KSG Founds New King Hussein Program for Middle East Leaders

Jordanians and diplomats alike mourned the death of King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan, and now Harvard is paying its respects with a new program to honor him.

While on a trip to Jordan, Kennedy School of Government (KSG) Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr. agreed to establish the program in a private meeting with King Abdullah bin Hussein, the country's newly crowned monarch, according to the Harvard Gazette.

The program will honor the late King Hussein by continuing his work in promoting international peace and friendship.

The king's noted accomplishments include Jordan's 1994 peace accord with Israel and his work surrounding the 1998 Wye River peace agreement.

The KSG program will include a permanently endowed professorship--the King Hussein bin Talal Professorship of Public Leadership--and a series of King Hussein fellowships.

It's "a program designed to produce research on Middle East diplomacy and ways in which the knowledge and expertise in areas of public policy can be applied to Jordan," said Marvin Kalb, Murrow professor of press, politics and public policy at KSG.

A scholar will be invited to research and teach about Jordan and related questions in the Middle East. According to the Gazette, the professor "will build bridge among policy-makers, scholars and business leaders across the world," as Hussein did.

In addition to the professorship, current and future leaders of Jordan will be invited to Harvard for training. These fellowships are aimed to strengthen Jordanian leaders, a program KSG officials hope can be expanded to other Middle East nations.

"Our area in the Middle East needs all the academic attention that it could possibly get," said Mohamad M. Al-Ississ '00, president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Arab Students. "I think through getting people to get as much as possible from the excellent program at the Kennedy School and go back to Jordan to implement it, that will benefit the country immensely."

Al-Ississ said that although Harvard has programs devoted to the Arab world, they are devoted more to scholarly work than active change. He stressed that the KSG program is important because it may put research and teaching into effect in the Middle East.