Read the latest news, commentary, and analysis from the Ash Center.
Commentary
Allen Lab Policy Fellow Hillary Lehr provides a late-October 2026 snapshot of the multiple ways that AI and the midterms are intersecting, including campaign use cases, policy issues, and voters’ use of LLMs.
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Q+A
As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, its founding principles — and its enduring contradictions — continue to provoke reflection and debate. In this conversation, Alex Keyssar, historian and Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, discusses the historical circumstances in which the Declaration was written, the ideals it sought to articulate, how its meaning has evolved over time, and the tensions between its soaring language and the realities of slavery, inequality, and political compromise.
Feature
Key takeaways from the Ash Center’s 2025–2026 seminar series on navigating global threats to modern democracy.
Media Release
A new book from Harvard scholar Danielle Allen revisits the forgotten British radical movement that helped shape modern democracy.
Feature
Paige Swem MC/MPA 2026 has built her career around a simple but powerful belief: meaningful change happens when institutions share power with the people they serve. From leading democracy reform efforts in Michigan to studying public leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, she has championed grassroots, participatory approaches that bring citizens into decision-making and strengthen democratic systems from the ground up, earning her the Ash Center’s Martha H. Mauzy Award this spring.
This article was originally written by Carol Kerbaugh for Harvard Kennedy School’s website.
Commentary
First published in 2014, Professor Danielle Allen’s Our Declaration has been reissued with a new foreword this year to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Media Release
New study published in AI and Ethics introduces a new ethical-moral intelligence framework for AI and finds that leading AI models mimic human moral concern while making decisions that reveal a hidden value hierarchy.
Q+A
As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in everyday decision-making, its role in shaping how people think about ethics and morality is drawing increasing scrutiny. In this conversation with researcher Sarah Hubbard, we discuss insights from her co-authored paper, “Crocodile Tears: Can the Ethical-Moral Intelligence of AI Models Be Trusted?”—examining how AI systems respond to moral dilemmas, and what this reveals about the risks, limitations, and need for greater transparency and human oversight in AI-driven ethical guidance.
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.
Feature
Asset managers face increasing political risk stemming from concerns that they prioritize their own interests when voting on behalf of investors. Using survey evidence and structural estimation, Pablo Montagnes of Emory University provides early evidence on how well asset managers represent their investors by studying the ideological alignment between the two in the initial implementation of “voting choice policies.”