RWAMAGANA,Rwanda--The allegedly corrupt past of former Ecuadorian President Jamil Mahuad's, a current IOP fellow and Kennedy school alum, reminded me of another piece of modern Harvard lore. The legend goes like this: There was once a Guatemalan military officer studying at the Kennedy school who received not one but two documents on Commencement Day--his diploma and a subpoena to answer to charges of human rights violations.

This may or may not be a true story, but what is an undisputed fact is that Harvard's worldwide reputation and unmatched prestige draw all kinds of people seeking either degrees or speaking engagements.

While many remember with fondness the special convocation for Nelson Mandela or the charm of King Abdullah of Jordan, a few guests, like Mahuad, could be accused of using the University's name for unsavory ends. For example, this past spring, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, touted as a progressive woman leader, gave a public address at the Institute of Politics. While many in the audience gushed at how wonderful it was to see a female head of government from South Asia, no one mentioned another Bangladeshi proponent of women's rights, Kalpana Chakma.

Chakma was allegedly abducted by government forces in 1996 and has never been seen since. Prime Minister Hasina has to this day refused to release the report of the investigation into the incident. Meanwhile, a bill that would create a national human rights commission had been languishing in Sheikh Hasina's cabinet for over a year while she rushed through a draconian "national security" law.

In January, the Kennedy School's Center for International Development hosted Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, who leads of one of the rebel factions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Widely derided in Congo as a puppet of foreign powers that have invaded the country to plunder its diamond wealth, Wamba dia Wamba's own subordinates have admitted that his soldiers have been involved in at least one very bloody massacre of civilians.

For better or worse, the Harvard name can give international figures a boost back home. Hasina's visit was covered in the Bangladeshi press, which made sure to add her to the list of all the other prominent personalities who have in the past been invited to speak at the Institute of Politics (IOP). The website of Wamba dia Wamba's rebel group (designed by a Kenyan refugee working at gunpoint) prominently announced his Kennedy school talk, as well as other university engagements.

The list goes on and on. Besides Mahuad, other internationally infamous Harvard alums include former kleptocrats such as Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Mexican President Carlos Salinas, as well as strongmen like one-time IOP fellow and Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew. Bhutto, widely viewed in Pakistan as hopelessly corrupt, found an enthusiastic audience at the IOP after losing power.

Yasushi Akashi, the former U.N. diplomat in charge of the disastrous Bosnia peacekeeping mission, spoke to the U.S.-Japan seminar at Harvard just a few years after refusing to stop a Bosnian Serb attack on a town called Srebrenica, resulting in the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.