Applying the lessons of government service to the classroom

By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

For decades, Harvard's faculty has served as a rich source of talent for U.S. presidents seeking to fill key departmental and advisory positions.

From FDR's Brain Trust to JFK's Best and Brightest to later appointments by Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and others, the call of government service has regularly deprived Harvard of some of its most distinguished scholars and teachers.

In most cases, fortunately, that deprivation is temporary. The majority of faculty return, bringing with them a host of experiences that can only enhance their scholarship and teaching.

Several faculty members whose resumes include notable stints in Washington spoke recently to the Gazette about how their approach to teaching has changed as a result of their government service. Their answers throw a revealing light on how real-world experiences can combine with scholarship to produce innovative and effective teaching.

Speaking Clearly

Ashton Carter, now the Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, served as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy from 1993 to 1996. In that role, he was responsible for establishing defense relations with all the states of the former Soviet Union and overseeing the elimination of nuclear weapons in those countries.

He also served as chairman of NATO's High Level Group, directed the Clinton administration's Nuclear Posture Review, oversaw the Defense Department's Counterproliferation Initiative, and played a crucial role in many international negotiations concerning weapons of mass destruction.

During his years with the Defense Department, Carter found that his scholarly training served as an inexhaustible source of ideas and inspiration, and it is this perspective that he now brings to his teaching.

"I want to teach students to bring the ideas of a great university into public discourse, so as to persuade and inform other people without diluting the depth and complexity of the ideas developed in the world of learning," he said.

Working in such a high-stakes arena also emphasized for Carter the need for clear, unambiguous communication. At the Kennedy School, he brings an almost missionary zeal to teaching students to communicate effectively in the real world.

"I used to assign term papers. I won't do that now," Carter said. "Instead I have students write memoranda or Congressional testimony or give oral presentations as if they were speaking before a town council or a TV audience. I do this because in the world outside the university, term papers are not used to communicate."

In his teaching, Carter confronts students with complex, real-world situations rather than specialized, academically oriented problems.

"I believe strongly that students must have skills to be practical people in the world," Carter said. "Issues don't come broken down into neat categories, they come in integrated wholes. The world doesn't allow you to say, I only know about the economic aspects of that. Students must learn how to put it all together."

The Power of Example

Professor of Economics Lawrence Katz served as chief economist in the Department of Labor from January 1993 until September 1994, working with Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and Robert Rubin, then head of the National Economic Council and now secretary of the Treasury.

Katz headed the U.S. Labor Department delegation that negotiated the labor side agreement to NAFTA (now known as the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation). He also worked on a wide range of issues related to training and education policies, tax policy, welfare reform, the 1994 crime bill, and unemployment insurance reforms.

Like Carter, Katz learned that in order to succeed in a government advisory position scholars must explain their ideas in clear, straightforward language.

"I found that nothing is more effective in debate than rigorous, transparent analysis," Katz said. "If a person can't understand the methodology, if it's not crystal clear, the argument will have very little effect. The experience forced me to find clever ways of using real-world examples."

Katz discovered that one of the most powerful rhetorical devices he could use was what he now calls "natural experiments." He described these as large-scale economic events in which the sources of variation are clear. For example, laws that vary from state to state may illustrate how different economic variables result in different outcomes.

He said that his experience in Washington provided him with many real-world examples of this type, which he now uses to illustrate economic concepts in his undergraduate course, Social Problems of the American Economy. His government service also helped him fine-tune "the interplay between historical themes, current issues, and theoretical concerns."

The experience also reinforced for him the value of taking a scholarly perspective, something that the government job's frenetic pace and 18-hour work days rarely allowed him to do.

"I found that Washington typically focuses on issues in the extremely short run. The focus is on political expediency, but to me the longer run trends seem to be more important. One needs to think more broadly. My time in Washington reinforced that. It made me see the importance of integrating a longer historical viewpoint."

Working Together

Mary Jo Bane, another member of the Kennedy School faculty, agrees that clear and forceful communication should be a goal in the teaching of public management. But her experience in government has shown her the value of another set of skills as well -- the ability to work with others in a group setting.

"People sometimes kid me about this," she said. "They say I want my students to be able to 'play well with others.' But interpersonal skills are very important when you're working in a government agency. The best policy analyst in the world won't succeed unless he or she is able to work well in a group setting."

Bane, now professor of public policy, said her emphasis on interpersonal skills reflects her own experience managing government agencies rather than serving in an advisory or staff position.

Bane took a leave of absence from the Kennedy School in 1992 to serve as commissioner of social services for the state of New York. In 1993, President Clinton appointed her assistant secretary for children and families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), managing a staff of 2,000 with a budget of $30 million. She resigned in protest after Clinton signed the 1996 welfare bill and was rehired by the Kennedy School in January of this year. (Harvard faculty may not take a leave of absence of more than two years).

"Running a government agency teaches you that passing a law is only about 10 percent of the problem. The real question for a public manager is, what are the things that need to be done to make something change in people's lives?"

Now, as a professor, Bane emphasizes class exercises, role playing, and scrutinizing case studies to teach the skills that public managers need for working in an agency setting.

Bane said that her resignation from HHS has also had a significant impact on her approach to teaching. The signing of the welfare bill, which she called "a startling defeat," has caused her to re-examine the relation between politics and policy.

"I think I'm more aware of the complex interrelation between politics and poverty and the depth of people's feelings, which are not always based on facts. It's a relationship I'm still trying to think through and that I will continue to explore with my students."