Ben Heineman
Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Contact:
Telephone: 617-496-7305
Fax: 617-495-8963
Email: ben_heineman@harvard.edu
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March 31, 2010
"Obama's Afghan Dilemma: Managing Hamid Karzai"
Op-Ed, Harvard Business Review
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"President Obama has committed the prestige of the United States, his personal credibility, billions of taxpayer dollars and, most importantly, the lives of American military personnel to a war which depends — as his top generals, Petraeus and McChrystal have said — on attaining a key civilian, not military, objective: creating an Afghan state with security, order, rule of law and accountable institutions that protects and serves its people. That goal depends on defeating the corruption and instability which have plagued Afghanistan for centuries."
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March 25, 2010
"Accountability and the Catholic Church"
Op-Ed, BusinessWeek
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"I am not a Catholic, but I am a student of accountability in major institutions. As a matter of principle, I do not understand why the practices of corporations, whose main objectives are material, to assess and fix accountability should be more direct and robust than the practices of the Church, whose objectives are ethical and spiritual."
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March 25, 2010
"Google and global ethics"
Op-Ed, On Leadership at washingtonpost.com
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Google is not the first company to resolve the conflict between country law and company ethics in favor of ethics. But its highly publicized decision will make companies operating around the globe sensitive to the importance of seeing clearly, before others do, the potential collision of law and ethics and of thinking ahead about how to resolve them in light of company values and stakeholder -- not just shareholder -- pressures."
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March 23, 2010
"No Presidential Greatness Without Spending Political Capital"
Op-Ed, The Atlantic
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Presidential greatness is combining policy and politics to win significant victories that have a major impact on the trajectory of national life. Such victories--which upset the status quo--only occur when a president takes political risks and is willing to incur short-term unpopularity with significant segments of the electorate."
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March 11, 2010
"No Private Zone"
Op-Ed, On Leadership at washingtonpost.com
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"The lesson for public officials is clear. There is virtually no zone of privacy for
questionable person acts. People in positions of influence proceed at their peril. Power
may be the ultimate aphrodisiac, but there is now no place to hide."
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February 18, 2010
"LBJ's grand scale"
Op-Ed, On Leadership at washingtonpost.com
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"LBJ's combination of vision, timing, skill and courage is reminder, on a grand scale, that getting important things done is vastly more important than anodyne political or bureaucratic survival or personal accretion of wealth."
February 11, 2010
"Flunking crisis management 101"
Op-Ed, On Leadership at washingtonpost.com
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Toyota's severe problems stem as much from poor crisis management as from poor product quality. In all industrial companies, problems may develop in products. The question is: How does the business respond? When products have serious potential safety issues like Toyota's sticking accelerator pedal, then crisis management becomes the company's stress test."
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February 10, 2010
"Where Are the Global Anti-Corruption Leaders?"
Op-Ed, The Atlantic
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"The BAE and Siemens cases are symbols of pervasive corruption across the globe and lack of senior leadership making anti-corruption an international imperative. Bribery and extortion in public sector activities--especially in the developing world--distorts competition, erodes legitimacy and rule of law, impedes economic growth, thwarts building of institutional infrastructure, injures the poor and supports criminals and terrorists who pose a threat to world order."
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February 4, 2010
"All in the implementation"
Op-Ed, On Leadership at washingtonpost.com
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Developing consensus within the military on how to implement a non-discrimination rule is key to securing support within the armed forces, winning congressional assent and sustaining the current majority approval of openly gay service (as reflected in public opinion polls)."
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January 29, 2010
"Restoring Trust in Corporate Governance"
Op-Ed, BusinessWeek
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"It is profoundly in the self-interest of private sector leadership energetically to implement these six "must do's" in order to answer powerfully the legitimate criticisms of board and senior executive decision-making in recent years."
