News and Analysis
Read the latest news, commentary, and analysis from the Ash Center.
Newest
Video
Panel Two: Facing the Past (Truth and Transformation 2022)
Memorialization efforts and museums are increasingly playing a role in racial reckoning. How are state officials, activists, and organizers using memorials to face the past? How do these efforts connect to the work of truth commissions? How do we mark sites of violence and re(make) them as sites of consciousness-building, truth-telling, and historical documentation?
Video
Midday Keynote with Alvin Warren (Truth and Transformation 2022)
Tune into a musical performance by Raye Zaragoza followed by a keynote by Alvin Warren (Santa Clara Pueblo), former Santa Clara Pueblo lieutenant governor, about the deeper implications of the Land Back movement and how allies can take meaningful action to support Tribal Nations and Indigenous Peoples in these efforts.
Video
Panel Three: Paying It Forward (Truth and Transformation 2022)
Globally, reparations movements are gaining ground. These movements focus on a broad spectrum of ways to return resources, achieve economic security and close the racial wealth gap, including cash payments, repatriating cultural artifacts, land givebacks, health access, and philanthropic investments. What can we learn from these latest efforts in the US and elsewhere? Looking into the future how can we make reparations work?
Media Release
Researchers with Harvard Project Examine Federal and State Landback Options for Tribal Nations
Researchers from the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development (Harvard Project) released a policy brief outlining how to identify lands historically belonging to Indian nations that could be returned by the U.S. federal and state government—a process commonly referred to as landback.
Q+A
How to reduce rejected ballots
With the 2022 midterm vote approaching, the issue of ballot “curing” or correcting clerical errors on ballots has garnered increased attention as some jurisdictions work to expand vote by mail, while others have sought to curb the practice.
Hybrid Intelligence: A Paradigm for More Responsible Practice
The authors propose an alternate approach to mainstream AI practice that broadens the focus beyond algorithms viewed in isolation to processes of human-algorithm collaboration.
Commentary
Crowd Counting Consortium: Escalating Right-Wing Attacks on the LGBTQ+ Community
Feature
It’s not a moment of racial justice backlash—it’s an era—and a crisis of democracy
Speaking in the JFK Jr. Forum, civil rights leader Maya Wiley underscored the entwined fate of democracy and racial justice
Feature
How to save democracy
Events this week in JFK Jr. Forum examined what can be done to address grinding problems of race, internet’s power to exploit political, and cultural schisms to destructive ends.