Library of democratic content

How the Coronavirus Pandemic Fuels Trump’s Autocratic Instincts

"Trump apparently read from a teleprompter on Wednesday night. After weeks of dismissing the threat of a pandemic and of continuing to obsess about his own personal grievances, he finally sounded grave… precisely because Trump was not at his worst… in the extraordinary situation of a pandemic, what we are witnessing is peak Trump." (Gessen, 2020)

Inequality and Support for Democracy: a Micro Perspective

This piece demonstrates how “perceived equality significantly increases support for democracy as a regime type, while feelings of being more unlike others significantly reduces support for democracy” (Isbell, 2020) and explores what drives democracy or endangers it in relation to inequality.

Social Media Monitoring

The extent to which DHS exploits social media information is buried in jargon-filled notices about changes to document storage systems that impart only the vaguest outlines of the underlying activities. To fill this gap, this report seeks to map out the department’s collection, use, and sharing of social media information by piecing together press reports..., and other publicly available documents. (German, 2020)

Time to care: Unpaid and underpaid care work and the global inequality crisis

"Governments around the world must act now to build a human economy that is feminist and values what truly matters to society... Investing in national care systems to address the disproportionate responsibility for care work done by women and girls and introducing progressive taxation… are possible and crucial first steps."

Livable Cities and Inclusion

The Cost of Inequality

We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both," said Louis Brandeis, a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Was he right? Can economic inequality be tempered without discouraging innovation and entrepreneurship?

We and Them

Far from diminishing, ethnic, national and religious tribalism is on the rise, feeding intolerance, exclusion, populism and conflict. Why are the ideals of multiculturalism and inclusion so elusive, and so often held in disdain?

A Human and Constitutional Right to a Quality Public Education: Looking Ahead in the Struggle for the Rights of Teachers, Parents, and Students

The authors use the Declaration of Human Rights and the U.S. Constitution as a lens through which they examine how to ensure quality education and labor protections as fundamental human rights, why ensuring those rights is necessary, and how these protections can bring change and justice to classrooms.

Fighting Far-Right Violence and Hate Crimes

“The purpose of this white paper is to examine how Justice Department policies regarding far-right violence undermine our nation’s security by discounting the safety concerns of American communities victimized by this reactionary violence and official indifference” (German and Mauléon, 2019).

People, Profits and Peace

This report encourages “the private sector to...pursue an agenda which builds on but also goes beyond human rights due diligence” and “calls on policymakers and civil society to work with business in novel ways to complement existing dialogues on business and human rights” (Martin, Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Lisa ten Brinke, 2019).