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University Splits HIID Between Graduate Schools

Almost two months after Provost Harvey V. Fineberg '67 announced his decision to dissolve the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), administrators are reaching consensus on how to divvy up the institute's many programs.

Most will go to the Kennedy School Of Government (KSG), although the Graduate School of Education (GSE) and the School of Public Health (SPH) are each hoping to take over one program specific to the school's mission.

Since its founding in 1974, HIID has always maintained a healthy independence from the individual schools--reporting instead to the provost's office--and acted as a means to centralize the University's programs in foreign policy consulting, focusing on four areas: environment, macroeconomics, public finance, and health, education, and welfare.

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Now, Fineberg says, it is not independence but integration that will best serve Harvard's needs. At the recommendation of a University task force that carried out a six-month review of the institute, he decided to pair each program with the school closely affiliated to it.

The task force report says changes in the field of international development and the growth of HIID brought the institute further and further from its original purpose and form, prompting them to consider reorganizing.

In recent years the institute has been troubled by claims of mismanagement and a Justice Department investigation of Professor of Economics Andrei Schleifer '82 and his former colleague on HIID's Russian project, Jonathan Hay. Both were accused of using their knowledge of the Russian economy to help private investors.

When Jeffrey D. Sachs '76 resigned as HIID director last spring, the University took the opportunity to reconsider the institute's mission.

Certainly, change will not come overnight, and KSG officials warn that it will take several years to fully integrate HIID's programs into the school.

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