With Georgia passing legislation to dramatically restrict voting access, and with similar legislation pending in other states, fundamental issues of voting and democracy are now front and center in Congress. A sweeping set of election reforms recently passed the House as H.R. 1 and are now before the Senate. The fate of these efforts, and the future of fundamental Senate procedures such as the legislative filibuster, could be decided in the weeks ahead. Join the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation as we convene advocates from the states and Capitol Hill to discuss what is...
Join us for a skills-building workshop with AY 2020-2021 Technology and Democracy Fellow Ashley Bryant, Principal at A/B Partners and Co-Founder of Win Black / Pa’lante. Ashley will lead an interactive session exploring evidence-based messaging and how to refine content strategies through testing in order to build narrative campaigns that engage, mobilize, and persuade target audiences amidst a swarm of disinformation.
Participants will examine the “Win Black” case study and identify how to use this model to build their own narrative campaigns to combat issue-based disinformation...
The 2020 Presidential Election, more so than any other, was run on digital platforms as we lived through the unprecedented realities of the Coronavirus pandemic. Effective campaign strategies for digital storytelling were dependent on not only originality, but on pitching and producing thoughtful media content. This highly interactive workshop, run by J.P. Carroll, former deputy director of Hispanic media for the Republican National Committee (2018-2020), will cover how to both pitch a story and then write a compelling opinion piece (op-ed), guiding participants...
Please register for this session using your Harvard email address. Join us for an interactive workshop with AY 2020-2021 Technology and Democracy Fellow Vignesh Ganapathy, LoudLight Action Board Chair and former Head of Government Relations at Postmates. Vignesh will lead a group-oriented session analyzing successful campaigns for policy change, drawing upon his experiences managing legislative campaigns at the local, state, and federal level while utilizing an innovative and diverse toolkit.
Participants will examine the risks and benefits of various real-world approaches...
Join the Ash Center; Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life; Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Harvard University; and Black Student Union at Harvard Kennedy School for a conversation with Heather McGhee, a leading voice in the national conversation on systemic racism and its consequences, and the author of the recently released book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. The book is a personal journey and a powerful examination of the debilitating economic and social consequences of...
The Ash Center and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) invites you to a discussion of Our Common Purpose, a report issued by the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. The Commission, which was launched by AAAS, spent two years engaging with communities all over the U.S. to explore how best to respond to the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in our political and civic life.
Please register for this session using your Harvard email address. Join an interactive workshop with Mariana Ruiz Firmat, Executive Director of Kairos and AY 2020-2021 Technology and Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center. During this workshop, participants will examine the Latinx vote in Florida during the 2020 presidential election as a way of understanding how disinformation and misinformation impacts voting behavior. Participants will engage in an immersive exercise where we will identify voting trends and messaging that was effective in shaping...
Join us for a skills-building workshop with Kate Gage, Founding Partner at The Movement Cooperative and AY 2020-2021 Technology and Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center.
The 2020 election was proof of how important local organizers and organizations are to building power and creating meaningful change. Over the past few years there has been an explosion of new entrepreneurs, technologists, tools, and tactics within the political and advocacy space, but many of these critical new innovations remain inaccessible to down-ballot candidates and local organizers due to cost, adoption...
Why do politicians cooperate peacefully with organized criminal groups? Interactions between organized criminal groups and politicians are often either depicted as coercive or where the politician is a member of the criminal group. Using mixed-methods research on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a project by Jessie Bullock, PhD Candidate in Government, Harvard University, shows that there is a third explanation for cooperation: politicians willingly engage with organized criminal groups at arms-length when it is in their electoral interest to seek out these arrangements and when they have a low...
