Harvard Kennedy School
 
People mourn the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

People mourn the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Reuters/Joshua Roberts)

DEMOCRACY & GOVERNANCE

Research measures just how far to the right the next Supreme Court could go

 

Even before President Trump confirmed that he would nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, research by Kennedy School Professor Maya Sen and her colleagues had determined that any of the names he considered would move the Supreme Court far to the right of the average American’s ideological perspective. The researchers used an innovative method to track how the court could shift rightward with any of the 44 listed prospects. First, the scholars examined millions of political donations to estimate the ideologies of the donors. Sen and Professors Adam Bonica of Stanford University, Adam Chilton of the University of Chicago, and Kyle Rozema of Washington University then looked at political donations made by the potential Supreme Court nominees to political candidates. Their findings show that given how conservative the listed nominees were, the new median Supreme Court justice would hold viewpoints further to the right of 74 percent of Americans. Sen’s previous research showed that before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, the Supreme Court’s major decisions this spring term aligned fairly closely with the views of most Americans. 

 
 

HEALTH

Study measures health vs. economic tradeoffs of pandemic lockdowns

 

New research by Kennedy School Associate Professor Soroush Saghafian seeks to help policymakers strike the right balance between the economic and social costs of pandemic lockdown measures and health benefits. Saghafian and his coauthor, Alireza Boloori, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, collected health information—including infection rates, hospitalizations, residents’ mobility obtained from cell phone data, and the use of intensive-care beds and ventilators—and provided the first detailed, national, and state-by-state measure of economic costs and health gains. The researchers examined the various interventions taken by state governments across the United States, and then calculated the value of health benefits that they produced for each state. Saghafian explains that the results can help policymakers make better cost-benefit analyses of policy options, including the timing and duration of interventions.

 
 

GLOBALIZATION

Weighing tactics to help public leaders confront polarization

 

At the annual flagship event held by the Center for International Development (CID) at the Kennedy School, top business leaders, policymakers, and academics debated challenges of polarization, “us and them,” and conflict. The Global Empowerment Meeting gathered for a full week of virtual discussions, with hosts including Professor Asim Khwaja, the CID director, and Professor Ricardo Hausmann, director of the center’s Growth Lab. The opening session heard public leaders from Colombia, South Africa, Yemen, and Canada draw on their own experiences with polarization and how to overcome it. They considered polarization as a political tool and as a driver of recent increases in political extremism. A path to overcoming polarization, they argued, emerges only when the moderate majority binds together—despite differences—in support of the greater good or in opposition to a greater threat such as violence and war. One example: Former South African Cabinet Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi described how South Africans banded together after 1990 amid widespread violence to forge the National Peace Accord that led to the first democratic election in 1994, and then did so again to create the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to deal with past rights violations.
 

WHAT WE'RE READING

“

Generous listening can take as much courage as brave speaking, because listening to people with whom you strongly disagree or with whom you think you have nothing in common is hard. But understanding others’ perspectives and acting on that understanding is crucial for making a better world.”

—HKS Dean Douglas Elmendorf, “For the Sake of Argument,” HKS Magazine, Spring 2019

 

UPCOMING ONLINE EVENTS

 

HOSTED BY THE INSTITUTIONAL ANTI-RACISM AND ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT

Truth and Transformation 2020

Friday, October 2, 2020
10:00AM-5:30PM ET

HOSTED BY THE CARR CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS POLICY

Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities

Thursday, October 8, 2020
10:00AM-12:00PM ET

HOSTED BY THE BELFER CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

The man who ran Washington: Life and Times of James Baker III

Friday, October 16, 2020
12:00-1:15PM ET
 

IN THE NEWS

 
• The incredible influence of James A. Baker III [Samantha Power] New York Times
• The origins of policing in America [Khalil Gibran Muhammad] Washington Post
• For women of my generation, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was us. Her fights were our fights. [Wendy Sherman] USA Today
• Challenges mount for election officials [Archon Fung, Alex Keyssar] Harvard Gazette
• Will Tuesday’s presidential debate change the course of the election? [David Gergen, Yanilda María González, Thomas Patterson] Harvard Gazette
• Q&A with William F. Schulz and Sushma Raman, authors of ‘The Coming Good Society: Why New Realities Demand New Rights’ [Sushma Raman, William Schulz] Harvard University Press