Why strengthening democracy deserves a "genius" award!
Issue 183: Congratulations to to Dr. Hahrie Han for winning a 2025 MacArthur Award
The MacArthur Foundation just announced its 2025 class of “Genius Grant” winners — a dazzling group of thinkers, artists, and change-makers reshaping how we see the world. Among them is someone whose work has influenced our own thinking: Dr. Hahrie Han.
We featured Hahrie in a short documentary we produced a few years ago, Protecting Democracy in a Time of Political Extremism — check it out below! We also interviewed her for this newsletter when her book, Undivided, came out.
Hahrie does extraordinary research on how people build power together, not through money or access, but through relationships, organizing, and collective action. Her work shows how ordinary people, when connected by shared purpose and structure, can revitalize democracy from the ground up.
She is also the Director of the Agora Institute at John’s Hopkins University, where we hosted a conference on The Power of Us. The institute is dedicated to strengthening global democracy by improving and expanding civic engageme…
