Here's a look at our upcoming events...

• 6/7 — FORUM: A Public Address by Nobel Laureate Tawakkol Karman
• 6/23–6/30 — Latino Leadership Initiative, cohort 3

And others of note from around the University and beyond...

• 5/13 — Walk for Light (Liter of Light)
• 5/24 — Harvard University Commencement
• 5/31–6/1 — 3rd Berlin Forum on Innovation in Governance (Technische Universität Berlin)
• 6/9 — Milken-Penn GSE’s 2nd Annual Education Business Plan Competition
• 6/11–6/12 — Personal Democracy Forum 2012
• 10/24–10/27 — 2012 ILA Conference

Join the CPL mailing list for up-to-date information on CPL announcements, research, and event information. Got an event that you'd like us to list? Email suggestions to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Here's a look at our upcoming events...

• 6/7 — FORUM: A Public Address by Nobel Laureate Tawakkol Karman
• 6/23–6/30 — Latino Leadership Initiative, cohort 3

And others of note from around the University and beyond...

• 5/13 — Walk for Light (Liter of Light)
• 5/24 — Harvard University Commencement
• 5/31–6/1 — 3rd Berlin Forum on Innovation in Governance (Technische Universität Berlin)
• 6/9 — Milken-Penn GSE’s 2nd Annual Education Business Plan Competition
• 6/11–6/12 — Personal Democracy Forum 2012
• 10/24–10/27 — 2012 ILA Conference

Join the CPL mailing list for up-to-date information on CPL announcements, research, and event information. Got an event that you'd like us to list? Email suggestions to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

With the Kennedy School (HKS) placing increased emphasis on experiential learning opportunities, CPL has jumped on the bandwagon in a big way. Three experiments have highlighted our cocurricular programming this academic year, each of them designed to give students an opportunity to use insights gleaned from specific contexts to shape policy and their own self-understanding as leaders.

The first was a fall study group entitled "Knowledge, New Media, the Arts, and Civic Engagement: Four Keys to Revitalizing America’s Small Cities." Led by Ed Walker, an entrepreneur, urban activist, and lawyer, based in Roanoke, Virginia, this experiment exposed ten HKS students to an interdisciplinary approach to revitalizing tertiary cities with populations under 100,000—where more than 50 million Americans call home. The study group focused on five spheres of influence: arts & design, new media and knowledge, food and drink, social entrepreneurship and investment, and key aspects of good government including politics, policy and citizenship. In addition to Cambridge-based sessions, the students also attended CityWorks (X)po, a two-day conference in Roanoke that brought together more than 400 social entrepreneurs from across the country and overseas to share ideas about the synergistic effect these elements can have when subsumed under a single, integrated plan. Walker plans to hold the conference annually, and to turn it into a network of linked initiatives.

By the end of the study group, students had self-organized into interdisciplinary teams to craft proposals for improving the life and civic engagement of tertiary cities of their own choosing and with which they had some on-the-ground experience.

More than a year has passed since a wave of revolutions washed over the Middle East. Some of these were successful; for others, the struggle continues today. There's no question that each movement gained strength and determination from simultaneous regional events. Indeed, this was one of the most salient dynamics: the ability of activists to leverage the internet and communication technologies to help their cause.

But for Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim, the most important lesson about the Arab Spring lies elsewhere. "Egypt revolted because there was a regime that was basically oppressing all of the people, not because of a Facebook page or an individual calling for people to go into the streets," he told a capacity crowd at Harvard Kennedy School this semester, in the first installment of a series of conversations sponsored by CPL called "Leadership & the Internet."

Even so, it was the Ghonim-administered web page "We are all Kaled Saeed" that helped spread the word across Egypt—and around the world—of the Mubarak regime's continued brutality and suppression, and also helped activists coordinate their efforts. And today it's YouTube that allows dissidents to broadcast Syrian government attacks, where news cameras are forbidden from entering.

Because of his online activism, Ghonim explained the Egyptian government was waiting for him when he arrived in Egypt in January of 2011, and imprisoned him for his dissention. News of his capture spread almost as quickly as the calls to protest, and within two weeks Ghonim was standing before throngs of protesters in Tahrir Square.

Student filmmakers, the intersection of social impact campaigns and compelling storytelling, food insecurity, and hugely profitable corporations that somehow manage to avoid paying taxes were the highlights of the Gleitsman Social Change Film Forum held at Harvard on March 2–3.

Sponsored by the C. Charles Jackson Foundation and CPL's Gleitsman Program in Leadership for Social Change, the forum began with a panel discussion moderated by Robb Moss, Rudolf Arnheim Lecturer on Filmmaking at Harvard, and featuring four student filmmakers from the Kennedy School: Juliet Asante, the president of Assegai, one of Ghana's largest film and production companies; Talmage Cooley, a director and producer of four films, two of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival; Chad Troutwine, who has produced twelve films about social change, three of which debuted at Sundance; and first-time filmmaker Daniel Rotman who coproduced the 2012 film Transgression, which chronicles the struggles of transgender persons seeking asylum in the U.S.

Discussion topics ranged from how the students got into filmmaking and have subsequently managed to sustain themselves once they got into the profession, to how to strike the proper balance between making social change and telling a good story. What do you do if you discover something that makes your protagonist look bad? the filmmakers were asked. Troutwine said that in his film Freakonomics, he kept out of the end of the movie material that would have undermined the legacy of one of the protagonists, civil rights leader Stetson Kennedy. "The power of storytelling cuts both ways," said Troutwine. "This man put together an amazing career of many, many decades. I just didn't want the powerful lasting image of this film to be where he was sort of unmasked... . It just seemed a little mean-spirited... . We ultimately decided to keep it out of the film in many ways to sort of protect his legacy. We're not journalists completely—I feel that way."