Read the latest news, commentary, and analysis from the Ash Center.
Commentary
Allen Lab Fellow Hillary Lehr convened a Voter Experience Summit at Harvard’s Ash Center in March, bringing together 25 cross-sector experts to rigorously map the voter journey. This essay explores how that collaborative process could lay the groundwork for new interventions to understand and improve the experience of voting for all.
Newest
Feature
George R. Greenidge. Jr. HGSE ‘96, Ash Center Democracy Visiting Fellow, doesn’t draw a line between scholarship and community advocacy, using both to combat gentrification and racial injustice.
Feature
South Bend, Indiana CIO Denise Linn Riedl MPP ’15 knows you can’t always code your way into a solution. With help from Juliahna Green MPP ’22, Riedl is expediting aid to residents in need by balancing people and process.
Assistant Professor of Public Policy Benjamin Schneer sat down with the Ash Center to discuss the once-in-a-decade reapportionment process now underway, the potential for partisan gerrymandering and its impact on politics nationwide.
Video
Confronting racism directly and building a fully inclusive democracy are completely intertwined. Two authors with strong history in the democracy movement have recently written forcefully and personally on the subject. Heather McGhee served as President of Demos before writing the New York Times bestseller The Sum of Us, and Theodore Johnson, after serving twenty years in the military, is the Director of the Fellows Program at the Brennan Center for Justice and the author of the just-published When the Stars Begin to Fall. Harvard Law Professor Guy Uriel-Charles engaged with them on their experiences, their arguments, and how they see the way forward.
Video
In this panel discussion, community organizers, leaders, and democracy advocates explored examples from communities all over the country where this is working today. Then, they discussed the challenge of replicating and expanding community civic infrastructure initiatives across the country.
Q+A
Requiring citizens to vote, or actively abstain, would increase voter participation and make democracy more representative in the Bay State says Ash Center Senior Practice Fellow in American Democracy.
Feature
Patrick Lynch MC/MPA 2019 partnered with Indigenous filmmakers to tell the story of native sovereignty in Alaska.
Video
Six exceptional tribal programs were selected by the Harvard Project’s Honoring Nations Program as finalists for the prestigious 2021 awards in American Indian governance. At the heart of Honoring Nations is the principle that tribes themselves hold the key to generating social, political, cultural, and economic prosperity and that self-governance plays a crucial role in building and sustaining strong, healthy Indian nations.
2021’s outstanding finalists were:
Media Release