Teaching

American democracy is in crisis. Politicians talk past each other, national policymaking is increasingly calcified, and states pursue wildly diverging policies that frequently contradict, or even directly challenge, one another, while sometimes contradicting the public will...

The purpose of the course is to facilitate the development of students' dissertation research ideas and to build community among Harvard Kennedy School doctoral students and faculty. Invited speakers from the Harvard Kennedy School faculty will engage students in...

This seminar course is designed to spur PhD students toward effective work on their dissertation and completion of an approved prospectus by the end of the academic year. There will be written assignments defining their problem area, a literature review, analytic frameworks...

This course will explore major public policy issues and challenges facing American democracy that have been placed in stark relief by the COVID-19 pandemic, using the pandemic and related issues as a case study for exploring the issues. Each session will consider a different...

This course considers the degree to which Americans' political opinions and actions are influenced by the mass media and the influence that public opinion and the mass media, in turn, have on public policy. Topics to be covered include the history of the mass media, recent...

This seminar surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the influence of domestic politics on foreign policy and international politics, with a primary, though not exclusive, emphasis on American foreign policy. Scholars have long recognized that domestic politics...

This is a course about fundamental problems of participation, democratic governance, and conflict in contemporary political systems. It will provide students with an analytical toolkit for understanding and acting on the political dimensions of policy problems. The G and H...

There are five PAC seminars, each bearing the same "150Y" designation along with the relevant policy-area prefix: BGP, DEV, DPI, IGA, and SUP. While the seminars differ in the subject-area concentrations of their students, they share key characteristics: All are explicitly...

This course considers the degree to which Americans' political opinions and actions are influenced by the media as well as the influence of the media on public policy. Topics to be covered include the history of the mass media, recent trends in the media, theories of media...