HKS Professor Elizabeth Linos, a behavioral scientist and founder of The People Lab, says the recent government cuts by the Trump administration and its so-called Department of Government Efficiency and the partisan debate over them are missing a key point. Linos says believers in small government and robust government can potentially find common ground in improving the function of government—whatever size it is— for the people it serves. In her work, Linos has identified says there are three pillars to a functioning public sector: people, which means working to recruit, retain and support talented workers; process, which involves turning interactions between citizens and government into positive, trust-building experiences; and feedback loops, where agencies are constantly using data to examine and improve how they’re doing their jobs. In the latest episode of HKS PolicyCast, she talks with host Ralph Ranalli about how the real choice about government isn’t between big or small, but between function and dysfunction. Elizabeth Linos’ recommendations for improving government: * Start by experiencing the process yourself: Try doing the task you're asking others to do (e.g., apply to a program, book an appointment). * Adopt a user-centered mindset: Focus on the user experience to uncover pain points and inefficiencies. * Identify simple, actionable improvements: Small barriers (like hard-to-find forms or lack of childcare) often reveal easy fixes. * Don’t underestimate small changes: Minor adjustments can significantly improve user experience and trust in government.

HKS COMMENCEMENT SPECIAL EDITION Award-winning international journalist and interviewer Christiane Amanpour developed her philosophy of journalism—which favors the pursuit of objective truth over neutrality—while covering events like the bloody siege of Sarajevo and Serbian ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. “People don't understand that objectivity actually means pursuing the truth,” she says. “But you get there by giving all sides a hearing, which doesn't mean treating all sides equally—then you are an accomplice in these extreme situations.” She also says that good journalism and democracy are inextricably linked, and that journalists and the public must speak out when either are threatened. Amanpour was this year’s Class Day speaker at the Harvard Kennedy School Commencement, arriving at the University at a tumultuous time, as the Trump administration has attacked both Harvard and major news organizations in ways she says echo authoritarian regimes she’s covered over the years. The daughter of an Iranian father and British mother, she was raised in Tehran until age 11 and finished her secondary education in British boarding schools before moving to the United States. She started as a lowly desk assistant at CNN in 1983, when she was fresh out of the University of Rhode Island’s journalism program and the network was basically a 3-year-old startup still trying to sell viewers and TV executives on the idea of a 24-hour news channel. She got her first big break covering the Iran-Iraq war, and through her reporting on everything from the fall of communism in Europe to the Persian Gulf War to the war in Bosnia, she basically became the de-facto face of CNN’s international coverage. Now based in London, she hosts the nightly shows “Amanpour” on CNN International and “Amanpour & Company” on PBS. She took some time out of her busy Class Day speaker schedule to share some thoughts on journalism and democracy with PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli.

Harvard Kennedy School Professor John Holdren and Jennifer Spence, the director of the Arctic Initiative at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs say the alarm bells ringing in the Arctic on everything from thawing permafrost to economic exploitation to great power rivalry are dire warnings for the rest of the world. It's one of the most remote regions on earth, but what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in there. Melting land ice in Greenland is the single biggest contributor to the sea level rise that is literally drowning Kiribati, a Pacific island nation that is home to 132,000 people and more than 6000 miles away. Worsening wildfires in the Canadian Arctic contributed to the rise in emergency room visits for people with respiratory problems in New York and Philadelphia last summer. Holdren and Spence say that for decades the Arctic has represented the best of humanity—a model of international cooperation where scientists, policymakers, and indigenous people have set aside national concerns to try to save one of the world’s most vital places. But that cooperation is now endangered by political conflict over Russia’s war on Ukraine and Trump’s attempts to annex Greenland from Denmark, by budget cuts to science programs, and by the economic lure of new ocean shipping routes made possible by melting ice and the region’s reserves of rare earth elements. John Holdren is co-director of the Kennedy School’s Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, a theoretical physicist, and director of the White House office of science and technology under President Obama. Jennifer Spence is a former Canadian government official and an expert on the Arctic and sustainable development. They join host PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about the unprecedented pressures facing the Arctic and its people. John Holdren’s Policy Recommendations: ● Reverse as many Trump administration cuts to research and Arctic science as possible and restore U.S. scientific cooperation efforts in the region. ● Prioritize and support joint work on Arctic Ocean management, the impacts of permafrost thaw, and the mechanics of Greenland ice sheet thaw and its contribution to global sea level rise. ● Focus on the management of Arctic travel routes as part of overall ocean management. ● Recognize that non-Arctic countries like China have legitimate interests in the Arctic and should be included in relevant discussions and collaborations. Jennifer Spence’s Policy Recommendations: ● All Arctic states should invest in their own expertise, scientists, and institutions to fill the space vacated by the U.S. and Russia . ● Continue dialogue and maintain lines of communication, while ensuring a place remains open for U.S. experts and officials at the working level of the Arctic Council. ● Prioritize areas of common ground for collaboration, such as wildfire and emergency management, and continue to collect and share data.

