Cases

A Duty to Leak?

Publication Date: February 01, 2004

This case describes the challenge faced by the executive director of a (disguised) human rights watchdog agency. The state wants to increase the number of inmates in its prisons (without increasing the size of the facilities). This requires the...

"Big Media" Meets the "Bloggers": Coverage of Trent Lott's Remarks at Strom Thurmond's Birthday Party

Publication Date: February 01, 2004

The resignation of Mississippi Senator Trent Lott from his position as Majority Leader was an event unprecedented in the history of the US Senate. It occurred precipitously, in the wake of remarks he had made at an event where no one expected...

City of New York and the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement

Publication Date: January 30, 2004

The Office of Management and Budget of the City of New York is considering how to use a new source of revenue--the payments from the Tobacco Master Settlement. The recently settled tobacco lawsuit between the states and the major tobacco...

Placebo Trials in Africa: The African American Dilemma at the Centers for Disease Control (Sequel)

Publication Date: January 01, 2004

In 1997, a small group of African American doctors and scientists on the staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found themselves on the horns of a painful dilemma. For months, they had been making known their objections to...

Placebo Trials in Africa: The African American Dilemma at the Centers for Disease Control

Publication Date: January 01, 2004

In 1997, a small group of African American doctors and scientists on the staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found themselves on the horns of a painful dilemma. For months, they had been making known their objections to...

The Ad Hoc Conference and Sammy Sockeye

Publication Date: November 01, 2003

When a career public employee in a research division of the US Forest Service gets a call from a lobbyist for a coalition of environmental advocacy groups, he finds himself confronting an opportunity of which he's not sure it's right to avail...

A Letter to Professor Dutch Leonard

Publication Date: November 01, 2003

This letter to a Kennedy School faculty member from a former student is a plea for advice about one of the most difficult dilemmas faced by public employees in a bureaucratic chain of command: what to do when one thinks a new boss is moving an...

Trapped in a Dysfunctional Family

Publication Date: November 01, 2003

This human resource/career management case focuses on a newly-promoted mid-level manager in the US Social Security Administration who finds that what he thought was good news--his appointment as director of the administrative and matching staff...

Robust Web of Corruption: Peru's Intelligence Chief Vladimiro Montesinos

Publication Date: November 01, 2003

In 1990, President Alberto Fujimori swept to power in Peru on a wave of public enthusiasm for his promised reforms. Indeed, over the next five years Fujimori accomplished something of an economic turnaround miracle. He also vanquished a...

Neighborhood Conservation Services of Barberton: Responding to Change in the Magic City

Publication Date: November 01, 2003

In the late 1990s, the leadership of Neighborhood Conservation Services (NCS) of Barberton, Ohio--a nonprofit housing rehabilitation organization founded two decades earlier to help reverse the decline of this aging industrial city--found its...

Exercising Leadership in Northern Ireland

Publication Date: October 28, 2003

In December, 1987, 18-year-old Gary McMichael suddenly became the literal heir to the tradition of political violence in Belfast, Northern Ireland. McMichael's father John--a prominent leader of a Protestant "paramilitary" group--was...

Education, Immigration, and the "Right of Abode" in Hong Kong (Part C)

Publication Date: October 01, 2003

In early August, 2001, just in advance of a new school year, the Education Department of Hong Kong issued what officials believed to be a standard, non-controversial advisory to the 1200-plus primary and secondary schools receiving government...