The February 1st coup launched by Myanmar's military effectively put an end to the country's tentative transition to democracy as civilian political leaders were imprisoned and the results of the 2020 elections annulled. During an event sponsored by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and moderated by HKS Professor of Public Policy Tarek Masoud, Pwint Htun, Non-Residential Myanmar Program Fellow at the Ash Center, and Derek Mitchell, president of the National Democratic Institute and former U.S. ambassador to Myanmar, discussed how... Read more about Myanmar After the Coup
As the world looks back on the events that convulsed much of the Middle East a decade ago during what became known as the Arab Spring, the Ash Center sat down with Tarek Masoud, Professor of Public Policy and Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations to discuss the prospects for democracy in the region today. In our conversation, Masoud, who recently published an article in the Journal of Democracyarguing that the Middle East retains considerable democratic potential, pushes back on the notion that authoritarian states in the region can successfully hold back the demand for freedom so vividly exhibited during the height of the Arab Spring.
As Myanmar’s military launched a coup, imprisoning many of the country’s political leaders including Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who heads the country’s largest political party, the National League for Democracy, we spoke with David Dapice, a senior economist with the Ash Center’s Myanmar Program.
As President-elect Biden prepares to take office, we sat down with Edward Cunningham, the director of the Ash Center’s China Programs and the Asia Energy and Sustainability Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School to discuss how the friction in the U.S.-China relationship might impact America’s economic recovery, and steps that the incoming administration can take to constructively engage with Beijing.
With President-elect Biden releasing a comprehensive COVID-19 recovery plan as he prepares to take office, we sat down with Philip Jordan, a research fellow at the Ash Center with extensive experience assessing the impacts of sustainable economic development. Jordan discussed the scope of the economic challenges wrought by COVID-19 as well as how the incoming administration can best target assistance to those segments of the country hit hardest by the economic collapse.
Each year, the Ash Center works with experts from around the world to publish research and writing on some of the most salient topics relevant to democratic governance, government innovation, and Asia public policy. Touching on issues as varied as Chinese public opinion, to voter engagement, and COVID-19 relief, the work of our scholars has had an important impact in the field of public policy.
“We’re seeing truly a global outcry over questions of policing,” said Yanilda González, Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor of Public Policy, at a recent Ash Center event celebrating the launch of her book Authoritarian Police in Democracy: Contested Security in Latin America. In her book, Gonzalez works to answer the question, how is it that police violence persists in democratic countries?
When Stephen Goldsmith, the Derek Bok Professor of Urban Policy and Director of the Ash Center’s Government Innovations Program, served as mayor of Indianapolis, Indiana, “I thought I was the mayor of parking. I don’t think anything mattered except parking in downtown Indianapolis.” Since Goldsmith last held the reins at city hall, the debate over how cities should best put to use curb space and sidewalks has only grown more intense as online delivery companies, ride sharing services, and commercial businesses all vie for...
There's a general consensus in Washington that China presents the most significant geopolitical and strategic challenge to any administration moving forward. However, there are considerable differences in how to deal with that challenge. Should it be through competition? Should it be through confrontation? Or should it be with containment? Or should it be a mixture of any one of those three?
The Ash Center’s Innovations in American Government Awards, established in 1985, announced the winner and finalists for its 2020 award cycle, which specifically sought exemplary programs working to create economic opportunity for all in their communities.
In 1976, foreigners were a rarity in much of China. Even rarer still were foreigners from non-socialist countries studying in Chinese universities, especially given the recent social and educational upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, which was winding down. As a British-born graduate student at the University of Nanjing, Tony Saich—director of the Ash Center and Daewoo Professor of International Affairs—wasn’t exactly an inconspicuous presence around campus.
