Students graduating from Harvard Kennedy School are entering a deeply polarized political environment. While partisan politics isn’t new, the intensity of disagreement is disruptive. There have been five government shutdowns in the last 30 years, the nation’s longest occurring in 2019, lasting 35 days. Today, the government relies on continuing resolutions to fund the federal government, rather than budget agreements.
Further, confidence in federal institutions and public service is at an all-time low. It has many students wondering, “Is it possible to bridge this divide?”
Anthony Foxx says yes.
Foxx, the director of the Center for Public Leadership and the Emma Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership, has created a new course at the Kennedy School to address this issue: MLD-250 Bridging the Divide: Issues, Culture & Leadership.
The class, which filled immediately, is the first offered through Foxx’s Culture and Civil Society Initiative, a teaching philosophy using popular culture—music, the arts, sports—to build a foundation for dialogue.
Culture, says Foxx, can remind us who we are. And more important, can create a bridge to reach across the aisle. “As much as it sometimes feels otherwise, our divisions are not greater than what binds us,” said Foxx, who served as U.S. secretary of transportation and mayor of Charlotte North Carolina.
“When I left active politics, I asked myself tough questions about what responsibility I might have to help us bridge the many divisions that have been exposed in America. The best answer I have, and it is still a working hypothesis, is that we cannot effectively address political divisions without engaging the overall culture,” he said.
Paraphrasing John F. Kennedy, Foxx said culture “is the great democrat calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color.”
“Our music, film and television, sports, food, visual art, and other aspects of culture all tell this story,” Foxx said. “The integration we accept in these forms is often rejected in our politics, and it calls me to ask, ‘Why?’ Our culture tells us to be unafraid of our differences and shows us how extremely practiced we already are at integrating the influences we all bring to the table. That should bring us hope.”
The Culture and Civil Society Initiative is all about researching, teaching, programming, and otherwise building on the strengths of culture as a point of connection. And Foxx feels the time is right for this kind of education.
“I’m a Black American, proudly so, but I also see that in the context of a larger state of being, something that is more of a collection of identities, than it is my singular identity. So, I recognize that my life experience is going to be different than someone else’s.”
“But I also believe that, if someone looks back far enough into their own lineage, they will find a similar experience that we can relate to. And so, the process of moving through the world is trying to find those threads that we can pull on that cause us to understand each other at a different level.”
What divides am I ready to bridge?
“We begin the class by asking students to think about building their own awareness of what filters they have,” said Foxx. “Before we even begin talking about issues, we need to understand how it might feel to have our own beliefs challenged.”
The course uses case studies organized around what Foxx calls the five themes of democratic leadership: listening, personal expression, relationship building, navigating public sentiment, and delivering results across differences.
Each theme features a mix of traditional readings, news analysis, and visits by cultural icons like jazz great Wynton Marsalis and movie producer Thomas Tull. In one of the final sessions, students heard former Republican congressman Bill Shuster and former lieutenant governor of Louisiana Mitch Landrieu talk about developing infrastructure policy by working across the aisle. The course culminates with students negotiating a resolution to a policy topic with which they disagree.
For CPL Fellow and Air Force officer Chris Agnew MPP 2025, it was the right course at the right time. “I was very interested to see how applicable it is,” he said, “to find out what is the benefit of actually bridging the divide as opposed to doubling down on your base.”
Agnew, a graduate from the Air Force Academy, served as his squadron’s diversity and inclusion officer, where he held discussions on inclusive leadership for 100 cadets. He saw bridging political divides as key to his future with the Air Force.
“I grew up on military bases. My friends, classmates, even my parents were all in the military,” he said. “After a while, you see ideological divisions, especially between the enlisted members and officers. That’s just what you get with an all-volunteer force, it’s extremely diverse. You have folks from different backgrounds exposed to different ways of life.”
A successful leader, Agnew said, can create that bridge.
“I think as a leader overseeing people, you need to know your people, and people look different, and they think differently, which is the bigger thing. Being able to see that you don’t agree with me on this but we’re still united by our mission is key,” he said.
Working through real-life issues is what Agnew appreciated most about the class. “I loved the simulations. Putting yourself in the mindset of a Democratic or a Republican legislator fighting for healthcare was very interesting because it was right before the budget resolution passed the house. So, it is very practical, not an abstract. We’re working with what’s happening.”
