By Jennifer Doody
The remarkable uprising in Egypt earlier this year created an extraordinary opportunity to radically change the trajectory of the country. Jennifer Bremer (MPP ’75, PhD ’82, public policy) is training a new generation of Egyptian leaders to make good on that opportunity.
Bremer is leading a well-timed new master’s program in public policy — the first of its kind in the Middle East — at the American University in Cairo (AUC). The program targets aspiring policymakers, helping them to develop the crucial analytical skills needed to create effective public policy. Bremer is joined by fellow Harvard GSAS alumna Warigia Bowman (PhD ’09, public policy), recently appointed as assistant professor at AUC, who will play a key role in the program.
GSAS reached Bremer in Cairo to find out more about the program and to hear about what Egypt is like at this moment in time.
Can you tell us about the new program in public policy at the American University in Cairo?
Bremer: This is the first year in which AUC is offering the master’s in public policy. Our program is the first MPP to be offered in the region, as far as we are aware, although it has been more than 40 years since the first MPPs were launched in the United States. AUC began adding more policy-related tools and content to our public administration program about five years ago and introduced a hybrid degree that combined policy and public administration, the MPPA, in 2006.
The core areas emphasized in our program respond to what we see as the region’s most urgent needs: promotion of broad-based economic growth, reform of social and environmental policies, better public governance, and greater use of evidence-based policy analysis in decision-making. We have also made the thesis mandatory to require students to demonstrate that they can produce a solid piece of analytic writing based on original research.
Why was it important to start the program?
Egypt faces huge policy challenges. The list is long and quite daunting: youth unemployment, weak governance and corruption, growing inequality, absence of basic rights, truly awful public education, an overstaffed and rigid bureaucracy, and low productivity in the real economy, and that’s really just the start. The Tahrir Revolution gives us all hope that these problems can now be addressed, but there remains a very real danger that the problems will instead undermine the revolution. Expectations are very high, but of course the revolution did not do anything to address the root causes underlying any of the problems on the list.
Both policies and the policymaking process urgently need to be improved to get at these root causes and move forward rapidly and sustainably. The Middle East does not have a strong tradition of policy making based on analysis of the evidence, careful consideration of alternatives, and incorporation of implementation and political challenges into decision-making. The policy process has been very closed, with minimal public debate on what should be done and no real consultation with stakeholders. Just to give you an example, a minister I was interviewing on the reform strategy in his area told me that the government did indeed have such a strategic plan, but it was a secret! So much for participation, consultation, and building a consensus to push through difficult reforms. Of course, like almost all the top-level people, he’s gone now, but the attitude will be harder to change.
I feel it is very important to give the rising generation of leaders and technocrats the tools to change both the policies and how policy is made. It’s fine to talk about the need for accountability and control of corruption, but how do you actually go about doing those things? How do you analyze the options? How do you mobilize support for reform? How do you deal with opposition or other setbacks to keep on track? These are the kinds of skills that we try to teach to our students, most of whom are young professionals. These are the skills that motivated me to go to the Kennedy School back when the MPP was just getting started, and now we are trying to develop them here in Egypt.
How is the program progressing?
Public policy has taken on a much higher profile at AUC over the past few years, especially since we launched a new School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in 2009 and created an independent department of public policy and administration. We have about 125 graduate students enrolled, which is up from only 10 students continuing into the fall when I arrived in 2007. The faculty consisted of two visiting appointments, but we now have six full-time faculty members and are hiring three more for next year. We’ve gone from invisibility to the point where we’re one of the largest graduate programs at AUC.
How have recent events in Egypt affected the program, or vice-versa?
We’ve seen a tremendous increase in interest in our programs, both in public policy and public administration. Everyone wants to grab this opportunity to address Egypt’s problems and really move forward. The process of economic and social reform accelerated in the early 2000s, but there is a broad sentiment that those reforms really benefited only a narrow segment of society. Educated youth have a pent-up drive to improve their country that finally can be directed into productive channels, and they are looking for the tools and knowledge to help them to do that.
The revolution started during our winter break, so we only lost about three weeks off the regular schedule, which we have made up. There has been a short-term decline in security, because the old regime pulled the police off the street and opened up the prisons in a truly misguided attempt to scare the population into opposing change and grabbing for security. Things are getting back to normal, but it’s a “new normal” in which everyone wants to debate policy issues 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and many of our students are involved in launching new parties or organizing political movements. We’re trying to support this with a series of public debates and invitational workshops on key issues. In our department, we didn’t lose any faculty or students, either expatriate or Egyptian.
A real concern is the impact on student finances, though. Everyone expects the economy to slow down, and we’re worried that some students may not be able to continue for financial reasons or that new students will have to delay their studies because of falling family incomes.
What are your hopes for the students who enroll in, and graduate from, the program?
When I was a young professional working in Egypt to restart the U.S. foreign aid program — I joined USAID in 1977 after completing a second master’s at Stanford and was assigned to the Cairo office, right after Camp David — the shortage of capable young technocrats throughout the government was painfully evident. I returned to the US in 1980 to complete my doctorate (in the joint GSAS-HKS public policy program), worked in two major development consulting firms which kept me very involved in Egypt through short-term consulting assignments, and was appointed in 1990 as the head of the Washington Center of the Kenan Institute (part of the University of North Carolina business school). In the spring of 2007, when AUC offered me the opportunity to come back 25 years later to rebuild the program in public administration and create the region’s first public policy program, naturally, I grabbed it. My aim now is the same as it was when I got here in 2007: to build a regional cadre of young professionals with the commitment but also the skills to drive change. We now have a truly exciting opportunity to make this happen, not only in Egypt, but in the region as a whole.