Cases

Conflict Minerals: Influencing the Supply Chain for Public Purpose

Publication Date: November 2, 2022

Gold, tungsten, tantalum, and tin are essential to a wide array of today's products. Industries ranging from electronics to health care to defense rely on these minerals. A sizable portion of these minerals are sourced from Democratic Republic...

Mexico City's Hoy No Circula: Restricting Car Travel to Abate Air Pollution (B)

Publication Date: October 6, 2022

The rapid, sprawling growth of the Mexico City megalopolis—combined with industrialization, a fast-expanding fleet of gas-fueled vehicles, and a location vulnerable to deadly thermal inversions—led to a serious air pollution crisis...

Mexico City's Hoy No Circula: Restricting Car Travel to Abate Air Pollution (A)

Publication Date: October 6, 2022

The rapid, sprawling growth of the Mexico City megalopolis—combined with industrialization, a fast-expanding fleet of gas-fueled vehicles, and a location vulnerable to deadly thermal inversions—led to a serious air pollution crisis...

Leadership and Negotiation: Ending the Western Hemisphere’s Longest Running Border Conflict

Publication Date: October 4, 2022

For centuries, Ecuador and Peru each claimed sovereignty over a historically significant, but sparsely inhabited tract of borderland in the Amazonian highlands. The heavily disputed area had led the two nations to war—or the brink of...

Work or Exploitation? Debating Whether to Decriminalize the Sex Industry

Publication Date: August 12, 2022

As traditionally written and enforced, laws regulating the sex trade in the United States and abroad have disproportionately penalized the least powerful players in the industry—the people, mostly cis- and transgender women, directly...

"Doing Something with Nothing" Trying to Make Kampala's Primary Schools Healthier and Safer Practitioner Guide

Publication Date: July 19, 2022

This practitioner guide accompanies HKS Case 2238.0. By late 2012, well into Jennifer Musisi’s second year as executive director of the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), city revenues were improving. But there was little in...

"Doing Something with Nothing" Trying to Make Kampala's Primary Schools Healthier and Safer

Publication Date: July 19, 2022

By late 2012, well into Jennifer Musisi’s second year as executive director of the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), city revenues were improving. But there was little in the budget for schools, and no further assistance was...

Confronting the Unequal Toll of Highway Expansion: Oni Blair, LINK Houston, & the Texas I-45 Debate (B)

Publication Date: April 6, 2023

 In this political strategy case, Oni K. Blair, newly appointed executive director of a Houston nonprofit advocating for more equitable transportation resources, faces a challenge: how to persuade a Texas state agency to substantially...

Galvis City Schools Collective Bargaining Simulation

Publication Date: June 8, 2022

This is a seven-party exercise, with six negotiators and one facilitator. Representatives from a large school district and its affiliated teachers’ union must negotiate for three rounds. The Mayor serves as a facilitator and convening...

Postage Due: The Financial Crisis at the United States Postal Service

Publication Date: June 1, 2022

In October 2020, the Inspector General of the United States Postal Service (USPS) conducted a survey of the American public and found that despite service challenges largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic—employee absenteeism, mail, and...

Embracing the Uphill Struggle: Marc Morial’s Quest for Corporate Diversity

Publication Date: October 25, 2021

As incoming President and CEO of the National Urban League in 2003, Marc Morial believed that promoting racial equity in corporate America was a natural part of the organization’s remit. In the latter third of the 20th century, the NUL had...

Casa Pueblo: Community-Based Electricity Resilience in Puerto Rico

Publication Date: March 28, 2022

Category 5 Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017 ravaging the Island. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority reported that all customers were without power unless they had their own generators. However, in the mountain town...