Politics

Populations around the world have been electing more and more autocratic leaders in the past couple decades, via supposedly free, fair, and democratic elections. The freedom of the press is being impinged upon in many places, and fear, outrage and misinformation are often taking the place of reasoned debate. Minority populations in some countries are increasingly oppressed...

Merely defining gun violence is difficult, and coming to agreement on what to do about it often seems near-impossible in the United States. But people on all sides of the debate agree that they want to feel safe, even if they have different ideas of how to achieve security. What will it take to truly listen to each other and make progress on this issue? U.S. Representative...

The desire to try and stop people from reading certain printed material has been around since material was first printed. In the modern era, book banning has waxed and waned in popularity, experiencing peaks during McCarthyism and again in the 1980s. We’re now in the midst of another wave, mostly targeting books by people of color and LGBTQ identities. In 2022, the number...

A problem as big as climate change relies on millions of incremental solutions of all sizes, but also requires leaders who can keep their eye on the big picture. Not all the movement on climate needs to come from the government, but making progress will rely in large part on executive action. Vice President Kamala Harris has a clear vision for the role that the U.S. govern...

Americans across the country will go to the polls and cast their ballots next week, but they won’t all do it in exactly the same way. The U.S. has 8,800 voting jurisdictions, which allows for local adaptation, but presents a challenge when it comes to standardizing elections. That variability might be part of what’s fueling a wave of mistrust about voting integrity, and a...

Does it feel like the quality of our national discourse has gone down in the last several years? You’re not the only one who’s noticed. It’s not individuals who have gotten stupider, says NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, but it’s our collective intelligence that’s suffering. Institutions aren’t getting as much done, and leaders are making rash decisions under the pr...

Have Democrats become too identified with technocratic ways of speaking — about the economy, the pandemic, climate change? Has this deepened the political divide between those with and those without college degrees? Can Democrats reconnect with working-class voters who were drawn to Donald Trump? A few people inside the Democratic Party, including Colorado senator Michael...

The Aspen Institute remembers and mourns Secretary Madeleine K. Albright, who passed away on March 23, 2022. She was a diplomat, professor, author, business leader, and the first woman to be the U.S. Secretary of State. In 2018, she raised the alarm on dangerous world leadership with her book “Fascism: A Warning,” calling out the regimes of Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin,...

It's clear the United States isn't united right now. A Pew Research poll done before the 2020 election showed about 9 in 10 voters worried a victory by the other party would lead to lasting harm for the country. Our partisan divides aren't just endangering relationships and slowing progress in Washington, they're threatening our national security. "The greatest gift the Un...

Quick Take is a weekly dose of ideas and insights delivered in short form. Today’s episode features Gayle Smith, the State Department’s coordinator for the global response to Covid-19. Watch her full conversation from the Aspen Security Form. The talk was co-presented with the Aspen Institute Health, Medicine, and Society Program. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYXL0Ppkv...

Norms in newsrooms across the United States are being upended thanks to deep polarization, a racial reckoning, and the pandemic. Hallmark journalistic traits like neutrality and objectivity are being redefined. Eric Deggans, TV critic for NPR, says it's impossible to be objective, and journalists have long been advocates for the status quo. “We’ve seen newspapers apologize...

Twenty years ago, terror attacks on September 11th took place in the United States over the course of a morning but the effects have been felt ever since — politically and psychologically. Journalist Garrett Graff says America lost its innocence that day and the attacks led to a series of consequential blunders by political leaders. The anger, hatred, and fear that emerged...

Representative Liz Cheney is one of nine lawmakers investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The Republican is part of a House select committee that held its first hearing last month. It's critical the committee get to the bottom of what happened that day, says Cheney, but equally important is Americans' acknowledgement that change is needed beyond Washington. “...

Imagine a new kind of democracy — one that puts governance back in the hands of the people. This is the idea behind political theorist Hélène Landemore's book "Open Democracy." Contemporary representative democracies, like in the United States, are broken, she says, so why not reinvent popular rule? In a conversation with Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic,...

Insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. As a nation, America has cycled through the same defense and intelligence issues since the end of the Cold War. In her book "Insanity Defense," Congresswoman Jane Harman chronicles how four administrations have failed to confront some of the toughest national security poli...

Award-winning author and playwright Ayad Akhtar grapples with identity and belonging just like the protagonist in his book "Homeland Elegies." "In some ways being an outsider has given me a freedom to be able to withstand and bear some of the forced outsiderness. It gives me a perspective," he says. His fictional book, named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the New...

The type of conflict that's permeating America today is the intractable kind where normal rules of engagement don't apply. High conflict is the opposite of useful friction or healthy conflict. It's when discord distills into a good-versus-evil kind of feud — an us and a them. Sound familiar? In this time when everything is political, including aspects of the pandemic, ever...

America has been shaped by a hidden phenomenon that touches all of our lives. A rigid hierarchy of human rankings, or caste system, influences our culture, politics, and even our health. Race is the metric by which one’s position in the caste system is determined. In her book, "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents," Isabel Wilkerson describes how these inherited rankings...

The United States is facing one of the most difficult tests in its 244-year history. American democracy is struggling, economic and social justice are under interrogation, faith in institutions is declining, and a pandemic is touching us all. Is national unity a far-off dream?

After more than two decades of research, tax scholar Dorothy A. Brown discovered that America's tax system is not color-blind. In fact, societal racism is deeply embedded in it. From attending college to getting married to buying a home, Black Americans are financially disadvantaged compared to their white peers.