Daniel Tichenor, University of Oregon
124 Mount Auburn Street, Suite 200-North
At the inaugural seminar of the Ash Center Democracy Seminar Series, Professor Daniel Tichenor will speak about the inter-action between the American labor movement and immigration from the 19th century to the present. He holds that unions, contrary to popular perception, have at different times in American history been very divided internally over immigration policy and the question of whether immigrants are an opportunity or a threat. More»

Thomas Carothers, Vice President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North
Among the many foreign policy challenges President Obama inherited from his predecessor, restoring the credibility of U.S. democracy promotion is one of the most complex. What have the new president and his foreign policy team done so far on this front? More»

James Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Sciences, Yale University
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North
Why would people choose to remain stateless? For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia—a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries—have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. More»

Heather Gerken, Yale Law School
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North
At this seminar, Professor Heather Gerken will call for an institutional turn in elections scholarship. While scholars of elections have long been preoccupied with the problem of political self-interest, they have focused too narrowly in identifying the problem and failed to think broadly enough about potential solutions. More l Introduction l Watch Seminar

Vijayendra Rao, Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North
In this seminar, Vijayendra (Biju) Rao will examine transcripts of village meetings (gram sabhas) in South India, to demonstrate how boundaries of caste and status are breached within them, and definitions of poverty and beneficiary selection understood and interrogated.
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Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution & Freeman Spogli Institute
124 Mount Auburn Street, Suite 200-North
Why is there not a single democracy in the Arab world today, when every other region has a significant number of democracies? In this seminar, Larry Diamond examines possible cultural, historical, economic, political, institutional, and geostrategic explanations for the democracy deficit in the Arab world. More l Watch the Seminar

David Leblang, University of Virginia
124 Mount Auburn Street, Suite 200-North
Professor David Leblang will discuss the causes and consequences of dual citizenship rights as they apply to expatriates. Arguing that migrant networks provide sending/home countries with access to global capital pools, he will demonstrate that the provision of dual citizenship helps home countries harness the financial and human capital of their diasporas. More l Introduction

Jennifer Rubenstein, University of Virginia
124 Mount Auburn Street, Suite 200-North
Advocacy campaigns by international anti-poverty non-governmental organizations are an increasingly prominent feature of global politics. Professor Rubenstein focuses on two possibilities for how these campaigns be conceptualized and normatively evaluated. More l Introduction l Watch the Seminar

Ariane Chebel d'Appollonia, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
124 Mount Auburn Street, Suite 200-North
In this seminar, Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia examines three interlocking processes that fuel ‘the dynamics of security/integration policy failure.’ The first relates to the spiral effect of border escalation. More l Introduction