Study after study has shown that the well-intentioned ways of trying to achieve fairness in the workplace—trainings, leadership development programs, networking events, speaker events—simply haven’t delivered results in terms of equity and diversity. The reasons they haven’t worked has been the subject of exhaustive study by Harvard Kennedy School Professor Iris Bohnet and Senior Researcher Siri Chilazi. Both are affiliated with the Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy, where Bohnet, a behavioral scientist, is co-director. They say that most training programs focus on changing individual behavior, while their research and experiments have shown that changing systems—especially in a way that targets key moments in an organization’s operations where bias is given free rein—is much more effective. Fairness is a tough issue these days and the politics of the moment can make it a difficult subject even to talk about, but Bohnet and Chilazi join host Ralph Ranalli to discuss data-driven and research-backed ways they say can make workplaces more fair, more cohesive, and more productive. They also discuss these techniques in their new book: “Make Work Fair.” Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi’s policy recommendations for organizations looking to improve workplace fairness: * Approach organizational improvement like a doctor diagnosing a patient; use data to reveal gaps, pain points, and areas for improvement; and gain a thorough understanding of the issues before implementing solutions. * Design targeted interventions to address fairness gaps, and implement those interventions as experiments to test whether they work as intended. * Start small, prove concept, inspire learning about what works across your organization. After rolling out new processes, continually review and refine them.

Today PolicyCast welcomes two guests who were among the first experts to try to bring the wild world of cryptocurrency under the supervision of the U.S. financial regulatory system. Timothy Massad, who is now a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at HKS, is the former chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and one of the first regulators to establish jurisdiction over crypto. Professor Howell Jackson is an expert on financial regulation at Harvard Law School, and a former consultant to the Securities and Exchange Commission when the SEC made its first attempts to wrap its regulatory arms around the blockchain world. Also known as digital assets, cryptocurrencies have been around for more than 15 years, and in that time, they’ve been derided by critics as a purely-speculative asset with zero intrinsic value. Meanwhile, the blockchain that supports them has been criticized as a climate-change-exacerbating energy hog and a technology without a use case beyond helping criminals and terrorists launder money. For most ordinary people, they’ve been viewed as mostly irrelevant, a way-to-risky investment traded by tech bros and basement day traders. But that’s all about to change. Thanks to some new types of digital assets, interest from Wall Street and the Trump administration, and some bills currently before Congress, looks like it could soon be going mainstream and becoming integrated into the financial system, bringing with it both risks and possible benefits. Massad and Jackson join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to discuss what’s new in the world of cryptocurrency, where things are headed, and to share some recommendations on how to make sure crypto is an asset to ordinary people and not the source of the next financial meltdown. Timothy Massad’s policy recommendations for digital asset regulation: ● The top priority should be passing stablecoin regulatory legislation— preferably the McHenry-Waters proposal but either the STABLE Act or the GENIUS Act with appropriate revisions—to stablish a regulatory framework to address the risks of stablecoins. ● Address market structure issues by designating a regulator of the cash market or spot market in the trading of crypto assets, possibly the CFTC, while ensuring that any new regulations in the crypto space do not undermine the good work done over decades in the securities law. ● Clarify the question of when a digital asset is a commodity and when it is a security. ● Eliminate the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. Howell Jackson’s policy recommendations for digital asset regulation: ● Pass stablecoin regulatory legislation while making sure the regulatory structure reaches foreign entities that interact with the United States. ● Ensure that new regulatory systems not only address the safety and soundness of the markets for stablecoins and other digital assets, but also address illicit finance issues like money laundering and tax evasion. ● Recognize that this is a global problem craft global solution because digital assets can travel everywhere regardless of where they are issued.

