Elizabeth Plantan, a China postdoctoral fellow with the Ash Center, spent her 21st birthday in Irkutsk, Siberia, near Lake Baikal. With windchill, the temperature was minus 55 degrees Fahrenheit. “It's the sort of cold where your eyelashes freeze, but everyone still walks everywhere in the snow,” she recalled.

Plantan, then an undergraduate at Wesleyan University, made the long trek to Irkutsk because she hoped to completely embed herself into Russian culture and community. “I wanted there to be very few foreigners so I wouldn't have any temptation to speak English,” she said of her decision to swap the mild climate of Middletown, Connecticut, for the subarctic Siberian environment.... Read more about A Tale of Two Countries

Jaws drop the first time most students enter Christopher Robichaud’s office. The animated response is fitting for the senior lecturer in public policy’s workspace. On top of, between, and leaning against the books that line nearly every inch of the walls—save the window looking out over John F. Kennedy Memorial Park—are memorabilia ranging from collector-edition action figures to a vintage-inspired Star Wars turntable.  

Robichaud, an Ash faculty affiliate, opened his door for a conversation with the Center about his unique decor... Read more about Office Hours: Christopher Robichaud

The Ash Center sat down with Jane Mansbridge, Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values, to discuss her work developing a package of case studies, simulations, and exercises for teaching effective legislative negotiation aimed at state and federal legislators in the United States... Read more about Jane Mansbridge on Legislative Negotiation

With clipboard often in hand, Ryan Pierannunzi MPP 2019 became something of a noodge around campus. A friendly noodge to be sure. Pierannunzi, who was honored by the Ash Center with the 2019 Martha H. Mauzy Award for the Advancement of Democratic Governance, was a lead student organizer of the Harvard Votes Challenge and worked through much of the 2018 fall semester to help register as many of his eligible HKS classmates to vote as he could. Pierannunzi and his fellow organizers, it turns out, were pretty successful at noodging, as over 90 percent of eligible HKS students ultimately participated in the challenge in the runup to the midterm elections.... Read more about Mauzy Award Winner Ryan Pierannunzi Takes Democracy Reform from the Classroom to the Campaign Trail

If voter participation is the cornerstone of democracy, American democracy is in poor shape, according to Harvard Kennedy School’s Archon Fung, Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government. “American democracy would be a lot stronger if all Americans voted. Imagine a future, maybe five years from now, maybe 10 years from now, in which 80 or even 90 percent of Americans voted,” said Fung at the start of a panel discussion on June 27th organized by the Ash Center. “How can we get there?”

Around half of eligible voters in the U.S. cast a ballot during the 2018 midterm elections. In contrast, 80 percent of the approximately 3,500 Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota employees voted that year. CitizenBlue, a 19-year-old civic-engagement initiative led by Blue Cross staff, is largely credited for the company employees' impressive turnout.... Read more about Calling on Companies

Six years after emerging from the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history, construction cranes once again dot Detroit’s skyline and large-scale investment is flowing into scores of high-end commercial and residential developments throughout the city. Ford is in the midst of remaking Detroit’s once grand but long since decrepit Michigan Central Station into a hub for tech-savvy workers and engineers working on autonomous vehicle projects.... Read more about Ensuring All Detroiters Benefit from the Motor City’s Revival

For most Americans, Huawei is hardly a household name. The Chinese telecommunications equipment and consumer electronics manufacturer has had only a limited consumer footprint in the United States. That began to change, though, last year when the daughter of the company’s founder and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, stepped off a plane in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was immediately taken into custody by Canadian authorities at the behest of the United States. Her arrest for allegedly helping Huawei evade US sanctions on Iran, and the tit-for-tat detention of a number of Canadian citizens in China, has brought renewed attention on the company, its relationship with China’s military and intelligence agencies, and its ambitious goals to be a dominant player in the race to deploy 5G wireless technology around the world. 

Paul Clifford, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Ash Center and author of The China Paradox: At the Front Line of Economic Transformation, helped shed light on Huawei’s growth strategy and addressed directly some of the security claims lodged at the company by senior Trump administration officials at a talk at the Ash Center earlier this spring.... Read more about Huawei, a self-made world-class company or agent of China's global strategy?

With national elections under way in India, hundreds of millions of voters are casting ballots at nearly a million polling locations. For the world’s most populous democracy, it is a herculean feat of electoral administration. But beyond the heavy logistical lift, this election has the potential to shape the very future of the country’s pluralistic political system, according to noted India expert Ashutosh Varney.

Just days after Ryan Swann MC/MPA 2019 and his identical twin brother, Bryan MC/MPA 2019, walked across the stage to accept their diplomas at Prince George’s County Largo High School in Maryland, the brothers enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve and were en route to basic training in Parris Island, South Carolina.

“I come from a large family of veterans and public servants,” says Ryan Swann, recipient of the Ash Center's 2018–19 Roy and Lila Ash Fellowship in Democracy, a scholarship that is awarded to a meritorious mid-career student with a proven dedication to democratic governance and public-sector innovation. “I really felt the need to serve.”... Read more about Roy and Lila Ash Fellow Ryan Swann: A Story of Service

In the United States, nearly 23,000 young people age out of the foster care system every year without having been reunited with their families or placed in permanent homes. Approximately 20 percent of those who leave foster care without a permanent home after turning 18 join the growing ranks of the homeless in cities and towns large and small across the country, according to the National Foster Youth Initiative. Only half will find gainful employment by the time they turn 24.... Read more about Working Wonders for Foster Youth

With camera equipment often in tow, Cecily Tyler MC/MPA 2016 has been a familiar face at the Ash Center since graduating from the Kennedy School three years ago. Tyler, a documentary filmmaker, has worked with scores of students at the Center since starting to teach videographic essay-making skills as part of Ash Center resident faculty affiliate Jorrit de Jong’s Innovation Field Lab course.... Read more about Behind the Lens: Cecily Tyler Is Building a New Generation of Citizen Storytellers

Getting eligible Harvard students to vote in US elections shouldn’t be hard, should it? After all, the University prides itself on being a training ground for emerging leaders, inculcating into successive generations of students the values and importance of civic engagement and democratic governance. But it turns out that many of these same students don’t exercise what is arguably democracy's core right and responsibility while at Harvard: showing up at the polls.... Read more about Harvard Votes

The Ash Center sat down for a conversation with Kathryn Sikkink, Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at HKS and one of Ash’s newest faculty affiliates.

You are known for your work on international human rights issues, but you also helped co-chair the School's participation in the Harvard Votes Challenge with Archon Fung. How did you go from the world of human rights, and the responsibility to protect, to voting?

Well, first, I've always been interested in human rights. I got interested in human rights as an undergraduate student living in Uruguay during the darkest days of the dictatorship.... Read more about Kathryn Sikkink on Voter Participation

Like most city leaders, Jennifer Musisi, the former municipal head of Kampala, Uganda’s capital city, came into office with plans to shake up how local government did business. She wasn’t afraid to ruffle a few feathers in order to improve how Uganda’s largest metro area, long plagued by corruption and poor administration, provided services to its one and a half million residents. What she didn’t expect was that her pursuit of greater government efficiency and transparency would result in threats on her life.... Read more about From Kampala to Cambridge: Jennifer Musisi knows what it takes to lead high-stakes change in city government

March 1–3, the Ash Center cohosted the Democracy Entrepreneurship Conference, which brought together democracy advocates, policymakers, philanthropists, academics, and journalists at HKS. The unique event helped attendees build connections, learn about innovative organizing strategies, and understand how best to tap into newfound energy directed toward strengthening US democratic institutions.