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A group of Harvard social scientists launched a four-part series last week previewing the high-stakes 2024 general election in India, expected to draw a record turnout in the worlds most populous nation, where more than 986 million are registered to vote.

The balloting will decide the political makeup of Lok Sabha, Indias lower house of Parliament. It will also determine whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a hard-line Hindu nationalist, will remain in power for a third term. The India Votes series kicked off with a conversation interrogating the very nature of democracy in the vast, multi-ethnic society, with Modis leadership proving a central theme.

Today India faces challenges that will be familiar to anyone in the Harvard community, noted series co-organizer Maya Jasanoff 96, the X.D. and Nancy Yang Professor and Coolidge Professor of History. The rise of right-wing populism has been a subject of global significance, she said. Concerns about media coverage of political campaigns are highly pertinent. . And Indias international presence has been shaped by an increasingly large diaspora population, particularly here in the United States.

Hindus make up the largest religious group in the nation at about 80 percent. The political, economic, and social persecution of Indias religious minorities figured prominently in the conversation, sponsored by multiple academic departments and global centers, including the Harvard University Asia Center, Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Also central was what moderator Sugata Bose, the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, called Indias fascinating case study of the struggle to establish democratic norms after freeing itself from the authoritarianism of British colonial rule in 1947.

The expert on modern South Asia and Indian Ocean history opened the discussion with a chronicle of his own service in the Lok Sabha, or House of the People, between 2014 and 2019, just as Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.) swept to national power.

In my very first speech, I tried to issue a warning not to confuse majoritarianism with democracy and uniformity with unity, having noted that the House of the People did not reflect the rich diversity of India as well as it should, recalled Bose, whose latest book is the just released Asia After Europe: Imagining a Continent in the Long Twentieth Century.

As the evenings three panelists took turns giving prepared remarks, Sandipto Dasgupta, an assistant professor of politics at the New School, suggested the persistent focus on the size of Indias democracy distracts from more qualitative assessments of political leaders like Modi, the clear favorite according to recent polling.

What we get is this idea of elections sans any kind of modernization, sans any kind of new politics elections as just an exercise in adding large numbers, said Dasgupta, whose Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony is available this month. We get this peculiar idea of a deeply undemocratic set of politicians who believe in elections very, very much.

Sushant Singh, a senior fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research think tank, underscored this point, noting that North Korea is one of the more than 60 countries with elections in 2024.

The political scientist, veteran journalist, and former Indian military officer also testified to the diminished state of Indias political press, which he accused of failing in its role as a pillar of democracy.

When Trump won [in the U.S.], Margaret Sullivan at The New York Times wrote that journalists are going to have to be better, stronger, more courageous, Singh said. In India, the journey has been in the opposite direction after Modi won in May 2014. Media have become a cruel propaganda arm of the government and ruling party.

Raheel Dhattiwala,an independent sociologist who is currently a fellow with the University of Heidelberg, spoke to the use of violence for winning elections. She cited the anti-Muslim riots that occurred in Gujarat in 2002, when Modi was the Indian states chief minister and widely perceived to have supported the attacks.

The greatest violence was in places where the B.J.P. faced the greatest electoral competition not where it was strong or weak, said the former journalist, who published Keeping the Peace:Spatial Differences in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002 five years ago.

Mob violence like that is hardly necessary today, Dhattiwala argued. You no longer need to feel any shame in expressing hatred for a minority group, she said.

Some in the audience pushed back on these analyses during the question-and-answer session. One attendee challenged the panelists to list a positive accomplishment of the Indian government over the last 10 years. Another requested something anything to end on a hopeful note.

As I sit here, Im a little struck by what to me feels like the narrowness of the case you make, said Mittal Institute Executive Director Hitesh Hathi, M.A. 97, one of the last in the audience to speak.

He listed examples of political violence and abuse of state power occurring in Indian states controlled by parties other than the B.J.P. So there is a larger political problem, Hathi said. If we only focus on one party and one system and one man, it feels to me like we are perhaps missing the problem and a possible solution, which I would argue comes from the deep roots of democracy in South Asian soil.

India Votes continues on March 25 with associate professor of history Arunabh Ghosh scheduled to preside over a virtual conversation featuring perspectives from Indias neighbors. Social studies lecturer Vatsal Naresh will lead an April 8 panel of journalists who have reported on Indian politics nationally and internationally. Jasanoff will close out the series on April 16 with a focus on South Asians in the U.S.

