Harvard Ash Center

✨ This year, we’re celebrating our 20 years of serving as a hub for democracy research, analysis, and discussion at Harvard ✨

"AI is the issue driving the most societal and economic change we will encounter in our lifetime, yet US political parties are largely silent. ... Few US politicians are leveraging the technology for public listening or other pro-democratic purposes." bit.ly/40JBKHh

“Technology just ignores [laws] and rewrites them. That’s true in social media. It’s true in AI as well. We already have laws [that] address issues of bias, consumer protection, and so forth. None of those are enforced online," shares Latanya Sweeney. bit.ly/4uECkDW

The latest episode of Terms of Engagement—featuring Nancy Gibbs—is now available on Apple Podcasts (apple.co/4sjswgU) and Spotify (bit.ly/4deeOrh). New episodes air live every Tuesday at 12pm, and are available the next day wherever you get your podcasts.

Jeanne Sheehan Zaino, Democracy Visiting Fellow at the Ash Center, joins Bloomberg's Balance of Power to discuss Operation Epic Fury in Iran, noting “the President has yet to articulate clearly how any of this is in our best interest." bloom.bg/4bMgS8x

Tune in to today's episode of Terms of Engagement, live on YouTube at 12pm ET. Watch here ⤵️ youtube.com/live/BgMn70uUV…

"The new war echoes key traits from 20 years ago. Operation Epic Fury is another war of choice with no imminent military threat to the United States. ... Once again, US leaders are optimistic about the outcome, with little planning for what lies ahead." bit.ly/4sKInVD

"This is all truly unprecedented. ... There's really nothing to support the idea that you can fix a national legislative problem with regional reforms," shares Nicholas Stephanopoulos. bit.ly/4rwm5pM

"Partisan segregation ... is rising fastest among younger voters, raising concerns that a generation growing up in a politically segregated environment may remain so and that the existing partisan divide may self-perpetuate and continue to increase." bit.ly/40qV77T

Exploring the impacts of the Trump administration's actions in Venezuela and Iran, Jeanne Sheehan Zaino shares that "what is left is for the American public to speak out, most importantly at the ballot box." Learn more here ⤵️ bit.ly/4bdhNgM

Tune in to today's episode of Terms of Engagement, live on YouTube at 12pm ET. Watch here ⤵️ youtube.com/live/CZlHFBKiS…

"With ambitious local leadership, AI, and especially the coming wave of agentic AI, can offer a profound opportunity not only to make government services more efficient but also to transform how cities fulfill their end of the social contract." bit.ly/4szE7bw

"It takes decades of debate, discussion, compromise ... to finally get action on an issue. ... Like limited responsiveness and ill-execution, policy dilution results when a political system is structurally divided as ours is," shares Jeanne Sheehan Zaino. bit.ly/4lgHiCH

"Human rights ... were created through struggle of people all over the world to try to define what our human rights were and to put them into declarations and then law. ... The enforcement of human rights is yet another set of struggles." bit.ly/4d5EUwi

"If the defense department is demanding the use of AI for mass surveillance or autonomous warfare that we, the public, find unacceptable, that should tell us we need to pass new legal restrictions on those military activities." bit.ly/4blSRF0

"Public AI developed by transparent, accountable agencies would allow democratic processes and political oversight to govern how these powerful systems function," share Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders in a recent article for The Globe and Mail. tgam.ca/3MGoKip

"If we can agree on the importance of deliberation across political divides, maybe voters will be more alert to the risk of tech companies. ... Technology will be as democracy-eroding or democracy-enhancing as the American people demand." kroc.nd.edu/news-events/ne…

"Public AI developed by transparent, accountable agencies would allow democratic processes and political oversight to govern how these powerful systems function," share Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders. tgam.ca/3MGoKip

Tune in to today's episode of Terms of Engagement, live on YouTube at 12pm ET. Tune in here ⤵️ youtube.com/live/nik89JrzU…

"Building strong institutions is a much more effective use of resources than is betting on any single individual. ... Universities and institutions should stay committed to the public interest," share Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders. nature.com/articles/d4158…

"The fact that badly designed approaches to participation exist does not delegitimize participation as a value. It signals that we have to rebuild the science of democratic design," shares Danielle Allen, in a recent conversation on The Good Fight. persuasion.community/p/danielle-all…