KSG Centers Tie Academia And `Real World' Together

They have a dizzying array of names, familiar from lecture posters seen around campus. The nine research centers of the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), ranging from the Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy to the Joint Center for Housing Studies, offer the unique combination of academia and real-world study that is the Kennedy School's forte.

The KSG thrives on its connections to the real world of politics and public policy: students studying for their masters of public policy stream in from the professional world for two brief years of academics, and high-profile speakers visit almost daily to share their experiences with students.

These centers ground this busy KSG experience in solid research. The nine centers are like think tanks: they are diverse both in their subject of study and their methods of studying it. Some sponsor courses, others mainly fund faculty research or sponsor lectures. Sometimes, many of these are united under the same center.

Assistant director David E. Luberoff likes to describe the Taubman Center for State and Local Government as a loose confederacy.

"What ties us together is a variety of domestic policy issues and our interest in those," Luberoff says. "Mainly it's a group of like-minded scholars."

In differentiating his Taubman Center from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Government Department, Luberhoff high-lights the practicality and accessibility of the center's research.

"We are a bit more in contact with the actual work of government," Luberoff says.

They keep in touch with the real world in a number of ways. Several host fellows come for a year of academics and to share their work experiences with Harvard students. Others host weekly brown bag lunches with guests from the field. And all focus their research on current public debate.

"There is not much dust that settles on the center," says Marvin Kalb, director of the Shorenstein Center. His center not only welcomes six fellows every semester, "journalists as well as scholars," but reaches out by participating in current debate.

"The world of journalism calls on us," Kalb says. "We seem to represent a non-partisan, serious appreciation to the world of journalism."

Just this week, for example, Kalb moderated a discussion on press coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal for the American Society of Newspaper Editors and will moderate one next week for newspaper publishers.

The focus of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has changed over time, according to Executive Director Richard A. Falkenrath.

"Under the Clinton administration global warming has been very important," Falkenrath says. Since the cold war ended, research has turned away from arms control to internal conflict, ethnic conflict, terrorism and Middle East and Asian security.

The Belfer Center is one of the oldest of KSG's research centers, founded in 1973. It is organized around four core programs--the International Security Program, the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, the Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project.

Rather than duplicating the work of academic departments, Falkenrath says that individuals have the opportunity to work with like-minded researchers in other centers and schools of the University. The Belfer Center's work on energy and the environment, for example, overlaps with initiatives at the Center for Business and Government.

Shawn J. Bohen, the administrative director of the Hauser Center for Non-Profit Organizations, which is only a year old, says her center "hopes to connect the dots."

Although there has always been "an enormous amount of interest in the non-profit sector," students and faculty are often unaware of the opportunities that exist at and beyond Harvard, Bohen says.

"We want to connect people to create research and learning opportunities helping [students] to take full advantage of the opportunities the University offers while [they're] here," Bohen says.

All the centers encourage undergraduates to take advantage of the opportunities they offer. The Hauser Center has research assistant positions available to undergraduates on a regular basis, for example.

Kalb teaches a class in the basics: "PPP 100," on press, politics and public policy.

"I decided six or seven years ago to allow half a dozen seniors into the class if they demonstrated a serious interest," Kalb says. "If I had one hope over the next couple of years it would be for a course like PPP 100 to be offered in the Yard."

Although her funds and staff are too limited to advertise widely, Julie B. Wilson, director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, says that undergraduates are encouraged to take advantage of the brown bag lunches, which play host to fascinating people often invited by students themselves, who use the centers' resources for research.

"One of the nice things about Harvard is that a lot of people, even though they don't get paid, want to come," Wilson says. "People are inspired by the students."

The Institute of Politics (IOP), probably the most well-known to students at the College in its mission to offer KSG resources to undergraduates, is in fact a research center too.

Beyond Teaching

The KSG has no departments, rather courses and professors fall under different themes and areas of study. Thus, they turn to the research centers for support and academic community.

According to Kalb, the centers focus on "a theme of government rather than a department."

Faculty choose to affiliate with the centers, and can affiliate with more than one. Kalb says that this makes the Shorenstein Center unique among centers studying the media, which he adds is "a growth industry in the academic world."

"We have a faculty that teaches eight or nine courses per semester," Kalb says. "We hit all aspects of major public policy to examine how the press affected them."

But Luberoff says the Taubman Center does not focus on instruction.

"We make thinking accessible via writings," he says.

Rather than sponsoring courses on its own, Wilson says the Weiner Center advocates on behalf of its students and researchers. It has a particular challenge in losing many faculty affiliates each time there is a new administration in Washington.

"Although research centers don't hire faculty, we have responsibility for making sure the courses our students need are taught," Wilson says.

Finding Green

While faculty choose to affiliate with centers for the support they offer, the centers' funding relies on their reputation and relevance to current policy problems.

The Joint Center for Housing Studies--housed by the KSG, but run jointly by the KSG and the Graduate School of Design--is funded by an advisory board composed of building materials companies, builders and financial services companies. Examples include Home Depot and National Gypsum.

"The advisory board has been around for a long time. The companies are leaders in their respective fields," says Nicolas P. Repsinas, who began as director of the forty-year-old Center for Housing Studies in March.

The center produces valuable data for these companies, according to Repsinas. Its signature report is the annual "State of the Nation's Housing."

Members of the advisory board choose to fund the center partly because of its affiliation with Harvard, which gives the research a context, according to Repsinas.

"[Housing] is a subject area including design, government, economics. It reflects the diversity that is Harvard," Repsinas says. The affiliation "gives it a special stature."

Foundation grants, rather than for-profit institutions, fund most of the other centers.

The Weiner Center just received funding for a new program in equity and social policy from the National Science Foundation. It is multidisciplinary. The impetus of the program came from the KSG center, but it will provide opportunities to faculty in disciplines and schools across Harvard, according to Wilson.

Falkenrath says that while some of the Belfer Center's programs have endowments, all apply for federal and foundation grants.

"They apply as individual faculty members and researchers. They like to do it this way," Falkenrath says. The center provides a financial office and an accountant and the institutional recognition and name value that convince foundations to fund faculty projects.

"The purpose of a research center should be to provide a location to carry out research that is better than doing it on their own," Falkenrath says.