By Jessie Yeung, CNN
After lower As New Zealand’s leader earlier this year, Jacinda Ardern has revealed that she is trading the chaos of politics for a period of quiet reflection within academia abroad, heading off to Harvard University this fall on two scholarships.
She was named to dual fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School, the university’s school of public policy and government, according to a Harvard news release.
He will serve as an Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Fellow, a program geared toward high-profile leaders transitioning from public service roles, and a Hauser Leader in the School’s Center for Public Leadership, a program where leaders from various sectors help students and teachers to develop leadership. skills.
“Jacinda Ardern showed the world strong and empathetic political leadership,” said Kennedy School dean Douglas Elmendorf. in the press release. “He has earned respect far beyond his country’s shores, and will provide important information for our students and spark vital conversations about public policy choices facing leaders at all levels.”
“I am incredibly honored to join Harvard University as a fellow; it will not only give me the opportunity to share my experience with others, but it will also give me the opportunity to learn,” Ardern said in the statement. “As leaders, there is often very little time for reflection, but reflection is critical if we are to properly support the next generation of leaders.”
At the same time, Ardern will complete a separate fellowship at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, where he will study ways to contain extremist content online.
In an Instagram post On Wednesday, Arden said he would do “a little bit of talking, teaching and learning.”
He added that Harvard had been an important partner in his work for Christchurch Call, an initiative he helped launch in 2019 to counter terrorist and violent extremist content online, two months after the Christchurch terror attack that killed 51 people at two mosques. . The attacker had livestreamed the incident and posted a manifesto online beforehand.
Ardern said she would be gone for a semester, missing the New Zealand general election, but would return at the end of the scholarships. “After all, New Zealand is my home!” she wrote.
When Ardern became the country’s prime minister in 2017 at the age of 37, she was New Zealand’s third leading woman and one of the world’s youngest leaders. Within a year, she had become the second world leader to give birth in office.
His time in power was defined by multiple crises, including the Christchurch attack, a deadly volcanic explosion and a global pandemic.
She quickly became a progressive global icon, remembered for her empathy as she guided New Zealand through these crises and for taking her young daughter to the United Nations General Assembly.
Back home, however, his popularity waned amid rising costs of living, housing shortages and economic anxiety. And he faced violent anti-lockdown protests in the capital, Wellington, with threats against him.
Ardern announced it surprise resignation in Januarysaying that he no longer had enough fuel in the tank to run in an election.
She last said goodbye earlier this month with an emotional speech in parliament, affirming to all the nerds, whiners, huggers, mothers, and ex-Mormons in the world: “You can be all of these things. And you can’t just be here; You can lead just like me.”
The CNN Wire
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