Friday Notes, May 23, 2025
Dear Friends —
This morning I went to LinkedIn and searched on “Harvard Kennedy School,” and then clicked on the filter for first-degree contacts, the people I’m most directly connected to. I didn’t attend the school myself, but over the years I’ve had the sense that a lot of people I worked with in think tanks, social enterprises, universities, government, multilateral agencies, and philanthropic foundations have a degree from the Kennedy School — or wanted one. In fact, it always felt in a slightly irritating way like a club I was near to, but not in.
As I suspected, a huge number of people I’ve gotten to know through a career in global health, education, program evaluation, and governance have ties to the Kennedy School. They are in leadership roles in every region of the world — every part of the nonprofit and corporate sectors, every agency within the United Nations family, and a broad swath of governments. The older ones are in senior executive jobs; the younger ones are rising stars. (I know my readers; if you query LinkedIn like this, I bet you will have the same experience.)
I was thinking about these connections because Harvard is in the headlines, and the Kennedy School is particularly affected by the threatened prohibition on enrolling people who enter the U.S. on a student visa. Some 60 percent of the Kennedy School student body hails from about 100 other countries — a profile reflected in my own LinkedIn search — and that diversity profoundly enriches the educational experience for all.
When you have a school that brings people from around the world into one place, particularly in a graduate program that offers professional degrees like a master in public policy or master of public health, it is mind-opening and world-changing. (I benefited from a comparable experience during my own graduate work at Johns Hopkins University, but I bet it’s even more pronounced at the Kennedy School.)
The experience is mind-opening because of the multiple perspectives that inform all of the discussions, inside the classroom and out. No one can leave that environment without a nuanced appreciation for both the commonalities across cultures and countries, and the importance of contextual understanding. If that’s all you learn in your graduate program, it’s enough.
The experience is world-changing because the intellectual connections and bonds of friendship with the fellow students persist forever. They create a web that is like a superstructure beyond national borders or identities. From what I’ve observed from outside the Kennedy School club — and have felt personally from my own long-ago graduate school connections — the shared frameworks, vocabulary, and other conceptual touchstones create a sense of kinship like a shared religion. Graduates have all learned to articulate and weigh variables that go into decision making in similar ways, and they possess a mutual understanding about the importance of facts, of rights, and of peaceful coexistence. That commonality makes it easier to communicate, easier to negotiate, and easier to trust. And what is more valuable on our one planet than the ability for leaders from different places and perspectives to communicate, negotiate, and trust?
If the opportunity to attend the Kennedy School, or any other college or university, is withheld from people outside the U.S., there will be immediate and visible individual and institutional losses. Those are painful to think about. But the larger losses that are harder to see will be felt over the long-term: the loss of the cross-national connections that benefit all of us so much. I honestly never thought I’d be saying this, but let’s say a little prayer today for Harvard University.
And keeping with the Ivy League theme, an oldie but goodie -
Whether you are a basketball fan or not, I think you’ll enjoy this brilliant writing by the legendary Sally Jenkins about this past Wednesday’s Knicks-Pacers matchup. (The link will take you to a “gift” article but if you don’t have a Washington Post account you’ll have to set one up to get it.) There’s a great video within it.
Have a good weekend,
-Ruth