A message from Dean Douglas Elmendorf Dear HKS Community, I write with the sad news that our former faculty member John W. Thomas died on March 11. John spent more than 45 years at Harvard, including 28 on the HKS faculty up to his retirement in 2010. He dedicated his career to international development, and specifically to fighting poverty and hunger in Asia and Africa. We are deeply fortunate that he spent so much of his career with us.