PolicyCast

The Chinese Communist Party rules a country that is already an economic superpower and is poised to become a military and geopolitical one as the 21st Century unfolds. But Harvard Kennedy School Professor Tony Saich says the party’s 100th birthday next month is also a time to remember the party’s struggles and humble beginnings. From it’s early days as Soviet-supported client and its existential struggles with the Chinese Nationalists; to the tragic excesses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; to its economic transformation and growing middle class, the party has made disastrous errors as well as successes. But through it all, Saich says, the party has shown a remarkable ability to survive, adapt, and maintain control of 1.4 billion people. That’s why understanding China’s politics is crucial for the future of everything from the world economy to the climate crisis to international human rights. Professor Saich, the director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, has written a new book due out next month called “From Rebel to Ruler: One Hundred Years of the Chinese Communist Party.” He talks to host Ralph Ranalli about the party’s past and why understanding it is important for the future.About our guest:Professor Anthony Saich is the Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Daewoo Professor of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Ralph Ranalli, Senior Staff Writer and Producer at the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs.PolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Associate Dean for Communications and Public Affairs Thoko Moyo.Our guest for this episode, Sheila Jasanoff, is the Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School and the founder and director of the Program on  Science, Technology and Society.PolicyCast is produced and engineered by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Associate Dean for Communications and Public Affairs Thoko Moyo.PolicyCast is produced and engineered by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Joseph Aldy, an economist and professor of the practice of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, has seen this all before. A climate in crisis. A big economic downturn. A transition from a Republican administration to a new Democratic president looking to drastically change the country’s direction. Twelve years ago, Aldy was a member of then-President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team as it took over from the George W. Bush administration. He says the challenges today are much the same—figuring out how to push aggressive measures to stave off the worst effects of climate change while bringing back lost jobs and jump-starting a stalled economy. Some of those Obama policies worked, he says, particularly investments in wind and solar subsidies that have now made clean energy sources competitive on price with dirty ones like coal.But comparisons only go so far. Aldy says in many ways President-elect Joe Biden faces problems that are even more formidable and acute: a much shorter window to transform the energy foundation of our economy, a struggling economy made even worse by a raging pandemic, and a country even more polarized and in ideological conflict with itself — including a US Senate that’s still up for grabs and an outgoing president who is refusing to acknowledge that he’s even lost.Professor Aldy and host Thoko Moyo explore those challenges and discuss how the new administration can respond—and maybe even succeed.Joseph Aldy is a Harvard Kennedy School professor of the practice of public policy, a university fellow at Resources for the Future, a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also the faculty fhair for the Regulatory Policy Program at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. His research focuses on climate change policy, energy policy, and regulatory policy.PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Associate Dean for Communications and Public Affairs Thoko Moyo.PolicyCast is produced and engineered by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our website.

In 2019, the 72-million strong Millennial generation (23-to-38-year-olds) quietly surpassed the Baby Boomers as America’s largest living generational cohort. In the 2020 election, they made their voices heard with a roar. Not only did younger voters—and particularly younger voters of color—turn out to vote and organize for candidates in record numbers, they also provided the margin of victory for Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in key states like Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. Mark Gearan is director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. He was also director of the Peace Corps under President Bill Clinton, as well as White House deputy chief of staff, communications director, and Vice Presidential Campaign Manager for the Clinton/Gore ticket in 1992. He is also the former president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges.Marshall Ganz is the Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at HKS. He teaches political organizing and trains young activists from groups like March for Our Lives and the Sunrise Movement, and was himself a member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Ganz was also director of organizing for the United Farm Workers under Cesar Chavez, and was a consultant on organizing and voter turnout for the political campaigns of Nancy Pelosi, Alan Cranston, Jerry Brown, and others.PolicyCast is hosted by Harvard Kennedy School Associate Dean of Communications and Public Affairs Thoko Moyo. The podcast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School. It is produced and engineered by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes. For more information and past episodes, please visit: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/more/policycastIf you have comment or a suggestion, please email us: policycastatharvarddotHKSdotEdu

Some choices are easy. Some are hard. Some are momentous, which is how many people are describing today’s US national election. Yet all of the choices we make have one thing in common: Our decisions are only as good as the information we have to base them on. And with the rise of disinformation, misinformation, media manipulation, and social media bubbles, we’re finding it increasingly hard to know what information to trust and to feel confident in the decisions we make.Harvard Kennedy School Professor Matthew Baum and Joan Donovan, the research director for the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, have been studying disinformation and the people who create it since the 2016 election and the time when the term “fake news” first entered the political conversation. Baum and Donovan have been building a community of researchers and creating tools to help understand disinformation, where it comes from, and — hopefully — how to make it less of a threat in the future.Baum, the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications, held one of Harvard’s first major conferences on fake news and misinformation in early 2017 on the heels of the last presidential election, when accusations flew that Republican Donald Trump’s electoral college victory was aided by disinformation campaigns and foreign interference. Donovan came to the Harvard Kennedy School in 2019 and is now director of the Technology and Social Change Project at Shorenstein. They launched the nation’s first scholarly journal on fake news, the HKS Misinformation Review, earlier this year.PolicyCast is hosted by Thoko Moyo, the Associate Dean for Communications and Public Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. The podcast is produced and edited by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes.

Recent polls show a majority of Americans say we need major changes to how police enforce the law and provide public safety. Policymakers and political leaders—under pressure from the Defund and Black Lives Matter movements after high police killings of Black people like Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and numerous others—are now considering a variety of measures to curb police brutality. But Harvard Kennedy School faculty members Sandra Susan Smith, the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice, and Assistant Professor of Public Policy Yanilda González say history has shown that reforming the police is much easier said than done.In her studies of policing in Latin America, González says authoritarian police forces have been able to block or roll back reforms even in otherwise democratic countries. In countries with high levels of polarization and inequality, including the U.S., she says, police are often given the role of protecting “us”—the dominant group—from “them.” Smith, the new director of the Kennedy School’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, says studies show that many widely-proposed reforms simply have not been effective in reducing police brutality. Measures like anti-bias training, body cameras, and diversity hiring fail, she says, because they put the pressure on individual officers to change deeply-entrenched systemic behavior. So if those things won’t work, what will?

This is the first episode of PolicyCast's 2020-2021 season. Alexander Keyssar is the Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. An historian by training, he specializes in the exploration of historical problems that have contemporary policy implications.In this episode, Professor Keyssar discusses his new book: "Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?" (Harvard University Press, 2020)  He is also the author of the widely-read book: "The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States" (Basic Books, 2000), for which he was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.PolicyCast is hosted by Thoko Moyo, the associate dean for communications at Harvard Kennedy School. The podcast is produced and engineered by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes. 

Joining PolicyCast and host Thoko Moyo for this episode are Kennedy School Professors Mathias Risse and Jacqueline Bhabha of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Professor Risse is faculty director of the Carr Center and his work focuses on global justice and the intersections of human rights, the climate crisis, inequality, and technology.  He is also the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Administration at Harvard Kennedy School.Professor Bhabha is an expert in public health — particularly involving children and vulnerable populations — as well as an internationally-known human rights lawyer. She is FXB Director of Research, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health and  the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School.To read more about the Carr Center’s work, please visit their website. PolicyCast is hosted by Harvard Kennedy School Associate Dean of Communications Thoko Moyo. The show is produced by Ralph Ranalli and Susan Hughes.

For more information, please visit:The Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability Project at the Shorenstein Center.The Nonviolent Action Lab at the Carr Center.