Alexander De Croo  became Belgium’s prime minister in October of 2020. It’s a relatively small country, with about 12 million inhabitants—slightly less than the city of Los Angeles—but it’s very much the face of Europe with the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and NATO all calling Brussels home. Prime Minister De Croo, who saw the country through the COVID pandemic, says that the geopolitical and economic upheavals already being instigated by the “America first” ethos of President Donald Trump will present another stiff test for the leadership of not only his country but the EU. In this episode of HKS PolicyCast with host Ralph Ranalli, De Croo says the key to Europe not just surviving that challenge but also thriving will depend on its ability to raise its level of economic competitiveness significantly in the coming decades. While still a powerful trading bloc, the EU’s economic growth has been slowing since the year 2000 and it’s an also-ran to the US and China in the vital tech sector, with only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies being based in Europe. It’s also facing the challenge of long-term demographic trends—by 2040 the EU’s workforce is projected to shrink by 2 million workers a year. So, as the US retreats from global leadership on fronts ranging from the green energy transition to human rights, De Croo says Europe must make urgent economic policy changes to maintain both its values and its status a leader on the world stage. Programming note: As this discussion was being recorded, a coalition of five parties—led by the separatist New Flemish Alliance and not including Mr. De Croo’s center-right Open VLD party—agreed to form a new government, effectively ending his tenure as prime minister.Alexander De Croo’s Policy Recommendations:Eliminate excessive corporate reporting systems like CSRD (the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) that add bureaucratic burdens to businesses without improving corporate behavior.Implement a non-permanent migration system that allows young people to study in Europe and stay for a set period of time, after which they are required to return to their home countries.Maintain Europe's openness to the world while protecting core European interests, and act assertively in areas—trade, climate sustainability, development, diplomacy—where the EU is already a global leader.Episode Notes:Alexander De Croo is the outgoing Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Belgium, a post he held beginning in 2020. De Croo has had a long career in politics and business, including numerous ministerial posts. As Minister of Finance, he helped create a framework for a major European recovery package. As Minister of Pensions, he carried out Belgium's first pension reform package in recent history and was involved in setting up a Pension Reform Commission. As Minister of Development Cooperation, Digital Agenda, Telecom and Postal Services, he promoted measures to strengthen human rights, enhance local economic growth in partner countries, and maximize the economic potential of the digital economy. He spent his early career as a businessman and entrepreneur, and in 2006 he founded his own company, Darts-ip, an intellectual property consulting firm that now operates around the world. He started his political career in 2009, running unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament but winning the chairmanship of the center-right Flemish political party, Open Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (OpenVLD). He holds an MSc in business engineering from Vrije Universiteit Brussel and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.Administrative support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team. 

The warning lights are blinking for the world’s food supply. At least that’s what 150 Nobel Prize and World Food Prize laureates said in a recently-published open letter calling for a “moonshot” urgency effort to start the immediate ramping up of food production to meet the global demands of 9.7 billion people by 2050. Harvard Kennedy School economist Wolfram Schlenker, the new Ray A. Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System says doing that will require urgent policy changes and, in some cases, policy reversals to meet those goals against the headwinds of climate change. Even as crop yields are under stress due to rising temperatures and extreme weather events, Schlenker says spending on research and development of new, climate-resistant crops and other food technologies has declined. Countries are also starting to put up more protectionist barriers around their domestic agricultural sectors, undermining the global free trade in staple food commodities that is essential to preventing severe agricultural shocks that can result in civil upheaval, mass migration, and global instability. Schlenker is the co-author of a groundbreaking study in 2009 which found that crop yields fall precipitously after reaching a certain heat threshold. The study’s conclusions were validated just three years later when a heat wave over the U.S. corn belt saw yields drop by 25 percent. With 700 million people globally already classified as undernourished and the world having at least temporarily breached the crucial 1.5 degrees Celsius warming standard in 2024, it may be the most important problem nobody’s talking about. Schlenker joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about the ticking global food crisis clock and policy changes that could make a difference.Wolfram Schlenker’s Policy Recommendations:Limit beggar-thy-neighbor agricultural policies where countries impose export restrictions when food prices rise. Specifically, implement the Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture passed at COP-28 by ensuring that the World Trade Organization has an enforcement mechanism that limits trade restrictions in agricultural markets following climatic events.Reverse the current decline in public R&D funding for agricultural technologies. Private companies, which currently conduct most of the R&D, do not have the correct incentives to innovate when there are positive spillovers on others.Ensure that the Social Cost of Carbon — the cost of emitting an extra ton of CO2 — reflects its impact on all countries and not just the U.S., as climate change is a global problem.Episode Notes:Wolfram Schlenker is the Ray A. Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System at Harvard Kennedy School. An economist and engineer by training, he studies the intersection of climate, agriculture, and the global economy. His research interests include:The effect of weather and climate on agricultural yields and migration,How climate trends and the U.S. biofuel mandate influences agricultural commodity pricesHow pollution impacts both agricultural yields and human morbidity. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He currently serves on the Board of Reviewing Editors at Science.Schlenker holds a PhD in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Berkeley, a master’s in engineering and management Sciences from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, and a master’s in environmental management from Duke University (1998).Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an BA in political science from UCLA and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University.Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Web design and social media promotion support is provided by Catherine Santrock and Natalie Montaner of the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team.