Political and legal fights over voter registration deadlines and polling locations are only intensifying as the United States lurches towards one of the most consequential and unprecedented elections in generations, leading many observers to ask, “Does it have to be this way?” Chief among the critics of this unfolding drama of voter suppression, voter disinformation, and an election system nearly brought to its knees by the COVID-19 pandemic is Miles Rapoport, Ash Center senior practice fellow in American democracy. As a former Connecticut secretary of the state, he should know—Rapoport was responsible for running the state’s elections. “What we’ve seen over the last few weeks, with uncertainty over voting rules, lawsuits filed by the dozens, and general confusion about what Election Day should look like, isn’t a flaw in the system. It’s just a further illustration of how our decentralized, often politically driven and in some cases poorly administered election system was designed to function,” he says.
Boston likes to fashion itself as a global tech hub, proud of the legions of start-ups and tech workers who have made its economy the envy of cities around the country. Yet vestiges of Boston’s analog past can still be found, if you know where to look—such as in the long, brick-fronted building that sprawls over much of a block along Massachusetts Avenue in the city’s Dorchester neighborhood. From the building, which houses the city’s Inspectional Services Division (ISD), the sounds of aging IBM Wheelwriter 1500 electric typewriters, which until recently filled the ISD offices. used to be heard as permit-seekers hunched over its well-worn keys typing out applications for zoning variances.
Demarquin Johnson HLS/HKS 2020 stepped up to a podium for the first time as a freshman in high school in Missouri City, Texas, as a member of his school’s debate team. After several weeks spent doing research, he was prepared to defend the right to vote for citizens convicted of a felony. Fueled by a deep belief that felony disenfranchisement is unjust and a legacy of Jim Crow-era attempts to strip voting rights from Black people, he hammered home how prohibiting people from voting because they were formerly incarcerated runs contrary to the American belief in democracy.
The Ash Center sat down with HKS Senior Lecturer Jorrit de Jong, an Ash Center resident faculty member and the faculty director of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. The Initiative has been at the forefront of training mayors in management and leadership techniques since its establishment four years ago. de Jong has led numerous seminars for mayors with leading public health and crisis response experts from Harvard and around the country since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic early this year and recently. de Jong recently published a compendium on COVID-19 Crisis Leadership Essentials for Mayors.
The Ash Center sat down with Kimberlyn Leary, an Ash Center faculty affiliate and key member of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative’s leadership team, to discuss how she is leveraging her background in public health and negotiation to help equip mayors and senior city leaders from around the world to lead high-performing, innovative cities. Leary, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a senior vice president of the Urban Institute, joined the Ash Center in fall 2019.
The following remarks were excepted from A Discussion on Black Lives, Protest, and Democracy, a virtual conversation hosted by the Ash Center with leading scholars and practitioners about the protests, their place in the long fight for social justice, and what they tell us about the state of democracy in America today.
The Ash Center sat down with Ashley Spillane MC/MPA 2018, president of social impact consulting firm Impactual, and Sofia Gross, Ash Center Technology and Democracy Fellow 2018-19, public policy manager at Snap, Inc.; authors of Civic Responsibility: The Power of Companies to Increase Voter Turnout, to discuss how organizations are supporting voter participation this fall.
In June 2006, a few days after Uche Pedro MC/MPA 2020 graduated from Western University, Ontario with a degree in business she started an anonymous blog about Nigerian pop culture. Going to a university in Canada had opened Pedro’s eyes to how little people knew of her native country’s burgeoning entertainment scene. Posting clips from magazines and stories about music and fashion in her free time, she hoped BellaNaija, her site, could help introduce the world to a new narrative about Nigeria.
Following the 2016 presidential election, senior advisor to then President Barack Obama Valerie Jarret and First Lady Michelle Obama poured over election return data. “Michelle Obama and I did a lot of soul searching trying to figure out what happened,” said Jarrett during a virtual discussion moderated by Harvard Law School Lester Kissel Professor of Law David Wilkins, hosted by Harvard Votes Challenge, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and Institute of Politics, this Tuesday to mark National Voter Registration Day. “I think the number that really jumped out at us was that nearly 100 million eligible Americans did not vote. That’s a big number in a country that depends on democracy, which requires civic engagement and participation at the most fundamental level.”