When you’re exploring an important and widely held concept or idea in the world of policy and academia, it’s rare that you’re able to go straight to the original source. Joseph Nye is a former dean of the Kennedy School and now a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus. During his storied career in academia and government service, he’s also served as United States deputy secretary of state, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and as an assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. But he may be best known for a moment of inspiration at his kitchen table, when he was trying to define what gives governments influence in the world beyond the size of their armies or the wealth in their economies. He called it “soft power,” and the term quickly became an indispensable staple of serious conversations about geopolitics and global diplomacy. Nye says the concept is also rooted in subtlety, meaning it is at serious odds with the smashmouth ethos of the Trump presidency here in the United States. Joe Nye joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about the history of American soft power, how it is already declining under Trump, and what that could mean for the future. Joseph Nye’s Recommendations for how non-government can contribute to American soft power: * Universities can contribute to long-term resilience by continuing to educate foreign students and fostering better understanding of the United States. * American foundations can exert soft power through global humanitarian efforts (e.g., vaccinations in Africa). * American civil groups can attract people abroad to American values and set an example by robustly pursuing their constitutionally-protected domestic activities, including criticizing the government and supporting a free press.

In less than three months, the Trump administration has radically reconfigured America’s relationships with both traditional allies and adversaries. So how do you make sense of foreign and economic policy during the first three months of his new administration? Now back at the Kennedy School (she had served as a professor of practice), Ambassador Wendy Sherman is working to assess the motivations behind presidential actions that have changed the course of geopolitics and economics in ways she says could have profound repercussions on everything from global economic stability to the future of democracy to nuclear proliferation. A diplomat’s diplomat and winner of the presidential National Security Medal, Sherman is no stranger to decoding the moves and motivations of enigmatic world leaders and autocrats. During the Clinton administration, she was a counselor to the State Department and coordinated policy for the United States’ negotiations with North Korea and President Kim Jong Il about its nuclear missile program. During the Obama years, she was appointed as undersecretary of state for political affairs by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was the lead negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal between the regime in Tehran and the five UN Security Council permanent members—the U.S., China, Russia, France, and the UK—as well as Germany. Under President Biden, she became the first woman to serve as deputy secretary of state and was the department’s point person on relations with President Xi Jinping and China. Now she’s a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a Hauser Leadership Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership, where she is also a former director. She joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to discuss the places—some of them potentially dangerous—Trump seems to be taking the U.S. and the world. Wendy Sherman’s Foreign Policy Recommendations for non-U.S. World Leaders: * Prioritize the interests of your own country and citizens by focusing on ensuring global peace, security, and prosperity. * Maintain open lines of communication with the U.S. regardless of short-term changes in friendly or adversarial relations. * Respond to ongoing events while maintaining perspective about the changeability of U.S. and international politics.

With a Republican Congress apparently unwilling to check President Donald Trump’s power, many Americans fear a looming constitutional crisis and are looking to the federal courts to ride to the rescue. But political scientist and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Maya Sen, who studies the federal judiciary, says the cavalry probably isn’t coming. The Trump administration has seemingly defied judicial orders on deportations, withholding congressionally appropriated funds for federal programs, eliminating birthright citizenship, and other issues. Meanwhile, surrogates like Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire Elon Musk have stated in social media posts that Trump is simply not bound by judicial decisions and can do pretty much whatever he pleases. Trump has even joined with some of his political supporters calling for impeachment of judges who rule against him, prompting Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to respond and call Trump’s statement “inappropriate.” With the legislative branch of government sitting on the sidelines and without a credible threat of impeachment, Sen says the judiciary is no match for an authoritarian executive in terms of speed of action and political muscle—and was never intended to be. And even if it had been, structural issues with the way decisions are made and how judges are chosen give conservatives an advantage, and have resulted in a Supreme Court that is largely out of step with public opinion. Sen talks with PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli about what can be done to restore both the separation of powers and the balance of power in the U.S. government during this unprecedented pivotal moment in American history. Maya Sen’s Policy Recommendations: * Pass a constitutional amendment to end lifetime appointments and limit terms for federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, to 18 years to help depoliticize the process of judicial selection. * Exert public and electoral pressure on Congress and political leaders to defend the legislative branch’s constitutional prerogatives and to stop ceding power to the executive branch.