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Dark concerns over upcoming vote in world's largest democracy Harvard Gazette - Harvard Gazette

On 24 February we entered the third year of horrific Russian violence in Ukraine. Much of that violence has been indiscriminately targeted by the invader against civilians, residential buildings and Unesco cultural sites. In some cases, whole cities have been razed to the ground.

In Russia, meanwhile, Kremlin propaganda conjures false realities while new waves of repression target anyone who dares to criticise the war culminating, just before the invasions second anniversary, with the murder of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

As a Russian studies scholar, I have struggled with how to best approach my profession since the invasion began. I absolutely do not equate all Russians with the Kremlin, but the situation has called for a re-evaluation of how we study Russia and Russian culture in light of everything being done in its name.

Over time, I have come to view my classroom as a training ground for citizenship. In this context, I see my discipline as one of many that can and should loudly tell the story of authoritarianism. Understanding what authoritarians do to their subjects powerfully illuminates the meaning of citizenship, with its powers, privileges and inviolable function in the preservation of democracy.

The Kremlin targets individuals through arrests and fines, but also by banning books and silencing speech, eroding citizenship to the point that individuals no longer feel at liberty to exercise it freely. When that doesnt work, it resorts to violence. It poisoned Navalny in 2020, but he survived and returned to Russia in 2021 because he dreamed of democracy and balance of power, a realparliamentary system and an independent judiciary to boot.

Navalny knew citizenship and democracy within himself, even if the same could not be true of those who immediately imprisoned him for extremism, kept him in solitary confinement for 300 days, moved him toa colony in the Arctic Circle and, ultimately, killed him. Every time he faced his jailers, he spoke out against Putins regime and the war in Ukraine, amassing new criminal charges for simply behaving like a citizen with the right to free speech.

People in Moscow were arrested for putting flowers in Navalnys memory on the Solovetsky memorial stone that honours the victims of Russias distinctive history of repression. Yet as many as 16,500 attended his funeral, openly criticising Putin as they stood in line a rare manifestation of citizenship under the cover of mourning.

In a Russian higher education system that has long pulled out of the Bologna process and been stripped of even the most basic standards of academic freedom, these moments of historical significance can never be properly analysed or even mentioned. Education plays an essential role in both the preservation and the fall of democracy, so it should come as no surprise that Putin has taken an active interest in it.

Last autumn, the Kremlin effectively ended the teaching of liberal arts in Russia by closing the Smolny College of Liberal Arts in St Petersburg. Authoritarians have no use for a mode of education that fosters independent thinking among younger generations. Instead, Putin recently unveiled a mandatory sequence of ideological courses, the foundations of Russian statehood, which articulates the Kremlins view of history and aims to make Russias global isolation palatable through the construct of a distinctively Russian civilizational model that reeks of exceptionalism and unreality.

Because of this weaponisation of education by autocratic regimes, institutions of higher education in free countries must make preservation of democracy an intentional part of our teaching. And Putin is quite right that a liberal arts approach, founded on independent, non-ideological critical thinking may well be the best way to do so. Its multidimensional and individualised curricular flexibility requires students to participate in courses that, as well as offering the basics of disciplinary training, teach them to grapple independently with global issues such as the pitfalls of AI, the perils of climate change and the true significance of the decline or collapse of democracy.

While we in free countries often take democracy for granted, individuals living under authoritarianism sometimes write the most extraordinarily poignant tributes to it, which we would do very well to study. They offer first-hand accounts of how subjects are stripped of layers of citizenship, at times to the point of being reduced to what Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls bare life whose only defining characteristic is that it can be ended.

I spend a lot of time teaching ethics through stories, both true and fictional, historical and contemporary, that introduce tangible stakes. I want to keep sharing the writings of gulag survivorssuch as Varlam Shalamov and Evgenia Ginzburg, as well as the many war testimonials, poems and documentaries from Ukrainian writers and journalists that memorialise the Russian governments actions against Ukrainians. In addition to helping us understand the true face of authoritarianism and why democracy is worth fighting for these stories project the voices of individuals who have held on to their self-conception as citizens despite violent attempts to turn them into something less.

Memorialising testimonials of how authoritarianism infringes on our basic freedoms, dignity, ideals and even our very lives can impassion students to champion human rights, freedom and the broader citizenship of groups and individuals. Because, however enshrined it is in law, democracy is most vibrant when reinforced through individual understandings so personal that they enable citizens to almost instinctively recognise manifestations of its lack.

Ani Kokobobo is professor and chair of Slavic, German and Eurasian studies at the University of Kansas.

