About the Event
Co-hosted by the Ash Center, the one-day workshop will highlight innovative programs that help veterans. We are pleased to offer spots for students interested in observing the event. Those interested should contact Christina Marchand, christina_marchand@harvard.edu.... Read more about A Better Welcome Home: Transformative Models to Support Veterans and Their Families

Devra Moehler, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

About the Seminar
Many developing countries include candidate pictures and party symbols on electoral ballots in order to allow autonomous voting by citizens with little education and voting experience. Advocates of visual cues argue that they reduce error and they allow illiterate voters to identify candidates and parties and mark their ballots in private, rather than having to rely on assistance from others who may try to alter their votes. However, these symbols might themselves shape voter preferences – and, hence, election outcomes – in unintended ways.

In this seminar, Devra Moehler describes how she conducted a survey experiment just days prior to the February 2011 elections in Uganda to test the effects of party identifiers and other features on ballot papers.... Read more about Parties on the Ballot: Visual Cues and Voting Behavior in Uganda

Harold Forsyth, Peruvian Ambassador to the U.S. and former Peruvian Ambassador to China
Co-sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies

About the Speaker
Harold Winston Forsyth became ambassador of Peru to the United States on August 29, 2011.

Before arriving in Washington, Forsyth was ambassador of Peru to China (2009-2011). Previous to that post he served as ambassador of Peru to San Marino and Turkey, Italy, and Colombia. He also served as consultant of the General Secretariat of the Andean Community of Nations, and was permanent representative of Peru to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the World Food Program.... Read more about U.S.-China-Latin America Relations: President Humala’s Administration Perspective

Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center

About the Speaker
Dr. Sanjbegz Tumur-Ochir is the president of the National University of Mongolia (NUM). In the recent past, Tumur-Ochir has paid visits to Japan, China, Taiwan, Turkey, and Germany as part of a larger effort to internationalize higher education in Mongolia and to establish stronger links between NUM and other universities around the world. He has initiated a series of lectures at NUM by Nobel laureates and has signed cooperation agreements with Meiji University and the University of Gottingen.... Read more about Mongolian Politics in Transition

About the Seminar
The Program on Crisis Leadership and the Crisis Management Student Group at HKS welcome Dr. Gregg Greenough and John Crowley of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), who will present on their work concerning crisis mapping and early warning systems, a dynamic area of research that examines the use of information communications technologies in various conflict and disaster settings. In addition, they will briefly overview the humanitarian implications of climate change – an increasingly important issue for the fields of disaster management, humanitarian assistance, and disaster risk reduction.

Light refreshments provided.

More information on crisis mapping>>

Sponsored by the Program on Crisis Leadership, the HKS Crisis Management Student Group, and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.... Read more about Crisis Mapping and Early Warning Systems in Humanitarian Relief

About the Seminar
Islam is commonly perceived as incompatible with democracy. The nature of state in Indonesia proves that religion and the state are two separate entities. As the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, Indonesia was a democratic country from 1950 to 1957. The fall of former President Soeharto’s New Order authoritarian regime in 1998 has been an avenue to a new democratic Indonesia.

Nationalists, Islamists, and secular political parties compete in fair and free elections. Civil liberties and political rights, however, have allowed undemocratic forces such as transanstional Islamist radical movements and groups of Islamist thuggery to strive for an Islamist state in Indonesia.

This seminar will reveal the two expressions of liberal-democratic and radical-conservative Islam in Indonesia since 1998. Four speakers will elaborate the course of Islam and Democracy in Indonesia.... Read more about Islam and Democracy: Two Expressions of Islam in Contemporary Indonesia

Christopher Wlezien, Temple University

About the Seminar
The link between public opinion and policy is of special importance in representative democracies. There is interest in policymakers’ responsiveness to public opinion. There also is interest in public responsiveness to policy itself. Only a small number of studies compare either policy or public responsiveness across political systems, however. Previous research has focused mostly on a handful of countries – the U.S., U.K., and Canada – that share similar cultures and electoral systems. It remains, then, for scholars to better assess the opinion-policy connection across contexts.

At this seminar, Professor Christopher Wlezien describes his recent research taking a first step in this direction, drawing on data from two sources: (1) public preferences for spending from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), and (2) measures of government spending from OECD spending datasets.... Read more about Political Institutions and the Opinion-Policy Link

Victor (Yue) Yuan, Horizon Research Consultancy Group
Co-sponsored by the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations

About the Speaker
Victor (Yue) Yuan is chairman of the board and founder and president of Horizon Research Consultancy Group which was founded in 1992. Mr. Yuan has had more than 20 years of experience in professional marketing, social research and policy analysis, and management consulting. He has published more than 400 research reports, papers, books, and translation works on law, economics, sociology, politic science, and culture. He also specializes in the areas of social group culture, branding, and empirical methodology of design for marketing strategy and public policy.... Read more about The Change of Chinese Public Opinion Towards Government and NGOs