Current fellows join past fellow, President of Ecuador Jamil Mahuad (seated at center) who graduated from the program in 1989. Carol Grodzins, the Kennedy School's director of international development programs is in the second row, second from the left. Mason Program Director Paula Jacobsen is at the far right in the second row.

Ecuadorian President Jamil Mahuad has dealt with crisis after crisis since taking office last August.

He's been busy with everything from a simmering border feud with Peru to civil unrest stemming from a banking emergency.

But Mahuad still took time to visit Harvard last week to help mark the 40th Anniversary of the Edward S. Mason Program in Public Policy and Management at the Kennedy School of Government.

Mahuad's visit is a measure of the impact the program has on its participants, who are high-level public sector professionals from developing countries. The program is Harvard's oldest and largest international program. It was begun by Edward S. Mason, a Harvard economics professor and dean of the Graduate School of Public Administration, the precursor to the Kennedy School of Government.

Mason believed Harvard should lend a hand to developing nations and founded the Development Advisory Service, through which Harvard faculty provided economic and other development advice.

It was through the Development Advisory Service, which became the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), that Harvard faculty identified promising young leaders in government ranks. Mason brought the first group of seven students, then called Public Service Fellows, to Harvard during the 1957-58 academic year. Since then, more than 1,200 fellows have come to Harvard.

Fellows pursue a master's degree in public administration during their year at Harvard, but they also engage in a rich exchange of ideas and experiences with other Mason Fellows.

Mahuad, who graduated from the Mason Program in 1989, is the second program participant to go on to lead his home country. Costa Rican President Jose Maria Figueres was also a Mason Fellow, as were several of his cabinet ministers. Figueres graduated in 1991.

Mahuad spoke to about 400 people packed into the Kennedy School's ARCO Forum on Friday, April 23, describing the challenges he has faced since taking office. He has watched his popularity plummet as he's taken strong action to deal with what he says is Ecuador's worst crisis in 70 years.

Left to right, current fellows Anca Harasim from Romania and Arturo Cabrera from Ecuador with Mahuad.

"This is a great opportunity to talk with you at the School of Government about the real problems of government. I would have liked to have had such a case study [when I was a student here]," Mahuad said. "But with problems come opportunity."

Mahuad told students in the audience that he remembered sitting where they sat, a student himself, hardly able to imagine where his path would lead. Though that path has been difficult at times, he said a commitment to honest leadership is important.

"Our feet are not as important as our steps, and our footprints are not as important as the path we make," he said, adding. "I think we're walking the right path [in Ecuador]."

Kennedy School Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr. praised Mahuad and said he embodies the qualities the school seeks to instill in its graduates.

"I said earlier that the Kennedy School was established to give lessons in public leadership," Nye said. "I think today we've had a lesson on public leadership."

Though the Mason Program's 40th anniversary celebration was last week, the actual anniversary was last year, according to the Kennedy School's director of international development programs, Carol Grodzins. Grodzins said the celebration was delayed so that it could be part of a yearlong effort to highlight the Kennedy School's strength as an international school.

Other events include the 10th anniversary of the Wexner Program for Israeli civil servants, the McCloy/German Program's 15th anniversary, the launching of a new master's degree program in international development, and the celebration of Harvard's new Center for International Development (CID), based at the Kennedy School.

The Mason anniversary celebration spanned four days last week, beginning Wednesday with a panel discussion of seven alumni, including a nongovernmental organization leader from the Philippines, the adviser to India's minister of finance, a recent Liberian presidential candidate and former head of the Africa Department of the United Nations Development Programme, the youngest member of the Korean National Assembly, and the publisher of Ecuador's leading newspaper.

A reception followed the panel, featuring several of Mason's colleagues from the program's early days: John Kenneth Galbraith, the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics Emeritus; Raymond Vernon, Clarence Dillon Professor of International Economic Affairs Emeritus, and Herbert F. Johnson Professor of International Business Management, Emeritus; and John Dunlop, Lamont University Professor Emeritus.

The reception also featured former directors of HIID: Dwight Perkins, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy and faculty fellow in the HIID; and Lester Gordon, honorary fellow in the HIID. Representatives of the Mason Program, HIID and KSG also attended, including Merilee Grindle, the Edward S. Mason Professor of International Development at the Kennedy School and faculty fellow at the HIID; Dean Nye, Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School; and CID/HIID Director Jeffrey Sachs, the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade.

On Thursday and Friday the Mason alumni joined the KSG annual spring professional refresher course, which was focused this year on international development.

The anniversary celebration ended Saturday with a CID symposium on the challenges facing developing countries, featuring addresses by Sachs; Michael Porter, the C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration; Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus, Mellon Professor of the Sciences, and curator of entomology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology; Robert Bates, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and faculty fellow in HIID; and Michael Kremer, a faculty fellow at CID and professor of economics at M.I.T.