Nation & World

As the country prepares to welcome home large numbers of servicemen and servicewomen from Iraq this winter, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation held a conference, “A Better Welcome Home: Transformative Models to Support Veterans and Their Families,” which explored approaches to help veterans connect to their communities and leverage their strengths in a tough job market.

At an event sponsored by the Women’s Initiative in Leadership at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, President Drew Faust discussed qualities that make a great leader and offered insights into her own role heading Harvard.

A Radcliffe and Rappaport symposium explored the important city-university relationship, and areas where each side can benefit the other.

Most people would say they live in a globalized world, but a sociology professor favors the model of a denationalized world in which regional organizations increasingly predominate.

A sprawling urban pocket of poverty offers a timeless lesson: talent is universal, but opportunity is not.

Prohibitions on marijuana use do more harm than good, and it’s time the federal government stepped away from the issue altogether, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., told a crowd at Harvard Law School Oct. 18.

Renowned chef Ferran Adrià visited Harvard Business School Oct. 13 to announce a challenge to business students: a competition to design the new venture that will expand his creative and culinary empire.

The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics is offering $8,000 in prizes for novel ideas on how to monitor and undercut institutional corruption.

U.N. official Babatunde Osotimehin says that educating women and girls worldwide is a critical step in slowing population growth.

Occupy Wall Street, the inspiration for hundreds of similar economic protests, is “an angry work in progress” that drew experts’ attention during two programs at Harvard.

Charged with enhancing undergraduate education in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning annually assists scores of faculty members and teaching fellows.

A new collaboration between Harvard Law School and the Brookings Institution hopes to help define the widening, post-9/11 reality of what constitutes a threat to society.

Barry R. Bloom Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson Professor of Public Health, Harvard School of Public Health

Two alumni of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who received their Ph.D.s from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, won the Nobel Prize for economics Oct. 10, 2011 for their work on change and the macroeconomy.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard Kennedy School alumna, is one of three recipients of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote peace, democracy, and women’s rights.

A small group of business and higher education leaders met in Washington to discuss the importance of attracting the world’s best students, the economic stimulus provided by government-funded research, and the safeguards of intellectual property protection.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says that universities and businesses are key contributors to the innovation that drives economic growth in this country but that congressional attention to research funding will have to wait until broader budget talks are completed.

Women’s voices have long been absent from stories of war — and from the process of peacemaking. A group of women scholars and filmmakers gathered at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Oct. 4 to explore those untold stories in conjunction with the new PBS series “Women, War, and Peace.”

Students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design mix reality and research during travel as Community Service Fellows, doing everything from helping tsunami victims to studying activist art.

A conference on “The Futures of Immigration: Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue” brought together academics and working reporters to hash out immigration topics such as the law, economics, and the future impact of the new arrivals’ children on U.S. labor markets and culture.

In a lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, retiring Professor David Perkins explored the evolution of the teaching of thinking, including its history, obstacles, advances, and likely future.

A panel of scholars explored the topic of Islam in Nigeria in preparation for the visit to Harvard by Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, the Sultan of Sokoto.

Chilean President Sebastián Piñera said during a Harvard Kennedy School speech on Sept. 23 that he hopes to lead Chile into the ranks of fully developed nations by the end of the decade.

Groups of educators and administrators from South Africa took part in a series of Harvard-sponsored programs, aimed at transforming leadership in that nation’s public schools.

Through its Nuremberg Trials Project, the Harvard Law School Library is digitizing parts of a massive trove of records from the postwar trials of high-ranking Nazi political and military leaders.

With a lawsuit against the British making its way through the courts, elderly Kenyan fighters share tales of battling the colonial regime.

Uncertainty about the long-term effects of low-level radiation and despair over the bleak employment picture in Japan are contributing to alarming rates of suicide among those affected by the cascading disasters of the March 11 earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown of a nuclear reactor, Harvard experts found on recent visits.

U.S. Navy Captain Curtis R. Stevens, Midshipman 1st class Evan Roth ’12, and Midshipman 3rd class Catherine Philbin ’14 discuss the demands and rewards of life in the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps at Harvard University.

American politicians no longer politely agree to disagree. On that, participants in a panel talk Sept. 16 at the John F. Kennedy Forum all concurred. On whether there was any chance this would change, there was dispute. Politely, if passionately, expressed.

Michael Chertoff, former U.S. secretary of Homeland Security, outlines the security paradigm shift in the run-up to 9/11 and the factors to consider when creating a new legal architecture to fight terrorism.