Danielle Allen and Mark Fagan say that when tested, thoughtfully deployed, and regulated, AI actually can help governments serve citizens better. Sure, there is no shortage of horror stories these days about the intersection of AI and government—from a municipal chatbot that told restaurant owners it was OK to serve food that had been gnawed by rodents to artificial intelligence police tools that misidentify suspects through faulty facial recognition. And now the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE say they are fast-tracking the use of AI to root out government waste and fraud, while making public virtually no details about what tools they are using or how they’ll be deployed. But Allen and Fagan say that, while careless deployment creates risks like opening security holes, exacerbating inefficiencies, and automating flawed decision-making, AI done the right way can help administrators and policymakers make better and smarter decisions, and can make governments more accessible and responsive to the citizens they serve. They also say we need to reorient our thinking from AI being a replacement for human judgement to more of a partnership model where each brings its strengths to the table. Danielle Allen is an HKS professor and the founder of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation. Mark Fagan is a Lecturer in Public Policy and faculty chair of the Delivering Public Services section of the Executive Education Program at HKS. They join PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to explain the guidelines, guardrails, and principles that can help government get AI right. Danielle Allen’s Policy Recommendations: * Federally license firms leading AI development in the same way other national high-risk labs are licensed, and require close reporting out of what they are discovering on an ongoing basis. * Support the "people's bid" for TikTok and generally promote an alternative, pro-social model for social media platforms. * Establish AI offices in state governments: Create offices that use AI to enhance openness, accountability, and transparency in government. Mark Fagan's Policy Recommendations: * Implement "sandbox" spaces for regulatory experimentation that allow organizations to test different policy ideas in a controlled environment to see what works. * Adopt a risk-based regulatory approach similar to the EU that categorize AI regulations based on risk levels, with clear guidelines on high-risk activities where AI use is prohibited versus those where experimentation is allowed.

For market purists, any mention of the term industrial policy used to evoke visions of heavy-handed Soviet-style central planning, or the stifling state-centric protectionism employed by Latin American countries in the late 20th century. But that conversation turned dramatically over the last several years, as President Joe Biden’s signature legislative achievements like the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act showcased policies designed to influence and shape industries ranging from tech to pharma to green energy. My guest today, Harvard Kennedy School Professor Ricardo Hausmann, is the founder and director of the Growth Lab, which studies ways to unlock economic growth and collaborates with policymakers to promote inclusive prosperity around the world. Hausmann says he believes markets are useful, but have shown themselves inadequate to create public benefits at a time when public objectives like the clean energy transition and shared prosperity have become increasingly essential to human society. In a wide-ranging conversation, we’ll discuss why industrial policy is making a comeback, tools that the Growth Lab has developed to help poorer countries and regions develop and prosper, and the uncertainty being caused by President Trump’s pledge to raise tariffs and protectionist barriers. Policy Recommendations: * Encourage governments to track industries that are not yet developed but have the potential for growth and monitor technological advancements to identify how new technologies can impact existing industries or create new opportunities. * Develop state organizations that are deeply embedded in understanding societal trends and industrial potential, similar to Israel’s office of the Chief Scientist or the U.S. Presidential Commission on Science and Technology. * Encourage governments to develop a pre-approved set of tools—including training, educational programs, research programs, and infrastructure—that can be quickly mobilized for specific economic opportunities. * Teach policy design in a way that mirrors medical education (e.g., learning by doing as in a teaching hospital), because successful policy design requires real-world experience, not just theoretical knowledge.