Public policy, values, and politics: Why so much depends on getting them right

Public policy has great power, both to improve people’s lives if it is planned and executed well and to cause significant suffering if it is not, says Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf, who will step back from his post this summer to rejoin the faculty. He joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli in this episode to discuss the crucial role policy plays in everyday life, the often-imperfect ways it gets made, and the factors that shape it, including politics, values, education, and communication. He also addresses the issue of public distrust in policy advice and the vital role that values play in policy making and educating public leaders, even when those values—including economic justice and diversity and inclusion—are under attack by some in the political sphere. “Our job is to enunciate our values, and to explain how those values can help us serve the world,” he says. Elmendorf became dean of HKS in 2015 after a career steeped in policy research and formulation, mostly involving his chosen field of economics. He has worked as the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a deputy assistant director of the U.S. Treasury, an assistant director of research at the Federal Reserve Board, and a senior economist at the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers. As dean, he’s seen the school through a campus expansion, the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing polarization and attacks on government and higher education in the public sphere, and the current domestic political fallout from the conflict between Gaza and Israel—all while diversifying the school’s community of students and scholars and affirming the important role of training public leaders and developing workable policy solutions to big public challenges.