Read the latest news, commentary, and analysis from the Ash Center.
Podcast
In the season finale, author and political theorist Laura Field joins co-hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to unpack the ideas and beliefs of the New Right and their impact on elections, race, and public debate.
Newest
Commentary
Crowd Counting Consortium data show a resurgence of pro-Palestinian activism at U.S. colleges and universities as students have returned to school and started probing the limits of new restrictions on campus protests.
Commentary
As part of its regular work tracking political protest activity across the United States, the Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC) closely followed events around this year’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Podcast
In this episode, host Jay Ulfelder sits down with Nonviolent Action Lab Research Fellow Freddy Guevara to discuss the outcome of Venezuela’s elections and what that means for the state of democracy in the country.
Feature
Across the United States, hundreds of thousands of people in jail retain their right to vote while being held in pretrial detention, having not been convicted of a crime.
Commentary
“In public life, if you don’t claim authorship of your own story, others will claim it for you.”
Commentary
This post uses the Crowd Counting Consortium’s data on U.S. protest activity since 2017 to estimate and compare the average size of the crowds at political rallies featuring Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and, since late July 2024, Kamala Harris.
Q+A
HKS research fellow Freddy Guevara MC/MPA 2024 remains optimistic about a democratic transition and that the July election was the beginning of the end for the Maduro regime.
Feature
In the wake of this most recent incident, the Ash Center convened a panel of experts to discuss Americans’ attitudes toward political violence and explore strategies for counteracting and de-escalating future violent acts to prevent them from becoming an accepted social norm.
Commentary
Tova Wang argues that the past two years have also been groundbreaking in terms of advancing the right to vote.