HKS Expands Consulate Program

The UK Consulate in Cambridge has expanded a one-year-old partnership with the Harvard Kennedy School that will allow students to potentially guide international policy.

The consulate will serve as the client for four groups of students—up from just one last year—in the Masters in Public Policy program at the school as the students work on their Policy Analysis Exercise, a two semester project that marks the capstone of their studies.

Joseph Pickerill, the vice consul who will present policy issues for the students to analyze, said that the Consulate’s primary reason for establishing the collaboration with the Kennedy School the unique wealth of intellectual capital it offered.

“The PAEs provide the perfect way to tap into the high level thinking at the Kennedy School,” Pickerill said.

Eric B. Rosenbach, an executive director at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said that the collaboration started in 2007 when he met with Phil Budden, the Consul–General for New England.

The first project under the partnership—looking at the use of language by political leaders—was presented to Prime Minister Gordon Brown on his visit to the Kennedy School last year.

“The UK Consulate has brought serious policy makers to meet students and their faculty advisors, like the current UK Ambassador to the UN and the Head of the UK’s Afghanistan and Pakistan policy department,” Rosenbach said.

Yll Bajraktari, a student who is working with the consulate to analyze the challenges of long-term international commitment to Afghanistan, said that the consulate took them to London and Brussels and arranged 22 meetings with international representatives at the NATO headquarters.

Claire E. Applegarth, another of the students working with the consulate, said the partnership has given her group much assistance along the way.

“It provides access to key research contacts,” she said.

“It is also exciting to know that our product, if useful, can actually help guide policy.”

With the final drafts of the projects due at the end of March, Pickerill said his office is “busy working with the students and testing their conclusions.”

He added that the consulate plans to continue the partnership in future years.

“Not only do we get insights from bright students, but we get to engage more widely with the Harvard community,” he said.