Jeremy Weinstein became the newest dean in the 88-year history of the Harvard Kennedy School this past June, arriving from Stanford University, where he was an award-winning scholar and the founding faculty director of the Stanford Impact Labs. The pursuit of deep scholarly curiosity and roll-up-your-sleeves impact has been a theme in his life and career, as well as an approach he intends to accelerate schoolwide at HKS under his leadership. Growing up, Weinstein experienced a family run-in with government policy gone horribly wrong—one that could have inspired a deep cynicism about the role of government in people’s lives. He found inspiration instead and embarked on a career that has encompassed field research on the ground in post-conflict countries including Uganda, Mozambique, and Peru; wide-ranging scholarship in areas including political violence, the political economy of development, migration, and technology’s proper role in society; government service at the National Security Council and as Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration. He has also been an academic leader who has led major initiatives including the Stanford Impact Labs and the Immigration Policy Lab. His new job marks a return to HKS, where he earned both his master’s and PhD in political economy and government. He joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about his life experiences, how they shaped him as a scholar and leader, and what he believes the role of the Kennedy School should be in challenging times for academia, the United States, and the world.Policy Recommendations:Jeremy Weinstein’s recommendations for restoring trust in public institutions, expertise, and scholarship:Reclaim the civic purpose of higher education and prioritize its role in serving democratic institutions and solving societal problems.Reconnect to the real-world problems people are experiencing and ensure that the questions being asked and answered by scholars and researchers are ones that can help public institutions make progress.Leverage expertise and use science and innovation to tackle pressing challenges including economic insecurity, housing insecurity, food access, access to health care, and geographic disparities in economic development.Realign incentives and allocate resources to position higher education institutions as active problem-solving partners, particularly at the state and local level where governors, mayors, and county leaders design policies that directly impact people’s daily lives.Demonstrate the value of science, expertise, and policy innovation by producing results people can see and benefit from, and emphasize their value in ensuring that government dollars at all levels are spent efficiently.Episode Notes:Jeremy Weinstein is Dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He is an award-winning researcher and teacher with expertise on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics; the political economy of development; democracy and accountability; and migration. Before coming to Harvard, he was the Kleinheinz Professor of International Studies at Stanford University, where he led major initiatives, including Stanford Impact Labs and the Immigration Policy Lab, which catalyzed partnerships between researchers and practitioners with the goal of generating innovative policies, programs, and interventions to meaningfully address important social problems.Weinstein has also held senior roles in the U.S. government at the White House and State Department, most recently as Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during President Obama’s second term. As Deputy, Weinstein was a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee—the subcabinet policy committee with primary responsibility for advising the National Security Council, the Cabinet, and the President on foreign policy issues. Before becoming Deputy, he served as Chief of Staff at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. During President Obama’s first term, he served as Director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council staff at the White House. Weinstein is the author of “Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence,” co-author of “Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action,” and co-editor of “Crime, Insecurity, and Community Policing.” For his research, Weinstein received the International Studies Association’s Karl Deutsch Award, given annually to the scholar under 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the study of international relations. In recent years, he has also written on issues at the intersection of technology and democracy, including in a co-authored book “System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot.”He earned a BA from Swarthmore College and an MA and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host and producer of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds a BA in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lilian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney, Robert O’Neill, and the OCPA Editorial Team.

