After reflecting on over thirty years of thematic investigations through the Institute and my independent work, I chose corruption as one of the most inclusive, critical topics to spend concentrated time on in the initial Emeritus chapter of my intellectual and policy life.

From 2017-19, I was a Senior Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where, with my friend Professor Nikos Passas, I convened yearlong workshop exploring of the nexus of corruption and human rights with expert guest speakers. An exciting initiative arising from the workshop, led by one of our speakers, German investigative journalist Frederik Obermaier, is the creation of an AntiCorruptionDataCollective, that derived from our original concept of a “Transparathon” hackathon and related symposium. In America alone white-collar crime cost victims an estimated $300 -800 billion per year, while “street level” property crimes including burglary, larceny, and theft cost around $16 billion annually, according to the FBI.

In 1999, I had chosen Global Crime, Corruption, and Accountability as the Institute’s year-long theme. The Globe editorial wrote of the culminating forum, “This is a symposium that promises bring history-makers together with students to seek answers for the knottiest problems bedeviling the contemporary world. The event illustrates the possibilities for moral and intellectual relevance at a university.”

I remember the humorous, but far too apt, outcome of that year’s Hurricane Island Outward Bound EPIIC retreat in September, when I divided my colloquium students into three groups - Crime, Corruption, and Accountability. One of their tasks was to construct a contraption that would float from barrels, ropes, bamboo and other materials, and then to paddle hundreds of yards out into the frigid Atlantic Ocean, offshore Maine around a buoy and return safely to land. You might already guess the outcome. Crime and Corruption securely returned to land, but Accountability sank and had to be rescued. The students were chastened, and the entire group recovered to create a powerful Spring semester forum.

The impact of corruption is a tremendous corrosive factor in destroying communities and hollowing out the commonwealth and eroding the social contract we require on all local and global levels. It is also invidious, affecting the integrity and morale of both individuals and sovereign nations. It transcends boundaries and undermines legitimacy in powerful and seductive ways, and is at the diseased heart of almost all of the subjects I have pursued throughout the thirty years I directed the Institute.

In 2017, I successfully applied to become a Senior Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy of the Harvard Kennedy School (my appointment was renewed for 2018-19). I was specifically looking for a way to confront the current threat to US democracy, and I understood corruption as being at the core of the disastrous Trump-Russia relationship.

I secured the participation of Nikos, a close friend and colleague from Crime, Corruption, and Accountability, to co-lead my primary Carr responsibility, a study group on Confronting Corruption in Defense of Human Rights. Nikos led several of our professional workshops, one emanating in the book It's Legal but it Ain't Right, co-authored by one of my board members, Neva Goodwin, and more recently on corruption in Russia. 

The speakers that we brought were chosen to profile an eclectic range of concerns, from the interface between corruption and environmental degradation to global financial and industry networks that prop up kleptocratic regimes. They were Craig Unger, Keith Darcy, Sarah Chayes, Nikos Passas, Frederik Obermaier, Nicole Barrett, Keith Slack, and Nicolas Giannakopoulos.

For more detailed information on the study group, see our study group brochures for the Fall semester and Spring semester.