Public Policy
Faculty of the Committee on Higher Degrees in Public Policy
Robert H. Bates, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government (Chair)
Arthur I. Applbaum, Associate Professor of Public Policy (Kennedy School)
Christopher N. Avery, Assistant Professor of Public Policy (Kennedy School)
L. Jean Camp, Assistant Professor in Public Policy (Kennedy School)
William C. Clark, Sidney Harman Professor of International Science, Public Policy, and Human Development (Kennedy School)
Jerry R. Green, John Leverett Professor in the University and the David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy
William W. Hogan, Thornton Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management (Kennedy School) (ex officio)
Thomas Kane, Associate Professor of Public Policy (Kennedy School)
David C. King, Associate Professor in Public Policy (Kennedy School)
Roderick MacFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science (ex officio)
Mark H. Moore, Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice, Policy and Management (Kennedy School)
Katherine Newman, Ford Foundation Professor of Urban Studies (Kennedy School)
Robert D. Putnam, Stanfield Professor for International Peace
Dani Rodrik, Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy (Kennedy School)
F. Michael Scherer, Larson Professor of Public Policy and Management (Kennedy School)
James H. Stock, Professor of Political Economy (Kennedy School)
Shang-Jin Wei, Associate Professor of Public Policy (Kennedy School)
Jeffrey G. Williamson, Laird Bell Professor of Economics (ex officio)
William Julius Wilson, Harvard University Professor and Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy (Kennedy School)
David A. Wise, John F. Stambaugh Professor of Empirical Analysis (Kennedy School)
Richard J. Zeckhauser, Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy (Kennedy School)
The doctoral program in Public Policy trains qualified candidates to shape the direction of public policy research and to prepare the next generation of teachers for programs in public policy. It also qualifies individuals to perform high-level policy analysis and prepares them for positions of leadership in the public sector. Interested applicants should contact the John F. Kennedy School of Government for application material.
Applicants who are currently in a Masters degree program in a related field, or who have completed a Masters degree, are strongly urged to apply directly to the Kennedy School for predoctoral fellowships. Students without a Masters degree generally apply first to the MPP or MPA program, and then to the predoctoral program at the end of their first term in residence. Through careful selection of courses, requirements for the predoctoral program can usually be completed concurrently with those of the MPP and MPA programs.
All Ph.D. candidates must demonstrate mastery of five fields of study through a combination of course work and written and oral examinations. A sophisticated understanding of the core materials in the MPP program at the Kennedy School, and a demonstrated ability to apply analytic techniques to a field of policy are critical components of the faculty decision to recommend a student to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for the dissertation phase of study. Once admitted to the GSAS, a student is expected to work closely with a faculty adviser and dissertation committee. Most dissertations involve the application of analytic techniques to the solution of a substantive problem. A few methodological theses concentrate on developing new analytic techniques, their usefulness to be demonstrated through explicit application to a policy issue.