Turbocharged by the internet and mobile technology, legalized gambling has exploded across the globe, leaving behind ruined lives, broken families and financial hardships, and should now be classified as a major public health concern. A four-year study by a public health commission on gambling convened by The Lancet, the respected British journal of medicine, found that net global losses by gamblers could exceed $700 billion by the year 2028, and that 80% of countries now allow some form of legal gambling. But HKS Professor Malcolm Sparrow, a leading scholar on regulating societal harms, says that in reality the percentage of countries where gambling is practiced is closer to 100% because internet- and mobile-based gambling—often using cryptocurrencies—can easily circumvent borders. Among the commission's more concerning findings is that a significant portion of virtual gamblers are teenagers, and that more than 1 in 4 teens are at risk of becoming compulsive or problem gamblers. Sparrow tells PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli that the harms are also widespread, since the suffering from each problem gambler also affects on average six to eight people around them—ranging from spouses to relatives to friends to employers and co-workers. Sparrow says the commission has identified a number of policy solutions to mitigate the growing fallout from gambling expansion, ranging from limiting the speed and intensity of virtual gambling products to prohibiting gambling with credit cards and banning gaming companies from offering loans. Policy Recommendations from The Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling:Push governments to define gambling as primarily a public health issue, and prioritize health and wellbeing over economic gains when crafting gambling policies.Adopt effective regulation in all countries—regardless of whether or not they have legalized gambling—including limiting promotion and marketing, providing accessible support for betting-related harms, and denormalizing gambling through public awareness campaigns.Create independent regulators in jurisdictions where gambling is legal to enforce protections including safeguards for young people, consumer protections, and mandatory limits on gambling activities.Shield development of gambling policies, research, and treatment from industry influence through a shift to independent funding sources.At the international level, require UN entities and intergovernmental organizations to address gambling harms as part of broader health and wellbeing strategies.Create an international alliance of stakeholders to lead advocacy, research, and collaboration on gambling-related issues.Adopt a resolution recognizing the public health impacts of gambling at the World Health Assembly.Episode Notes:Malcolm K. Sparrow is professor of the practice of public management at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.  He is faculty chair of the school’s executive education program on strategic management of regulatory and enforcement agencies. He is the offer of several books, including “The Regulatory Craft: Controlling Risks, Solving Problems, and Managing Compliance,” and “License to Steal: How Fraud Bleeds America's Health Care System.” An expert in regulatory management, his research interests include regulatory and enforcement strategy, fraud control, corruption control, and operational risk management. Before coming to HKS, he served 10 years with the British Police Service, where he rose to the rank of detective chief inspector and conducted internal affairs investigations, commanded a tactical firearms unit, and gained extensive experience with criminal investigation. A mathematician and patent-holding inventor in the area of computerized fingerprint analysis, he earned an MA in mathematics from Cambridge University, an MPA from the Kennedy School, and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Kent.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King, Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team. Administrative support is provided by Lilian Wainaina. 

The World Health Organization says smoking is the leading cause of global preventable death, killing up to 8 million people prematurely every year—far more than die in wars and conflicts. Yet the emotions evoked by national and international anti-smoking campaigns and the impact of those emotions has never been fully studied until now. HKS Professor Jennifer Lerner, a decision scientist who studies emotion, and Vaughan Rees, the director for the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, say their research involving actual smokers in the lab shows that sadness—the emotion most often evoked in anti-smoking ads—can actually induce people to smoke more. Lerner and Rees’ research also found that evoking gratitude, an emotion that appears to function in nearly the exact opposite manner to sadness, made people want to smoke less and made them more likely to join a smoking-cessation program. Lerner and Rees join host Ralph Ranalli on the latest episode of the HKS PolicyCast to discuss their research and to offer research-backed policy recommendations—including closer collaboration between researchers who study emotion science, which is also known as affective science, and agencies like the Centers for Disease Control.Policy Recommendations:Jennifer Lerner’s Policy Recommendations:Promote active collaboration between researchers and public health agencies (e.g., CDC, FDA) to develop health communications that leverage the most current, research-backed findings from affective and decision science.Rigorously assess not only the benefits of public service announcements but also potential harms.  Assessments often overlook the emotional distress these messages can cause, despite the potential of distress to undermine desired outcomes.Vaughan Rees’ Policy Recommendations:Expand research into integrating emotion-based strategies, such as gratitude exercises, into school-based prevention programs for adolescents to reduce the risk of tobacco and other substance use, as well as risky sexual behaviors.Introduce research-backed, emotion-based components in cessation counseling and support systems, helping individuals better manage high-risk situations and maintain abstinence after quitting.Dr. Jennifer Lerner is the Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy, Management and Decision Science at the Harvard Kennedy School.She is the first psychologist in the history of the Harvard Kennedy School to receive tenure.  