HKS 2017 Conference on Poverty and Inequality

The theme of this year's student-run conference at the Harvard Kennedy School is Tackling Poverty and Inequality Under a Trump Presidency, and seeks to highlight the deep economic anxieties that surfaced across the US in the 2016 election. Speeches and panel discussions will cover a range of topics including affordable housing, early childhood development, K-12 education, and extreme poverty/joblessness.

Featured Speakers:

• Dennis Kucinich, progressive advocate, former eight-term US Congressman, former Cleveland Mayor, and two-time candidate in the Democratic Presidential Primary
• Daniel Gillion, University of Pennsylvania Presidential Associate Professor and author of Governing with Words: The Political Dialogue on Race, Public Policy, and Inequality in America
• Portia Wu, Former Assistant Secretary of ETA at the US Department of Labor
• David Ellwood, former Dean of the Kennedy School and former Co-Chair of President Clinton's Working Group on Welfare Reform
• Melissa Boteach, Director of the Poverty to Prosperity Program at the Center for American Progress
• Robert Doar, Morgridge Fellow in Poverty Studies at the American Enterprise Institute
• Hanna Skandera, New Mexico Education Secretary
• Thomas Kochan, MIT Professor and Co-Director of MIT Sloan's Institute for Work and Employment Research
• Maria Mossaides, Child Advocate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
• Carol C. Burris, Executive Director of the Network for Public Education Foundation
• Amy Glasmeier, MIT Professor & Creator of the Living Wage Calculator
• Clark Ziegler, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Housing Partnership
• William Beardslee, Distinguished Gardner/Monks Professor of Child Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Baer Prevention Initiatives, Department of Psychiatry, Children’s Hospital Boston