Join the Ash Center; Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life; Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Harvard University; and Black Student Union at Harvard Kennedy School for a conversation with Heather McGhee, a leading voice in the national conversation on systemic racism and its consequences, and the author of the recently released book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. The book is a personal journey and a powerful examination of the debilitating economic and social consequences of...

The 2020 elections hinged, in dramatic ways, on widely varying state laws and state election procedures. Major changes were made in light of the pandemic, to expand options for mail-in and early voting and to Election Day itself. These changes engendered strong support and strong opposition, and were one reason for the record turnout of 160 million voters. Now, state legislatures are in session all around the country. Will the changes adopted in 2020 be made permanent? Will voting options be expanded further? Or will states seek to roll back voting opportunities as a result? Join us for...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated preexisting housing challenges for many low- and moderate-income US renter households, leading to a crisis in which an estimated $25 to $34 billion in rental payments were outstanding as of late 2020. However, there is very little data on how landlords have responded to this financial strain. In this session, Elijah de la Campa, a Senior Research Associate in Economics and Urban Analytics at the Bloomberg Harvard City...

Why do politicians cooperate peacefully with organized criminal groups? Interactions between organized criminal groups and politicians are often either depicted as coercive or where the politician is a member of the criminal group. Using mixed-methods research on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a project by Jessie Bullock, PhD Candidate in Government, Harvard University, shows that there is a third explanation for cooperation: politicians willingly engage with organized criminal groups at arms-length when it is in their electoral interest to seek out these arrangements and when they have a low...

The January 6 Capitol insurrection shows that the United States is facing exceptional challenges to our democracy. Lee Drutman, Senior Fellow in the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation, thinks that our two-party system is a root cause of that dysfunction. Although we have had a two-party system in name for many decades, there were divisions and overlaps between parties that created room for bargaining, compromise, crossing over, and even unity. In our current state of hyper-polarization, however, the two parties are fully sorted, and this give-and-take has eroded into...