Commentary
India & the Olympics of AI
Allen Lab Fellow Jeremy McKey reflects on India’s AI Impact Summit, exploring the theme of diffusion and the implications for sovereignty and democracy.
News and Analysis
Read the latest news, commentary, and analysis from the Ash Center.
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Commentary
The Present — and Future — of Alternatives to Police
Allen Lab Affiliate Benjamin A. Barsky examines alternative emergency response programs — arguing for a democratic model of public safety governance in which responses to nonviolent incidents are shared across government and civil society rather than dominated by police.
Commentary
India & the Olympics of AI
Allen Lab Fellow Jeremy McKey reflects on India’s AI Impact Summit, exploring the theme of diffusion and the implications for sovereignty and democracy.
Commentary
Allen Lab Fellow Spotlight: Why a People-Centered Approach to American Democracy Matters Now
Allen Lab Policy Fellow Christine Slaughter makes the case that democracy must be understood through people’s lived experiences and agency, not just institutions.
Feature
Ash Center Launches New Program on Democracy and the Informed Public
The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School, has announced the launch of a new Program on Democracy and the Informed Public, a major initiative designed to strengthen democratic governance by improving how people access, understand, and use essential information.
Feature
Funding Women’s Human Security: The Interaction of State Domestic Violence Policies and Federal Grants
Domestic violence is one of the most pervasive threats to women’s human security in the United States, yet it remains among the least visible. It cuts across age, income, race, and education, with one in four women and one in nine men experiencing severe abuse from an intimate partner. Despite the scale of the crisis, responses to domestic violence vary widely across states.
Feature
Supply Skeptics or Abundance Acolytes? Mayoral Views on the Housing Crisis
Economists and policy analysts broadly agree that more housing needs to be built in order to reduce costs in America’s most expensive cities. Using a novel survey of mayors of mid-sized and large cities to explore mayors’ views on the roots of America’s housing crisis and what solutions they believe will most effectively address their constituents’ housing challenges, the authors summarize mayors’ attitudes and perceptions on key issues related to expanding the housing supply, reporting how well these views correlate with mayors’ assessments of their own cities’ supply needs.
Commentary
Transparency is Insufficient: Lessons From Civic Technology for Anticorruption
Allen Lab Researcher David Riveros Garcia draws on his experience building civic technology to fight corruption in Paraguay to make the case that effective civic technology must include power and collective action in its design.
Media Release
The Harvard Project Announces 2025 Honoring Nations Award Winners
The national awards program Honoring Nations, flagship program of the Harvard Project, announces the recipients of the 2025 Honoring Nations Awards, recognizing 6 governmental initiatives for outstanding excellence in tribal self-governance.
Feature
Digital Civic Infrastructure for Massachusetts Workshop
The Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation and Bloomberg Center for Cities brought together civic technologists, researchers, as well as municipal and state leaders across Massachusetts for a workshop on digital civic infrastructure.