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Navalny's killing highlights the need for HE to help preserve democracy - Times Higher Education

Lets make a few things crystal clear right up front. First and foremost, green beer has always been a bad choice and is without any saving grace. I also doubt that even St. Patrick in his prime could drive all the political snakes out of todays Washington. The history of St. Patricks Day itself is not without major warts particularly regarding who could and couldnt participate.

But despite these caveats, I believe there is something about Americas version of the holiday that embodies strengths our nation can and should lean into particularly going into a high-stakes, take-no-prisoners election year.

This suggestion isnt coming from a rabid St. Patricks Day fan. Growing up with a distinctly Irish name, I was ambivalent at best about a holiday that reinforced so many caricatures and myths. As a kid (with a big dose of adolescent snark) I would say it was my job to be Irish 364 days a year and March 17 was my one day off. I also saw many efforts to define Americans by ethnic, religious or racial differences doing more to fuel divisions than to build healthy pride.

As time went by, Ive softened my view. What brought that about? Part of it was learning more about history. Weve been at this in America for a very long time in fact our first St. Patricks Day parades took place well before the Declaration of Independence was signed. First as a reflection of Irish pride (and sometimes defiance), over the centuries they have become more welcoming. Like the greatest aspects of the American story itself, more and more people have been allowed to participate both as parade marchers and celebrants.

This hasnt come easily (it never does) and even involved a landmark Supreme Court case concerning access for LGBTQ groups. Today it can feel like the Supreme Court decides everything, but while that decision actually affirmed the right to restrict parade participation it wasnt the final word. What turned the tide was changing attitudes and the willingness of political and business leaders to stand up for pitching a bigger tent.

As important to changing my attitude was personally witnessing several St. Patricks Day miracles. These included a longstanding breakfast tradition in Boston that features Republicans and Democrats putting aside their differences and making jokes rather than scoring political points. Humor is a really important part of the St. Patricks Day magic. Punch lines that are bitter and come at the expense of others feed our collective anxiety and anger. Laughing at ourselves and with each other is what heals and builds bridges.

Ive also attended multiple parades including a big one in my conservative Florida town where Ive seen a cross-section of Americans joyfully marching and cheering each other on. Celebrating anything as a community is a very beautiful and powerful thing and all too rare in todays America.

The sad fact is that navigating holidays has become much too complex and politized lately. We now need to walk on eggshells when we sincerely offer best wishes for example, the whole Merry Christmas vs. Happy holidays thing. To date, St. Patricks Day has been spared and its really important we keep it that way. There are no sides to take, nobody is keeping score, and it isnt about red and blue its just about different and often crazy shades of green that are almost invariably unflattering. Just come as you are to celebrate Irish culture and/or the coming of spring. Its an example of what America can be at its most authentically exceptional and unpretentious.

We desperately need to expand the number of special days like this when we put aside us vs. them thinking and come together. We need days where we can wear silly stuff, not talk politics, and celebrate the contributions of different members of the American family. This attitude and the values behind it should have an important role to play every single day.

For example, I can envision Election Day as a celebration of these aspects of the American character. Sure we will vote for different candidates, but we could also see it as an opportunity to express shared gratitude for the freedoms we enjoy and for those who sacrificed so much to secure them for us. The bottom line is that St. Patricks Day shows were capable of celebrating together without putting our differences, frustrations and anger front and center. If we can pull that off (albeit imperfectly) for even one day, it means we can do it more often. I sincerely believe that for the American experiment to survive and thrive we need to find the wisdom and courage to do just that.

By the way, if our toxic politics is making you consider green beer or even something stronger to deaden the pain, try Citizen Connect first. Its a nonpartisan online platform I co-founded that puts 600 organizations dedicated to finding common ground at your fingertips.

___

(The Fulcrum covers whats making democracy dysfunctional and efforts to fix our governing systems. Sign up for our newsletter at thefulcrum.us. The Fulcrum is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news platform covering efforts to fix our governing systems. It is a project of, but editorially independent from, Issue One.)

2024 The Fulcrum. Visit at thefulcrum.us. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Commentary: Can St. Patrick and green beer save American democracy? - Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel

Statement by Secretary General Marija Pejinovi Buri on the occasion of the finalisation of the Convention

This first-of-a-kind treaty will ensure that the rise of Artificial Intelligence upholds Council of Europe legal standards in human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Its finalisation by our Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) is an extraordinary achievement and should be celebrated as such.

It sets out a legal framework that covers AI systems throughout their lifecycles, from start to end.

While this treaty has been elaborated by the Council of Europe with like-minded international partners, it will be a global instrument, open to the world. After its adoption by our Committee of Ministers in the coming weeks, countries from all over the world will be eligible to join it and meet the high ethical standards it sets.

