Prolific Twitter User Ed Balls to Join Harvard Kennedy School

Ed Balls MP, Denton by Harry Potts on Flickr/Creative Commons

Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government has named former UK Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Ed Balls as its newest senior fellow for the 2015-16 academic year.

“We’re delighted to welcome Ed Balls to the Mossavar-Rahmani Business and Government Center,” John Haigh, co-director of the Center and executive dean of Harvard Kennedy School, said in a release. “Ed brings enormous depth and breadth of experience in the public sector and we’re confident he will make a valuable contribution to our students, to the Center, and to Harvard more generally.”

Balls, who has served in various roles in the British government, is perhaps best known on this side of the Atlantic as the man who—at 4:20 p.m. local time on April 28, 2011—forever damned all Twitter users to lives of eternal inferiority.

Ed Balls

— Ed Balls (@edballs) April 28, 2011

Balls said he was typing his name at the time when he received a call, accidentally hitting “Send” on the tweet. The slip-up has been celebrated each April 28, on Ed Balls Day. Balls even joined in on the fun this year.

Here we go again… ! RT @edballsmp: Ed Balls pic.twitter.com/EhIPfbmQRo

— Ed Balls (@edballs) April 28, 2015

“While serving as an M-RCBG senior fellow, and working on global financial stability and European integration issues, Balls will be analyzing international patterns of economic growth, investment, productivity, wages and employment and global policy responses to foster more inclusive prosperity,” the school said in the release.

Ed Balls.