Read the latest news, commentary, and analysis from the Ash Center.
Commentary
Election night 2026 produced a remarkable roll call of historic firsts. From the first Black woman elected governor of a U.S. state to the first Muslim elected to the Senate, voters broke barriers across state and party lines.
Newest
Video
This GETTING-Plurality Research workshop session features Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, Director of the Allen Lab, and presenting author of “A Roadmap for Governing AI: Technology Governance and Power-Sharing Liberalism.” Allen was joined in conversation by commentator Rob Reich, McGregor-Girand Professor of Social Ethics of Science and Technology, Stanford University.
Q+A
Ash Center Senior Researcher Tova Wang and NFL Network analyst Scott Pioli answer questions about how sports teams can foster civic engagement.
Commentary
To make it easier to find up-to-date information on pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protest activity in the United States since October 7, 2023, the Crowd Counting Consotium recently created a pair of interactive data dashboards separately covering the two.
Video
The Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia and the Ash Center hosted a Global Elections Webinar Series event to reflect on the implications of Prabowo’s landslide victory for the state of democracy and prospects for national development in Indonesia.
Video
During this talk, Hassan discussed her latest paper “Who Gets Hired? Political Patronage and Bureaucratic Favoritism,” which considers the relative importance of each source of biased hiring as an allocation problem between managers and politicians who have different preferences regarding public sector hiring and different abilities to realize those preferences.
Feature
Ben Schneer discusses the implications of redistricting and how those policies can be amended to combat gerrymandering and create fairer elections.
Commentary
Allen Lab Senior Fellow, Allison Stanger, and Jaron Lanier outline a world without Section 230.
Video
Harvard community members joined the Ash Center for a Democracy in Hard Places Initiative event featuring Larry Diamond, Mosbacher Senior Fellow of Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Media Release
In a new paper in Political Analysis, Ben Schneer, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, alongside co-authors Maxwell Palmer, Associate Professor, Boston University; and Kevin DeLuca, Assistant Professor, Yale University; present a new method for drawing legislative boundaries, the Define–Combine Procedure.