Terms of Engagement
Terms of Engagement
Podcast Description
From rank-choice voting to reconciliation, American democracy is headline news. Let’s talk about it.
Join Harvard Ash Center's Archon Fung and Stephen Richer for a weekly conversation about the latest developments in American politics. Blending perspectives from both the political right and left, Terms of Engagement addresses breaking news, providing insights from research and practice to deliver a unique perspective you won’t hear anywhere else.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast focuses on a variety of political topics including rank-choice voting, immigration policy, government accountability, and democracy trends. For instance, the inaugural episode dives into the expansion of ICE, ongoing deportations, and public protests, analyzing their implications for democratic governance and citizen engagement.
From rank-choice voting to reconciliation, American democracy is headline news. Let’s talk about it.
Join Harvard Ash Center’s Archon Fung and Stephen Richer for a weekly conversation about the latest developments in American politics. Blending perspectives from both the political right and left, Terms of Engagement addresses breaking news, providing insights from research and practice to deliver a unique perspective you won’t hear anywhere else.
What does it take to stand up for what you believe in when your personal safety, security and even liberty are at stake? Ami Fields-Meyer, a political strategist and former senior policy advisor in the Biden-Harris White House, who spent the last two years crisscrossing the globe interviewing more than a hundred dissidents, organizers, and everyday people who chose to speak out despite real risk. That reporting became his new book, co-written with journalist Julia Angwin, “On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear,” which distills those stories into practical lessons anyone can use. From authoritarian drift to cancel culture to corporate retaliation, Fields-Meyer joins Terms of Engagement hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to discuss the psychology, mechanics and practicalities of speaking out in tumultuous times.
About our Guest
Ami Fields-Meyer is a New York Times bestselling author, political strategist, and former White House senior policy advisor. His first book, “On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear,” co-authored with Julia Angwin, is a deeply reported manual about how anyone can defy an authoritarian – based on original interviews with more than 100 dissidents, activists, and theorists across the world. From 2021 to 2024, Fields-Meyer served as a senior policy advisor in the White House, where he led U.S. policy on civil rights, consumer protection, and technology. He has advised political candidates, leaders of top civil rights groups and major philanthropic foundations, and high-profile public officials. A former senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, his writing on democracy and public policy has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Foreign Policy. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
About Terms of Engagement
From rank-choice voting to reconciliation, American democracy is headline news. Let’s talk about it.
Join Harvard Ash Center’s Archon Fung and Stephen Richer for a weekly conversation about the latest developments in American politics. Blending perspectives from both the political right and left, Terms of Engagement addresses breaking news, providing insights from research and practice to deliver a unique perspective you won’t hear anywhere else.
Contact Us
Send questions, ideas, and feedback to us at [email protected].
About the Hosts
Archon Fung is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance with a focus on public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in professional journals. He received two S.B.s — in philosophy and physics — and his Ph.D. in political science from MIT.
Stephen Richer is the former elected Maricopa County Recorder, responsible for voter registration, early voting administration, and public recordings in Maricopa County, Arizona, the fourth largest county in the United States. Prior to being an elected official, Stephen worked at several public policy think tanks and as a business transactions attorney. Stephen received his J.D. and M.A. from The University of Chicago and his B.A. from Tulane University.
Stephen has been broadly recognized for his work in elections and American Democracy. In 2021, the Arizona Republic named Stephen “Arizonan of the Year.” In 2022, the Maricopa Bar Association awarded Stephen “Public Law Attorney of the Year.” In 2023, Stephen won “Leader of the Year” from the Arizona Capitol Times. And in 2024, Time Magazine named Stephen a “Defender of Democracy.”
About the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, a research center at Harvard Kennedy School, is Harvard’s hub for the study, discussion, and analysis of democracy. The Ash Center’s mission is to develop ideas and foster practices for equal and inclusive, multi-racial and multi-ethnic democracy and self-government.
Music Credit: Straight to the Point, Music Media Group
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