In Harvard visit, John Kerry ponders America’s problems, prospects
Though he left government service early last year at the close of the Obama administration, former Secretary of State John F. Kerry, now 74, certainly doesn’t look — or sound — like a man ready to retire. Kerry spoke expansively Tuesday evening about where the world appears headed and about what he learned in five decades as a U.S. Navy officer, a political activist, a lieutenant governor, a U.S. senator, and the nation’s top diplomat, during a 90-minute talk before a rapt audience at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). Kerry encouraged students to find their own pathways from belief to action, recalling returning home from combat in Vietnam — a conflict he came to believe was “a lie” — and leading a huge march on Washington, D.C., to demand better treatment and benefits for veterans who had endured the war’s horrors or were struggling with the aftereffects, physical and mental, of past conflicts....