Named in honor of the author and journalist Gustav Pollak, the endowed Harvard Kennedy School Gustav Pollak Lecture is designed to stimulate interest in government careers and research with a view toward building a better government.
The 2025 Pollak Lecture featured a conversation with Leo Varadkar and Hannah Riley Bowles, the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at vlog and co-director of the vlog Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP).
“There’s no better place to host this lecture series than here at the Kennedy School,” said Jeremy Weinstein, dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. “We work every day to train future leaders to solve the world’s toughest public problems.”
Varadkar served as Taoiseach, or prime minister, of Ireland from 2017-2020 and again from 2022-2024. He was a cabinet member for 13 years in the Ministries of Transport, Tourism & Sport, Enterprise, Trade, Employment, Social Protection and Health.
The first openly gay head of government of Ireland, Varadkar is only the fifth openly gay head of government in the world. The son of an Indian father and an Irish mother, he is also Ireland’s first multiracial head of government and the first Taoiseach who previously served as a medical doctor.
Varadkar is also a spring 2025 Hauser Leader at the Center for Public Leadership (CPL), a program founded in 2014 with support from Rita E. and Gustav M. Hauser.
“I think we recognized that the problems that we face around uncontrolled migration, at our borders, at your border, are driven by the fact that there are so many push factors that force people to leave the countries they live in.”
“There are three things you have to do if you’re heading a government,” said Varadkar when Bowles began the conversation asking about governing strategies. “The first is to keep the show on the road, to make sure the economy functions and public services are delivered. The second is to deal with whatever comes at you.”
During his time in office, Ireland faced the pandemic, then the war in Ukraine and a cost-of-living crisis that. Such challenges he said, make it hard to carve out space for his third strategy, implementing one’s own political agenda.
“People often wonder why governments don’t get more done,” said Varadkar. “There is a limited amount of political capital, a limited amount of legislative time, limited budgets, and then limited numbers of people who have the skills to do the stuff that you want done, whether it’s providing healthcare or building houses.”
“We did pursue a responsible agenda economically,” he said. “We made sure there was a pro-business environment, the taxes were low. We were able to balance the budget and run surpluses and set aside some of the surplus for future costs that we know are going to rise in relation to aging and relation to climate.”
One of his aims while Taoiseach, he said, was to align Ireland with the rest of Europe including significantly transforming Ireland’s social policy and enacting marriage equality. In 2015, Ireland became the first country to approve same sex marriage by popular vote.
His government also addressed the country’s outright ban on abortion. “It was a constitutional ban, and we can’t change our constitution without a vote of the people, and we were able to get that through,” he said.
Another priority was to make the workplace better for parents by introducing paid parental leave for mothers and fathers.
Internationally, Varadkar wanted Ireland to have some kind of influence on the world. As a small country of 5.2 million people, he said it had to “punch above its weight” and engage at the heart of the European Union.
“We are founding members of the Eurozone, members of the Common European Defense as well,” he said. “We went for a seat on the U.N. Security Council, which we got.”
Varadkar also found it important to increase overseas aid and the overseas development budget, “leveraging the soft power that we had,” he said.
“Most people do want the world to be a better place, and Irish people have a very good history of giving back, setting up schools and hospitals all over the world for example,” said Varadkar noting it is something all of Ireland is proud of.
“I think we recognized that the problems that we face around uncontrolled migration, at our borders, at your border, are driven by the fact that there are so many push factors that force people to leave the countries they live in.”
Varadkar said that he also worked to increase the awareness of Ireland around the world. “For a huge number of people, not of Irish heritage, the first time they hear about Ireland is through our arts, through literature and through our culture,” he said. “So, we built a beautiful arts center in New York, in Paris, and in London.”
On the relationship between Ireland and the United States—“everyone thinks they have a special relationship with the United States” Varadkar quipped—he said it really comes down to families.
“I don’t really know anyone in Ireland who doesn’t have a family in America,” he said, “Including himself. Three or four of my grandparents’ sisters came to New York and spread out all over America.”
“There is also the very important role America and Irish Americans played in our independence story,” Varadkar continued, “including right here in Boston.”
In 1919, President Éamon de Valera, who led the first independent government of Ireland, came to America to find political support and to raise money. “He did that very successfully here in Boston, addressing 50,000 people in Fenway Park.”
As for the next stop on Varadkar’s political journey, he said he had no immediate plans, although he remains interested in LGBTQ+ advocacy.
“We’ve had enormous progress in the past 10 or 20 years, but there is a pushback now globally,” he said. “There are 30 countries in the world where we have marriage equality, where you can marry the person that you love. There are 70 countries in the world where it’s still a criminal offense. So, you're twice as likely to live in a country where it’s illegal than where you have a large degree of equality, as we do in Ireland, as we do here in America.”
“One of the great allies that we had in recent years was Pope Francis (who recently passed way). Notwithstanding the teachings of the Catholic Church, he was somebody who spoke out against criminalization,” Varadkar said. “And his words and his messages were very strong, particularly in Africa, particularly in parts of the world where increasingly there are anti-LGBT laws being passed, often with the help of evangelical money from the other side of the Christian spectrum.”
As a Hauser Leader, Varadkar teaches skill-building leadership courses and enacts the CPL mission to develop principled, effective public leaders who make positive change in the world.
Varadkar joins the Rt Hon Dame Jacinda Ardern, former prime minister of New Zealand, and Ambassador Wendy Sherman as Hauser Leaders for the 2025 spring term. Former Hauser leaders include Nobel Peace Laureate Maria Ressa, former CDC director Rochelle Walensky, and former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.
The complete conversation is available online.
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Banner image: The 2025 Gustav Pollak Lecture featured a conversation with Leo Varadkar, former prime minister of Ireland and Hannah Riley Bowles, the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at vlog and co-director of the vlog Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP).
Photos by Martha Stewart.