Lerner, who also holds appointments in Harvard’s Department of Psychology and Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, conducts research that draws insights from psychology, economics, and neuroscience and aims to improve decision making in high-stakes contexts. Together with colleagues, Lerner developed a theoretical framework that successfully predicts the effects of specific emotions on specific judgment and choice outcomes. Among other honors, Lerner received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to scientists and engineers in early stages of their careers. Lerner earned her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California–Berkeley and was awarded a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA. She joined the Harvard faculty and received tenure in 2007, and from 2018-2019 she took a temporary leave from Harvard to serve as the Chief Decision Scientist for the United States Navy.Vaughan Rees is Director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The center’s mission is to reduce the global burden of tobacco-related death and disease through training, research, and the translation of science into public health policies and programs. Rees also directs the Tobacco Research Laboratory at the Harvard Chan School, where the design and potential for dependence of tobacco products are assessed. Studies examine the impact of dependence potential on product use and individual risk, to inform policy and other interventions to control tobacco harms. Rees also leads an NIH funded study which seeks to reduce secondhand smoke exposure among children from low income and racially/ethnically diverse backgrounds. His academic background is in health psychology (substance use and dependence), and he trained at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and did postdoctoral training through the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the United States.Note: Lerner and Rees collaborated on this research with former HKS doctoral student Charlie Dorison, who is now an assistant professor at Georgetown University, and former HKS doctoral student Ke Wang, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia. Both were co-authors on the research paper on sadness and the research paper on gratitude, which were both published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King, Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team. Administrative support is provided by Lilly Wainaina.  

Anti-LGBTQI+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex) discrimination is on the rise, both in the United States, where hate crime statistics are climbing, and globally, with the increase in right-wing populist governments weaponizing public sentiment against marginalized people. But there are also rights advocates around the world pushing back, despite threats of physical harm, prosecution, and even death. The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy’s Timothy McCarthy and Diego Garcia Blum, who are leading a new program to support those advocates, joined host Ralph Ranalli to on the most recent episode of PolicyCast to talk about the project and about policy responses to a growing threat. The Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program recently held a summit featuring 20 leading rights advocates from countries including Kenya, Russia, Brazil, Bangladesh, Morocco, and Pakistan to explore research-based methods to build social movements and to dismantle myths and stigmas harming their communities. McCarthy, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is the program’s faculty chair, Garcia Blum is program director and a member of the Carr Center staff. Together they also co-teach the course “Queer Nation: LGBTQI+ Protest, Politics, and Policy in the United States” at HKS.Policy Recommendations:Diego Garcia Blum’s Policy recommendations:Applying international pressure on countries enacting anti-LGBTQI+ laws is crucial, but it must be applied consistently across all nations to effectively curb such policies.Appoint LGBTQI+ individuals to public leadership roles and encourage them to run for public office to increase visibility, listen to their input, and show strong commitment to equality.Tim McCarthy’s Policy recommendations:Work with post-colonial nations to remove language from colonial-era statutes that continue to be used to discriminate against LGBTQI+ people.Revoke the tax-exempt status of U.S.-based religious and nonprofit organizations that fund and promote efforts to pass anti-LGBTQI+ statutes in other countries.Require U.S. embassies to work in collaboration with the State Department, and specifically the Office of the Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons, to grant access to LGBTQI+ people traveling to the United States and asylum to those fleeing persecution.Pass the Equality Act in the U.S. Congress to reaffirm America's commitment to LGBTQI+ freedom and equality at home and strengthen its moral standing as a global advocate for human rights.Contributors:Timothy Patrick McCarthy was the first openly gay faculty member at the Kennedy School and is faculty chair of the Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Currently a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Public Leadership at HKS, where he received the 2019 Manuel C. Carballo Award, the Kennedy School’s highest teaching honor, as well as the 2015 HKS Dean’s Award for Exceptional Leadership on Diversity and Inclusion. A co-recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama, McCarthy has published five books, most recently Reckoning with History: Unfinished Stories of American Freedom. A historian of politics and social movements, McCarthy gave expert testimony to the Pentagon Comprehensive Working Group on the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and currently serves as Board Chair for Free the Slaves, a leading global NGO in the fight against modern slavery. As founding director of Harvard’s Alternative Spring Break Church Rebuilding Program, he spent fifteen years organizing hundreds of students to help rebuild Black churches destroyed in