“As much as it sometimes feels otherwise, our divisions are not greater than what binds us.”
Convictions, compromises, and communications
Abbie Haug found Foxx’s approach of incorporating culture, storytelling and politics a very holistic way to address issues. Haug, who is from Fargo, North Dakota, is getting her master’s in theological studies with a focus on religion, ethics, and politics from Harvard Divinity School and cross-enrolled at vlog specifically to take this class.
“When we think about making real change, that takes large swaths of the population,” she said. “Most people aren’t dialed in on specifics of what’s happening in Congress day-to-day or know the inner workings of politics.” What most people are having conversations about, Haug said, is the music on the radio, what movies they are seeing, or the social media dialogues of front-page news.
“I think that that’s even a more powerful force than some of the inner workings and political dealings or pieces of data. That’s where you can reach people and begin to influence people,” she said.
Her favorite session of the class dealt with superheroes, featuring Tull, the producer of the Batman films among others, and vlog faculty member Christopher Robichaud, a senior lecturer in ethics and public policy.
“I’m really interested in narrative work and storytelling, cultural change through those mechanisms,” Haug said. “Our discussion of superheroes operating outside of the legal system and government was fascinating. How people are digesting those stories and then showing up to support their community—whether we even realize the connection or not—that is super interesting.”
Haug was also drawn to the class to learn how to bridge the divide of political polarization.
“From a faith perspective, religion itself isn’t declining as much as institutional membership is declining,” she said, “because more people are not trusting democracy and our institutions to support us or even to do the right thing and be trustworthy.”
Crossing the divide
“I’ve gotten so excited about what I’ve learned, the people that I’ve met. It completely transformed how I was thinking about what I was going to do next,” said Thomas Kenney, about his time at vlog and Foxx’s leadership class.
Kenney, a national security fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and the outgoing commander of the 416th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne) on Camp Pendleton North, San Diego, CA. Prior to his fellowship, he was at Google running AI and digital transformation.
“This was a real opportunity to expand some of my horizons. As a reservist, this aligns with the intersection of national security, politics, and entrepreneurship for me,” Kenney said.
As a leader in the military and the civilian workforce, Kenney saw Foxx’s class as a chance to deepen his skills to bring people together.
“One of the things that drew me to this class was recognizing where my biases are. And understanding and acknowledging that I don’t even know where some of my biases are,” he said.
“I think Secretary Foxx wants us to understand it ourselves: our biases, our conflicts, our inability to cross that aisle are eroding public trust in all of our institutions,” he said. “He emphasizes that idea when he brings in folks who have very strong opinions, like Wynton Marsalis.”
Foxx credits Marsalis, who also spoke at the , for the concept of culture as a bridge. “The whole idea of this class is the result of a long series of conversations he and I have had over time,” said Foxx.
“Wynton says our politics are fractured,” said Foxx. “But when you get out into America, you see so many connections between things.”
In the class, Marsalis spoke to the importance of listening, harmony, and agreement. He described the layers of jazz music and the fact that Irish jigs and African drums somehow blended in a way that created this unique music culture. It is an apt expression of freedom and democracy, he said.
“And when you really think about it, what Marsalis does every day is he reminds us of who we are,” said Foxx. “When he makes an observation about politics, it’s not coming from some policy abstraction, it’s coming from a very deep reflection on this country, its institutions, and what they all mean.”
As for the future of the Culture and Civil Society Initiative, Foxx is hopeful that the appetite for turning to culture to understand and mend divisions continues.
“For people who come through the Kennedy School and who aspire to make an impact in public life, it’s very important to understand that our ability to generate good ideas is a necessary but insufficient skill,” he said. “We need to pair it with building reflective and relational practices that are required to build support for taking good ideas into practice. Otherwise, we risk the possibility that well-intentioned problem-solving continues to make our divisions worse. Instead—and admittedly it is easier said than done—we should aspire to policy outcomes that heal many of our divisions,” he explained.
“Having a hunger to serve as a healing agent, as a public leader, is a competency that I hope students both want to develop and have a chance to develop while they’re here.”
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John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum photography by Martha Stewart; photo of Chris Kim Agnew by John Buckley.