was rebranding itself asHarvard Kennedy School effective Fall 2008.[12] The goal was to make clearer the school's connection with Harvard.[13] It was also thought that the new branding would reduce confusion with other entities named after Kennedy, including theKennedy Center inWashington, D.C. and theKennedy Library inBoston.[12] The rebranding had the support of John F. Kennedy's brother, U.S. SenatorEdward M. Kennedy, andCaroline Kennedy, the former president's daughter.[12]
In 2012, the Harvard Kennedy School announced a $500 million fundraising campaign, $120 million of which was to be used to significantly expand the Harvard Kennedy School campus, adding 91,000 square feet of space including six new classrooms, a new kitchen, and dining facility, offices and meeting spaces, a new student lounge and study space, more collaboration and active learning spaces, and a redesigned central courtyard. Groundbreaking commenced on May 7, 2015, and the project was completed in late 2017. The new Harvard Kennedy School campus opened in December 2017.[14][15]
In 2015,Douglas Elmendorf, a former director of the U.S.Congressional Budget Office, was named both dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and the school's Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy.[17] Elmendorf announced in September 2023 that he would step down as dean at the end of the academic year 2023/2024.[18]
The Harvard Kennedy School offers four master's degree programs.[21] The two-yearMaster in Public Policy (MPP) program focuses onpolicy analysis,economics,management, ethics, statistics and negotiations in the public sector.[22] There are three separateMaster in Public Administration (MPA) programs: a one-year Mid-Career Program (MC/MPA) intended for professionals who are more than seven years removed from their college graduation; a two-year MPA program intended for professionals who have an additional graduate degree and are more recently out of school; and a two-year international development track (MPA/ID) focused ondevelopment studies with a strong emphasis oneconomics andquantitative analysis.
Members of the mid-career MPA class also include Mason Fellows, who are public and private executives from developing countries. Mason Fellows typically constitute about 50 percent of the incoming class of Mid-Career MPA candidates. The Mason cohort is the most diverse at Harvard in terms of nationalities and ethnicities represented. It is named afterEdward Sagendorph Mason, the former Harvard professor who, from 1947 to 1958, was dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Public Administration, now known as Harvard Kennedy School.
The Harvard Kennedy School has a number of joint and concurrent degree programs within Harvard and with other leading universities, which allow students to receive multiple degrees in a reduced period of time. Joint and current students spend at least one year in residence in Cambridge taking courses. The Harvard Kennedy School joint degree programs are run with theHarvard Business School, theHarvard Law School, and theHarvard Graduate School of Design, and concurrent programs are offered with theHarvard Divinity School and theHarvard Medical School.
The Harvard Kennedy School maintains six academic divisions each headed by a faculty chair. In addition to offerings in the Harvard Kennedy School course listing, students are eligible to cross-register for courses at the other graduate and professional schools at Harvard and atMIT Sloan School of Management,Fletcher School at Tufts University, and theMIT School of Architecture and Planning. MPP coursework is focused on one of five areas, called a Policy Area of Concentration (PAC),[27] and includes a year-long research seminar in their second year, which includes a master's thesis called a Policy Analysis Exercise.[28][29]
The university is an active member of theUniversity of the Arctic.[30] UArctic is an international cooperative network based in the Circumpolar Arctic region, consisting of more than 200 universities, colleges, and other organizations with an interest in promoting education and research in the Arctic region.[31]
The Harvard Kennedy School has routinely ranked as the best, or among the best, of the world's public policy graduate schools.U.S. News & World Report ranks it the best graduate school for social policy, the best for health policy, and second best for public policy analysis.[32] In 2015 rankings, the Harvard Kennedy School is ranked first in the subcategory of health policy and second in the category of public policy analysis and social policy.[33][34]
The Harvard Kennedy School's foreign affairs programs have consistently ranked at the top or near the top ofForeign Policy magazine'sInside the Ivory Tower survey, which lists the world's top twenty academicinternational relations programs at the undergraduate, Master's, and Ph.D. levels.[35] In 2012, for example, the survey ranked the Harvard Kennedy School first overall for doctoral and undergraduate programs and third overall in the Master's category.[36]
The Harvard Kennedy School maintains a range of student activities, including interest-driven student caucuses, Kennedy School Student Government, known as KSSG, student-edited policy journals, includingHarvard Journal of Hispanic Policy,Kennedy School Review,[37] theJournal of Middle Eastern Politics and Policy,[38] a student newspaper,The Citizen, and a number of student athletic groups.
Students can join theHarvard Graduate Council, which is the centralized student government for the twelve graduate and professional schools ofHarvard University. The Harvard Graduate Council is responsible for advocating student concerns to central administrators, including thepresident of Harvard University, provost, deans of students, and deans for the nearly 15,000 graduate and professional students across the twelve schools, organizing large university-wide initiatives and events, administering and providing funding for university-wide student groups,[39][40] and representing the Harvard graduate student population to other universities and external organizations.[41] Harvard Graduate Council is known for spearheading the "One Harvard" movement, which aims to bring all of Harvard's graduate schools together through closer collaboration and social interaction.[42]
The majority of centers offer research and academic fellowships through which fellows can engage in research projects, lead study groups into specific topics and share their experiences with industry and government with the student body.
Under Dean Elmendorf, the school has tried to focus its engagement across the political spectrum, which has caused controversy at times. The school came under criticism for offering a fellowship toChelsea Manning on September 13, 2017.[59][60] It then publicly rescinded the offer on September 15, 2017, afterCIA directorMike Pompeo canceled a speaking engagement at Harvard and sent a letter condemning the university for awarding the fellowship.[60][61]
An investigative report in 2021 by student group Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard found that many of the centers' climate initiatives were funded in part byfossil fuel companies, and that some of the centers had allegedly taken several steps to cover up that fact.[62][63]
The Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Public Service is awarded to "a graduating student whose commitment, activities, and contributions to public service are extraordinary". Several other awards are also awarded on Class Day annually at the end of May.[66]
The Harvard Kennedy School has over 63,000 alumni, many of whom have gone on to notable careers around the world in government, business, public policy, and other fields. Its alumni include 20heads of state and dozens of leaders of government department and agencies, non-profit public policy organizations, the military, thought leadership and advocacy, academia, and other fields:[2]
Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai, Executive Governor of Kaduna State in Nigeria, former Minister of FCT, and Director General of Bureau of Public Enterprises ofNigeria
^The full name of the upon the change was the John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government.[8] It was subsequently usually referred to as the John F. Kennedy School of Government or, in shorter form, as the Kennedy School of Government.[9]
^See for instance the title of, and usages within, the historyThe John F. Kennedy School of Government: The First Fifty Years (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1986).
^Kumar, Martha Joynt. "Richard Elliott Neustadt, 1919–2003: a tribute," Presidential Studies Quarterly, March 1, 2004, pg. 1