racist arson attacks throughout the United States. McCarthy holds an AB in History and Literature from Harvard College and earned his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in History from Columbia University.Diego Garcia Blum MPP 2021 is the Program Director for the Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. His work is dedicated to advocating for the safety and acceptance of LGBTQI+ individuals globally, particularly in regions where they face significant risks. At Harvard, Garcia Blum's efforts have centered on driving social change through policy, impactful research, political engagement, storytelling, community organizing, coalition-building, and developing training programs for advocates. Prior to his current role, he worked under former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick researching LGBTQI+ issues and creating educational programs as a Social Change Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership. Since 2020, he has co-taught "Queer Nation: LGBTQ Protest, Politics, and Policy in the United States" alongside Tim McCarthy at HKS. Garcia Blum previously served on the National Board of Governors of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQI+ advocacy group in the U.S. He holds a master’s in public policy HKS, as well as bachelor’s degrees in nuclear engineering and political science from the University of Florida.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he earned an BA in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.Scheduling and logistical support for PolicyCast is provided by Lillian Wainaina. Design and graphics support is provided by Delane Meadows, Laura King and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.  

America is in the grip of a severe housing crisis. Tenants have seen rents rise 26 percent while home prices have soared by 47 percent since early 2020. Before the pandemic, there were 20 US states considered affordable for housing. Now there are none. And 21 million households—including half of all renters—pay more than one-third of their income on housing. Harvard Kennedy School Associate Professor Justin de Benedictis-Kessner and former Burlington, Vermont Mayor Miro Weinberger say that’s because homebuilding hasn’t kept up with demand. They say housing production is mired in a thicket of restrictive zoning regulations and local politics, a “veto-cracy” that allows established homeowners—sometimes even a single disgruntled neighbor—to block and stall new housing projects for years. Weinberger, a research fellow at the Taubman Institute for State and Local Politics, and de Benedictis-Kessner, whose research focuses on urban policy, say even well-intentioned ideas like so-called “inclusionary zoning” laws that encourage mixed-income housing development may also be contributing to the problem. They join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to discuss how housing became a affordability nightmare for millions of people. During this episode, they offer policy ideas on how streamline the inefficient and often subjective ways home building projects are regulated and how to level the democratic playing field between established homeowners and people who need the housing that has yet to be built.Miro Weinberger’s policy pecommendations:Remove subjective standards such as “neighborhood character” from housing approval processes in favor of objective, measurable ones.Loosen zoning restrictions that enforce suburban-style housing development in favor of creating denser, more urban environments that historically provided more housing and are popular today.Encourage leaders of municipal governments to take an active role in housing development, seeing themselves as developers taking an active role in more housing being built.Justin de Benedictis-Kessner’s policy recommendations:Integrate housing policy with other related policies including transportation and economic development in a holistic way that drives across-the-board progress.Transfer approval power currently exercised by appointed boards and elected city councils to municipal housing and planning staff experts and empower them with objective standards. Justin de Benedictis-Kessner is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His current research focuses on some of the most important policy areas that concern local governments, such as housing, transportation, policing, and economic development. His research also examines how citizens hold elected officials accountable, how representation translates the public's interests into policy via elections, and how people’s policy opinions are formed and swayed.He also leads courses on urban politics and policy, including an experiential field lab that partners student teams with cities and towns to work on applied urban policy problems. His work has received the Clarence Stone Emerging Scholar Award and the Norton Long Young Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association. He earned his PhD from the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his B.A. in Government and Psychology from the College of William & Mary.Miro Weinberger MPP ‘98 served as the Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, from 2012 to 2024. The longest-serving mayor in the city’s history, Weinberger led significant initiatives that transformed Burlington, earning recognition for his leadership in sustainability, economic development, and public health. Under his stewardship Burlington became the first city in the United States to achieve 100 percent renewable energy status. His housing reforms quadrupled the rate of housing production, and his proactive approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic helped keep Burlington’s infection and death rates among the lowest in the country. Prior to becoming mayor, Weinberger co-founded The Hartland Group, a real estate development and consulting firm based in Burlington, Vermont, and completed $40 million in development projects, creating more than 200 homes across Vermont and New Hampshire. He holds a Master’s in Public Policy and Urban Planning from HKS and an AB in American Studies and Environmental Studies from Yale University. Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial assistance is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill of the OCPA Editorial Team. 

