Matt Bieber

Timothy Patrick McCarthy is core faculty and director of the Sexuality, Gender, and Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He also served as a founding member of Barack Obama's National LGBT Leadership Council.

This interview took place in March,...

We face enormous challenges: global warming, poverty, health care, terrorism. Dealing with these challenges requires deep thinking about a range of moral questions. What is it to be a human being? How do we work? What's good for us? What do we owe to one another?

Unfortunately, HKS doesn't do...

Louis Menand is a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of English at Harvard and a staff writer for the New Yorker. His most recent book, The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University, traces the rise of the modern university system and asks hard questions...

Many mornings this spring, my roommate, Teddy, and I have speculated about how the Republican candidates are likely to fare in states we've never visited. Our third roommate, Ben, stays quiet and seeks out the most reliable polling information he knows. "InTrade has Romney up by 4," Ben will say....

In his lecture on "The Reality of the Unseen," William James describes how some people perceive gods or spirits just as vividly as they perceive objects directly in front of them. He quotes a fellow professor on his experiences with a mysterious, spirit-like presence.

For several nights, the...

Christopher Robichaud's office at Harvard Kennedy School is filled with role-playing board games, at least one giant John F. Kennedy action figure, and hundreds upon hundreds of books. Most are standard philosophy volumes, but several shelves are devoted to his other passion: horror.

Robichaud's penchant for the...

Beginning in 2003, Democrat Artur Davis represented Alabama's 7th District for four terms in Congress. Following a defeat in Alabama's 2010 gubernatorial primary, he retired from politics. Late last year, Davis left the Democratic Party and became an independent.

Davis is currently a Fellow at Harvard's Institute of...

Carlo Rotella is one of the most exciting thinkers I've ever met. He's a professor, writer, and public intellectual, and his mind ranges everywhere: from boxing to the blues and free play to fantasy novels.

A couple of weeks ago,...

Yup, not a typo. Romney made those remarks in an interview with Soledad O'Brien Wednesday morning.

After all, he said, "We have a very ample safety net and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it."

Several...

I'd been in New Hampshire for several days to follow the Republican primary campaign and see the candidates in person. On Monday, January 9, I traveled to Hudson, NH to hear a speech by Mitt Romney at the Gilchrist Metal Fabricating Company. The event had been advertised on Romney's website...

I'm pretty sure Rick Santorum lied to my face on Friday.

I was in Manchester, N.H. for one of Santorum's "Faith, Family, and Freedom" town hall meetings. As the event was getting underway, I asked Bill Boyd, one of Santorum's spokesmen, about an event earlier in the day in which...

The first time that the Gingrich campaign played Joe Esposito's "You're the Best," (viz. Karate Kid) I thought, This is going to be all right. After all, that song is boss.

This isn't true of most of the songs you hear at campaign rallies. And there's a reason...

Jack Abramoff helped break Congress, and now he's trying to fix it.

In the mid-2000s, Abramoff was earning $20 million a year selling his clients access to the Republican House leadership. He owned restaurants, flew on private jets and set up golf outings for congressmen on an obscure Pacific Ocean...

Michael Dukakis was the 1988 Democratic nominee for president.

MATT BIEBER: In an interview with Katie Couric a few years ago, you described yourself as the first Democrat to face the "Republican attack machine" and said that you and your team...

MICHAEL DUKAKIS: Oh,...

In October of 2009, MP David Bahati introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in the Ugandan Parliament. The bill which proposed the death penalty for homosexuality -- immediately became infamous around the world.

At that time, Val Kalende was a veteran activist in the struggle for LGBT rights in...

In the early 1960s, Marshall Ganz dropped out of Harvard to join the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. He then spent 16 years working with César Chávez and the United Farm Workers. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he architected Barack Obama's organizing effort.

Matt Bieber: You've described...

Ed Rendell has served as mayor of Philadelphia, (1992-99) chairman of the Democratic National Committee, (1999-2001) and governor of Pennsylvania (2003-2011).

This interview took place on October 11 at Harvard's Institute of Politics.

MATT: How does our political discourse today compare to when you first ran for office in the...

Timothy Patrick McCarthy is core faculty and director of the Sexuality, Gender, and Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He also served as a founding member of Barack Obama's National LGBT Leadership Council.

McCarthy's books include The Radical Reader: A...