The Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI) is an innovative academic program designed to unleash the potential of experienced leaders to help solve society’s most pressing challenges. As a university-wide initiative, ALI draws upon the expertise of all of Harvard’s professional schools and academic departments.
ALI Fellows come to Harvard and embark on a year-long immersion in inter-disciplinary academic learning, leadership development, and peer-to-peer collaboration to develop a social impact strategy focused on their issue of choice. Participants in the ALI program become part of a vibrant community of changemakers who continue learning, collaborating, and innovating for impact.
The core course
The ALI core curriculum includes a twice weekly seminar series designed specifically for leaders pivoting to working in areas of social impact. Distinguished faculty from around the university share their expertise and teach individual classroom sessions. The curriculum is organized around the “Person, Problem, Pathway” framework. While most sessions contain themes that cut across the “3 Ps”, the seminar emphasizes the person and problem dimensions of social innovation in the fall semester and pathways in the spring semester.
Deep Dives
Deep Dive sessions highlight one major global or community challenge where ALI Fellows might fill a gap. Over the course of several intensive days, outside experts and faculty from across the university take an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the complex nature of the issue. ALI Fellows contribute ideas based on their experience and knowledge for immediate solution-seeking with major figures in the field under discussion and with affected constituencies.
Course auditing
ALI Fellows may individualize their experience by auditing available courses across the university. Topics can range widely-from humanities to science, professional schools to area studies. Course audits are a highly valued and valuable part of the Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellowship and represent the individualized part of the program, in which ALI Fellows pursue knowledge relevant to their project domains.
Focus on impact.
During the program year, you will develop and refine your plans for your next stage of work: a concept, a program, an organization, a foundation, a campaign for a cause or public office with the potential for significant impact on a major problem. ALI Fellows are expected to engage with the intellectual resources of Harvard University to produce a plan of significance that can serve as a central focus for their next chapter.
Work with students.
ALI Fellows are expected to contribute to students and their learning, at all levels of education, often through the connections made in audited courses, getting to know students as they sit by their side. They often provide career guidance to students, act as their mentors, invite them into research efforts, and provide employment, such as paid summer research doing interviews or data-gathering for their ALI projects.
Grow your network
The cohort experience is a central element of the ALI Fellowship program. Collaborate with peers with equally distinguished careers, and participate in the many intellectual, social, and cultural events occurring on campus. Ongoing events with past ALI Fellows promote exchange of ideas and amplify impact.
Engagement with ALI continues beyond the fellowship year. Gatherings occur at Harvard several times a year to multiply the impact of projects, form partnerships, and exchange expertise.
The fall semester
The first half of the ALI program focuses on auditing courses and undertaking deep dives into global and community challenges. This half of the program aims to help fellows explore the problems they wish to address.
The spring semester
In the second half of the program, fellows are encouraged to continue independent research and take advantage of Harvard’s intellectual resources to develop a plan of action by the end of program year.
The Department of African and African American Studies brings together scholars and scholarship from many disciplines to explore the histories, societies, and cultures of African and African-descended people. The field of African and African American Studies is not only interdisciplinary but also comparative and cross-cultural. The Department offers students two paths of study within its concentration: the African track and the African American track, each with its own set of requirements.
FIRST YEAR
African and African American Studies 201 and/or 202
These required courses focus on major theories and philosophical perspectives on the study of Africa (201) and the Americas (202). At least one of these courses will be offered every year and both will be offered in any two-year period. Students can take these classes in their first or second year.
In addition, students must ordinarily take at least six other courses of which at least two must be in the Department of African and African American Studies and two in the primary field.
Save under exceptional circumstances, the Department of African and African American Studies does not give credit toward the PhD for courses from other universities and under no circumstances would the Department give credit for more than two courses.
SECOND YEAR
Students must ordinarily take at least six courses in their second year.
Students will ordinarily be required to take all of the following courses or their equivalents by the end of their second year:
one graduate seminar in African or African American History,
one graduate seminar in African or African American Humanities,
one graduate methods course,
one graduate seminar in African or African American Social Sciences (other than History),
the Graduate Seminars AAAS 201 and AAAS 202.
During their second year, students must produce a paper of publishable quality. This must be done no later than the second term of their 2nd year. This can be done in a graduate seminar (like AAAS 201 or 202) or in an independent tutorial through AAAS 391 (Directed Writing). Students will not be allowed to take their oral general examination unless they satisfactorily complete a research paper.
By the end of the second year, the total number of courses should be fourteen, including at least five in African and African American Studies and seven in the primary field. In particular, students should take all courses required for an AM in their primary field.
THIRD YEAR
Students must have completed all coursework and language requirements prior to their oral exams for their admission to candidacy.
By the end of the fall term of this year students must have completed the oral exam described below.
An important element of graduate education in the program is the experience of working as a teaching fellow in courses in African or African American Studies. The department also encourages students to seek teaching opportunities in their primary fields.The graduate committee must verify that a student has had sufficient preparation in teaching before voting the degree. Students ordinarily teach at least two courses in African and African American studies and one in their primary field during their third and fourth years.If designated as part of the student’s financial package, students are expected to teach in their third and fourth years at the rate of 2/5 per term. The department will assist the student in securing teaching positions. Priority for teaching fellow positions is given to students in their third and fourth years of graduate study.
Once students have completed their coursework, they begin to prepare for their oral exam in their primary field. For this purpose they require a committee, consisting of their major advisor and at least two others, at least one of whom should be a member of the discipline of the primary field. This committee, the student’s orals committee, meets with the student once his or her coursework is complete, and defines a bibliography and a set of topics on which the student will be examined orally in the first term of the third year. Once the student has passed the oral exam, he or she prepares a written prospectus.
Ordinarily the orals committee then becomes the dissertation committee, but students may reform their committee at this stage. Students have flexibility in picking their major advisor at the stage that the dissertation committee is formed, since this is the right moment to identify the member of the faculty whose work is closest to theirs. The dissertation committee is responsible for approving the prospectus, and this should ordinarily be completed and accepted at the latest by the middle of their fourth year. The composition of the student’s orals and dissertation committees is subject to the approval of the graduate committee in African and African American Studies, though students are given great flexibility in choosing their advisors.
The prospectus is due at the latest by the end of the first term of the fourth year of residence. The student must discuss the prospectus with each member of the dissertation committee and then have a final oral exam on that prospectus: If the committee accepts the prospectus at the exam, the student is admitted to candidacy and begins research for the dissertation.