As Vice President Kamala Harris making a strong bid for the U.S. presidency, HKS Women and Public Policy Program Co-Director Hannah Riley Bowles says Harris is just one of many “path breakers” who have dramatically increased leadership opportunities for women. But she also says the reaction to Harris’ campaign in the media and the public conversation shows how the popular narrative about the efficacy of female leaders still lags behind the reality of what successful women are achieving. And she says that narrative also isn’t supported by research, including multiple studies showing that on average women are actually rated higher than men for a number of important leadership qualities associated with performance.  Bowles is the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the HKS, she chairs the HKS Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences (MLD) Area, and she is currently wrapping up her tenure as co-director of the Center for Public Leadership. She’s a recognized expert in the study of negotiation and gender. She joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about how studies say women in leadership roles are really performing, the ways women can successfully attain positions of responsibility and power despite traditional obstacles, and some forward-looking policy recommendations that could make things better. Hannah Riley Bowles’ Policy Recommendations:- Adopt family-friendly workplace policies that engage men equally in unpaid family and caregiving work.- Adopt more transparency in salary standards and more equity in making both women and men aware of the resources available to help them achieve higher-paying positions and positions of authority.- Require organizations to report their gender pay gaps to help them determine whether women are underpaid compared to men in the same job or if they are underrepresented in higher-level positions.Hannah Riley Bowles is the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). Hannah chairs the HKS Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences (MLD) Area and co-directs the HKS Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP) and the Center for Public Leadership. A leading expert on gender in negotiation, Hannah’s research focuses on women’s leadership advancement and the role of negotiation in educational and career advancement, including the management of work-family conflict. Her work has been featured in Harvard Business Review’s “Definitive Management Ideas of the Year” and she is the faculty director of Women and Power and Women Leading Change, the HKS executive programs for women in senior leadership from the public, private and non-profit sectors. She won the HKS Manuel Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003. She holds a doctorate in business administration degree from the Harvard Business School, a master’s in Public Policy from HKS, and a BA from Smith College.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.Design and graphics support for PolicyCast is provided by Laura King, Catherine Santrock and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O'Neill. 

The attempted assassination of former President and candidate Donald Trump has catalyzed an important discussion about both actual violence and threats of violence against political candidates, office-holders, policymakers, election officials, and others whose efforts help make our democracy work. Harvard Kennedy School professors Erica Chenoweth and Archon Fung join host Ralph Ranalli to talk about political violence, what it is, what it isn’t, why it has grown, and—most importantly—strategies for mitigating it to ensure the health of democratic governance in the United States and beyond. The motivations and political leanings of the 20-year-old Pennsylvania man who shot and wounded Trump with an AR-15-style assault rifle, Thomas Crooks, remain murky, making it difficult to make sense of why it happened. In one sense it was a continuation of an unfortunate 189-year-old tradition of assassinations and attempted assassinations of U.S. presidents. But for many scholars, researchers, and political analysts, it also appeared to be a culmination of a more recent uptick in the willingness of some people to use violence to achieve their political aims in today’s highly polarized society.  Fung is director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at HKS and has talked to numerous local officials about their first-hand accounts of being on the receiving end of violent threats. Chenoweth is director of the Nonviolence Action Lab and is a longtime scholar of both political violence and nonviolent alternatives.Please also see: The Ash Center's webinar on Political Violence and the 2024 ElectionErica Chenoweth is the Academic Dean for Faculty Engagement and the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School. Chenoweth studies political violence and its alternatives. They have authored or edited nine other books and dozens of articles on mass movements, nonviolent resistance, terrorism, political violence, revolutions, and state repression, including the recent “Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know” (2021) and “On Revolutions” (2022). Along with Zoe Marks, Chenoweth is also the author of the forthcoming book “Bread and Roses: Women on the Frontlines of Revolution,” which explores how women's participation impacts mass movements. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that uses social science tools and evidence to support movement-led political transformation. Foreign Policy ranked Chenoweth among the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013. They hold a Ph.D. and an M.A. in political science from the University of Colorado and a B.A. in political science and German from the University of DaytonArchon Fung is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government and director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School. at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance. He focuses upon public participation, deliberation, and transparency. His books include “Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency” (Cambridge University Press, with Mary Graham and David Weil) and “Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy” (Princeton University Press). He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in professional journals. He holds two S.B.s — in philosophy and physics — and a Ph.D. in political science from MIT.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Robert O’Neill and Nora Delaney of the OCPA Editorial Team.

