Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), officially the John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the school of public policy and government of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school offers master's degrees in public policy, public administration, and international development, four doctoral degrees, and various executive education programs. It conducts research in subjects relating to politics, government, international affairs, and economics. HKS had an endowment of $1.7 billion. It is a member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), a global consortium of schools that trains leaders in international affairs.
The primary campus of Harvard Kennedy School is on John F. Kennedy Street in Cambridge. The main buildings overlook the Charles River and are southwest of Harvard Yard and Harvard Square, on the site of a former MBTA Red Line trainyard. The School is adjacent to the public riverfront John F. Kennedy Memorial Park.
Harvard Kennedy School alumni include 18 heads of state or government, the most of any graduate institution in the world. Alumni also include cabinet officials, military leaders, heads of central banks, and legislators.
History
Founding
Harvard Kennedy School was founded as the Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration in 1936 with a $2 million gift (equivalent to roughly $43 million as of 2023) from Lucius Littauer, an 1878 Harvard College alumnus, businessman, former U.S. Congressman, and the first coach of the Harvard Crimson football team.
Harvard Kennedy School's shield was designed to express the national purpose of the school and was modeled after the U.S. shield. The School drew its initial faculty from Harvard's existing government and economics departments, and welcomed its first students in 1937.
The School's original home was in the Littauer Center, north of Harvard Yard, which is now home to Harvard University's Economics Department. The first students at the Graduate School were called Littauer Fellows, participating in a one-year course listing which later developed into the school's mid-career Master in Public Administration program. In the 1960s, the School began to develop its current public policy degree and course curriculum associated with its Master in Public Policy program.
Renaming and move
In 1966, three years following the assassination of U.S. President and 1940 Harvard College alumnus John F. Kennedy, the school was renamed in his honor.
By 1978, the faculty, including presidential scholar and adviser Richard Neustadt, foreign policy scholar and later dean of the School Graham Allison, Richard Zeckhauser, and Edith Stokey, consolidated the School's programs and research centers at the present Harvard Kennedy School campus. The first new building opened on the southern half of the former Eliot Shops site in October 1978. Under the terms of Littauer's original grant, the current campus also features a building called Littauer.
In 1966, at the same time as the school was renamed, the Harvard Institute of Politics was created with Neustadt as its founding director. Harvard Institute of Politics has been housed on the school campus since 1978, and today sponsors and hosts a series of programs, speeches and study groups for Harvard undergraduates and graduate students. Along with major Harvard Kennedy School events, the Institute of Politics holds the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, named in honor of the late John F. Kennedy Jr., in Harvard Kennedy School's Littauer Building.
Rebranding and campus expansion
In late 2007, the Kennedy School of Government announced that while its official name was not being altered, it was rebranding itself as Harvard Kennedy School effective Fall 2008. The goal was to make clearer the school's connection with Harvard. It was also thought that the new branding would reduce confusion with other entities named after Kennedy, such as the Kennedy Center and the Kennedy Library. The rebranding had the support of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, as well as of Caroline Kennedy.
In 2012, Harvard Kennedy School announced a $500 million fundraising campaign, $120 million of which was to be used to significantly expand the Harvard Kennedy School campus, adding 91,000 square feet of space including six new classrooms, a new kitchen, and dining facility, offices and meeting spaces, a new student lounge and study space, more collaboration and active learning spaces, and a redesigned central courtyard. Groundbreaking commenced on May 7, 2015, and the project was completed in late 2017. The new Harvard Kennedy School campus opened in December 2017.