The text strikes the right regulatory balance precisely because it has benefitted from the input of governments and experts, and industry and civil society. We thank all of those partners for their contribution and delivering this seminal text. We are convinced that, once adopted, this treaty will bring everyone together in appreciation of its impact.

* * *

The Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law has been finalised yesterday by the Council of Europe Committee on Artificial Intelligence. The draft text will be referred to the Committee of Ministers for adoption and opened for signature at a later stage.

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Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law Framework Convention - Council of Europe

Senate Majority PAC, an independent group aligned with Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), is spending $2.7 million to elevate Donald Trumps pick a fellow 2020 election denier in a three-way Republican primary on Tuesday. The idea is to help the candidate, former luxury car dealer Bernie Moreno, because he would be the easiest GOP nominee for incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) to defeat in the fall.

Its a replay of the cynical tactic Democrats employed in the 2022 midterm elections. Then, they spent more than $53 million across nine states primaries to boost far-right Republican House candidates who had questioned or denied the validity of Joe Bidens victory in the 2020 election, as well as MAGA-inclined gubernatorial candidates in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Illinois.

Theres no question it paid off: Democrats hold several House seats they might not have otherwise and won all three governorships. Theres also no question it reeked powerfully, and enduringly, of hypocrisy. Who knows why so many Americans still back Mr. Trump despite his evident lies about 2020? But maybe one small part of the reason is that Democratic operatives keep manipulating the issue for short-term political advantage.

Mr. Moreno wasnt always an election denier. He urged his social media followers to accept the results in late 2020 and tweeted on Jan. 6, 2021, that Mr. Trump deserved lots and lots of blame for this. But then he decided to run for office. President Trump says the election was stolen, and hes right, Mr. Moreno said in a commercial during a short-lived 2022 bid for the Senate. More recently, hes called those prosecuted for storming the Capitol political prisoners.

The Democratic commercial doesnt mention any of that. Nominally, its an attack ad because it calls Mr. Moreno too conservative and mentions his support for a national abortion ban and repealing Obamacare. But those points appeal to GOP base voters. Moreno would lead the charge to enact Trumps MAGA agenda, a narrator says. The spot says that the former president calls Mr. Moreno exactly the type of MAGA fighter that we need. A spokeswoman for Senate Majority PAC said in a statement that Ohioans deserve to know the truth about Bernie Moreno.

In the Ohio race, state Sen. Matt Dolan would be the strongest Republican candidate against Mr. Brown in November. Hes a governance-minded conservative in the mold of former senator Rob Portman and Gov. Mike DeWine, who both endorse his bid. (Mr. Dolans father owns the Cleveland Guardians; one reason Mr. Trump has attacked the son is that the baseball team changed its name from the Indians.) Mr. Dolan would likely be a vote in the Senate for aiding Ukraine, which has a large diaspora in Ohio, while Mr. Moreno is critical of sending any more money. So the Democratic push for Mr. Moreno flies in the face of the partys position on that crucial issue, too.

Polling shows the GOP primary within the margin of error, with Mr. Dolan opening a slight lead and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose in a distant third. In a general election matchup, Mr. Brown leads Mr. Moreno but trails Mr. Dolan.

To repeat: Senate Majority PACs sole job is winning elections, so its rational for it to intervene in favor of Mr. Moreno. The $2.7 million buy is a drop in the ocean of likely spending on what could be this cycles most expensive Senate race. The group plans to air $65 million of television ads in Ohio during the general election while its Republican rival, Senate Leadership Fund, plans to spend $57.5 million.

But Senate Majority PACs tactics clash grotesquely with President Bidens portrayal of the 2024 stakes in this months State of the Union address: January 6th and the lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed the gravest threat to our democracy since the Civil War, he declared. Mr. Biden said those who stormed the Capitol placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy, adding: The threat remains, and democracy must be defended. The president called on lawmakers to respect free and fair elections, restore trust in our institutions, and make clear political violence has absolutely no place in America.

Mr. Trump has twice carried Ohio by eight points. The Moreno campaign points out that many Democrats assumed Mr. Trump would be the easiest Republican for Hillary Clinton to defeat in 2016. Whoever wins Tuesdays primary even Mr. Moreno has a real chance of sitting in the Senate a year from now. Democrats should be careful what they wish for.

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Opinion | Democratic ads to help Bernie Moreno win Ohio GOP Senate primary reek of hypocrisy - The Washington Post - The Washington Post