Populism—the political term that describes a group of self-described common people who oppose elite—has turned up in what for many is an unexpected place: the push for a worldwide transition to clean energy. Even though they’re vital to preventing the most catastrophic consequences of the manmade global climate crisis, clean energy measures are encountering pushback from multiple sources ranging from local citizens groups, to cost-conscious consumers, to self-styled conservationists, to right-wing politicians, and to corporate boardrooms. Harvard Kennedy School Professor Robert Z. Lawrence and Professor Dustin Tingley from Harvard’s Department of Government say a number of forces are shaping the new clean energy pushback, including genuine popular resentment in some communities left over from economic transitions like the loss of manufacturing jobs due to globalization. Robert Lawrence is a former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and an economist affiliated with the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government who studies trade policy. Dustin Tingley of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences is a political scientist researching the politics of the climate crisis and co-author of the new book “Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse.” With time running out for the world to make significant reductions in fossil fuel use, they join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to discuss strategies and policy ideas to keep the momentum going toward a sustainable energy future.Policy Recommendations:Robert Z. Lawrence’s Policy recommendations:Move away from protectionism and use international open trade to create opportunities for developing countries to contribute to the energy transition and grow economically.Accelerate investment in clean energy technology development to ensure that green energy solutions are significantly more cost-effective than fossil fuel alternatives.Replace current incentive-based government programs to encourage clean energy development with a carbon tax to bring in increased revenue and fund clean energy research and infrastructure changeover.Exempt imported steel from current U.S. tariffs when it is used in making clean energy infrastructure such as wind turbines.Dustin Tingley’s policy recommendationsAt the federal level, systematically analyze the public finance challenge that states and communities are going to face from the clean energy transition and plan supportPrioritize transparency when making green investments in communities, to ensure they are effective and that companies are playing by the rules.Pass legislation to share revenue from wind and solar project leases on federal lands with state and regional governments in the same manner those governments receive funds from oil and gas leases.Encourage clean energy technology companies to get more civically involved with the communities where they are located.Episode Notes:Robert Z. Lawrence is the Albert L. Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment at HKS and is affiliated with the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. He is Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on trade policy and he currently serves as Faculty Chair of The Practice of Trade Policy executive program at Harvard Kennedy School. He served as a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1998 to 2000 and has also been a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author or co-author of numerous books, including “Crimes and Punishments? Retaliation under the WTO;” “Regionalism, Multilateralism and Deeper Integration;” and “Can America Compete?” Lawrence has served on the advisory boards of the Congressional Budget Office, the Overseas Development Council, and the Presidential Commission on United States-Pacific Trade and Investment Policy. He earned his PhD in economics at Yale University.Dustin Tingley of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences is a Professor of Government in the Harvard Department of Government and  Deputy Vice Provost for Advances in Learning. His research has spanned international relations, international political economy, climate change, causal inference, data science/machine learning, and digital education, with most focus now on the politics of climate change and energy transitions. His new book with Alex Gazmararian, “Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse,” was published with Cambridge University Press. The book features the voices of those on the front lines of the energy transition -- a commissioner in Carbon County deciding whether to welcome wind, executives at energy companies searching for solutions, mayors and unions in Minnesota battling for local jobs, and fairgoers in coal country navigating their community's uncertain future.  His book on American foreign policy with Helen Milner, Sailing the Water's Edge, was published in fall 2015, and was awarded the Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published in the field of U.S. national policy.He teaches courses on the politics of climate change and the environment, data science, and international relations. In the fall of 2023 he is teaching a new course called Energy at Harvard Business School. He received a PhD in Politics from Princeton and BA from the University of Rochester.Ralph Ranalli of the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of HKS PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in Political Science from UCLA and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.Editorial assistance for PolicyCast is provided by Nora Delaney, Robert O’Neill, and Jim Smith of the Harvard Kennedy School Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Design and graphics support is provided by Lydia Rosenberg, Delane Meadows and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team.