Overview
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins is an academic and public forum that integrates research, teaching, and practice to improve and expand powerful civic engagement and informed, inclusive dialogue as the cornerstone of robust global democracy. We work by generating scholarly insights and transforming them into usable knowledge for civic and political actors who can enable real-world change.
Our objective is to translate the best insights from academic scholarship into actionable knowledge in the real world. As we are a university-based institute, our students and faculty are our core constituencies. However, through our research, teaching, and practice, our objective is to impact people who are or will become leaders of the modern-day agora. This includes the community leaders, advocates, non-governmental organizations, party organizations, public thinkers, and arbiters of the public information sphere who are catalysts of civil society around the world, and the students at Johns Hopkins who will go on to fill those positions. These leaders of the modern agora act as intermediaries connecting people to the political process, to allow proper functioning of the norms, behaviors, and institutions that make liberal democracy possible.
Founded in 2017 with a visionary $150 million gift to Johns Hopkins University from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the SNF Agora Institute draws inspiration from the ancient Athenian agora, a gathering place for shared conversation, debate, and action that became the heart of democratic governance in Athens.
COURSES
What does it take for people to engage productively as informed, skilled, and effective members of democratic communities and the world? Whether we are scientists, doctors, engineers, advocates, public servants, or anything else, we are all members of pluralistic communities. This introductory course seeks to introduce students to the theory and principles of civic life and the rights and responsibilities of active citizenship. We’ll examine the history of and struggles for freedom, inclusion, and civic participation, the role of information, deliberation, and free expression in the public sphere, and the threats and opportunities for global democracy. Students will read and discuss materials by civic studies and democracy scholars, building a foundational understanding of civic life across disciplines and perspectives. Many of these scholars and practitioners will appear in class to discuss their work directly with students. The course will pay particular attention to the ways that students from all backgrounds can apply these ideas in their everyday lives, regardless of the professions they pursue. This course is also the first course for students interested in minoring in the SNF Agora Institute Minor on Civic Life, but is designed to inspire a commitment to participation in civic life for all students, including those who do not major or minor in related fields.
Distribution Area: Social and Behavioral Sciences
AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
This course will explore the dynamics and interplay between social entrepreneurship, social change, and policy. Students will explore this specific moment in our democracy, and contextualize erosion happening in international and domestic contexts. The course will examine the intersection between social change and policy change, examining how the two concepts intersect while focusing on the end goal of systems change and furthering democracy. Students will examine different case studies of social transformation (or proposed social transformation) from across the United States and world. Guest speakers will include diverse practitioners of social entrepreneurship who think about long-term pathways to transformative social change, and dynamic policymakers. While the course will include case studies on broader domestic and international challenges and models of democratic erosion, a larger focus will be on specific local social problems and solutions. This will manifest through class discussions and a final project based on the surrounding community.
Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
What role does scientific expertise play (or not play) in American democracy? What role should scientific expertise play (or not play) in American democracy? These are the key questions we’ll address in this class, focusing on a wide range of examples such as government responses to public health crises, environmental crises, and war. We’ll tackle these questions from multiple angles, drawing on ideas from across the social sciences, including political science, psychology, sociology, economics, history, and communication. We’ll focus largely on the United States, though in some cases compare the US experience with other democracies to understand how unique aspects of our democratic institutions influence the link between science and democracy.
Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences
AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Projects and Methods (FA6)
Modern democracies like the U.S. are undergoing severe challenges from within and elsewhere. Internally, many of their citizens are newly skeptical of democracy, believing for example that elections are rigged. Outside, they face new competition from authoritarian systems such as China’s government, which show no signs of converging towards democracy, and offer a possible alternative system of rule. Finally, democracies also have to engage with new policy challenges, such as racial justice and climate change. In this course, we will draw upon the collective wisdom of faculty at Johns Hopkins’ new SNF Agora Institute, to understand better the political challenges that democracy faces, and the policy challenges that it has to respond to. We will put modern democratic challenges in their appropriate historical context. Has America really been a democracy in the past? We will ask about the social and political conditions under which democracy does well, and under which it fails. Finally, we will look at the new agenda of questions that democracy faces, and the means that it can draw on to confront them.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
How is democracy doing around the world? This course will help students to answer this question and ask their own questions about political systems by examining a variety of quantitative measures of facets of democracy in the U.S. and internationally. We consider general indices as well as those that focus on specific normatively-appealing aspects—the absence of fraud in and broader integrity of the electoral process itself, the guarantees of fundamental human rights to all, governments’ effectiveness and accountability to the public, the equity of both representation and policy outcomes for minority groups and those historically disadvantaged or excluded, and the possibility and extent of civic engagement in non-government institutions. Wherever possible, the course will present evidence about the kinds of institutions and policies that seem to bolster democracy. Students can expect to gain hands-on experience with publicly-available subnational and national indicators of electoral and democratic quality.
Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences
AS Foundational Abilities: Science and Data (FA2), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)
Once, many believed the information revolution would undermine autocracies and energize democracies. Instead, we live in an era of unprecedented disinformation, propaganda and media manipulation. Can we reverse these developments? How do we fight back? This course will look at examples of propaganda and disinformation in the past, especially in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, as well as the present: Russia, Latin America, Europe, and the US. We will analyze how our information environment has been transformed, and think about how to create alternatives that will help deliberative democracy flourish.
Prerequisite(s): Students may earn credit for AS.196.310 or AS.196.610 or AS.196.364, but not all three.
Distribution Area: Social and Behavioral Sciences
AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)
Democracies around the world are under threat. This course introduces students to the philosophical foundations of democracy as well as the history of democratic revolutions, institutions, and principles. How can we defeat the most important contemporary challenges to democracy, including populism, authoritarianism and disinformation? And how can we revive the “democratic spirit” - in America and around the world?
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
The Civic Life Seminar engages with foundational questions of civic life and supports students in developing and practicing skills that are needed for active citizenship. At the heart of these activities is the need to work with others to tackle problems in communities we care about, and so students will become well-versed in principles of collective action, communication, and the science of collaboration. Weekly meetings will involve a mix of reading, presentations by guest speakers, discussion, and reflection. As part of the Minor in Civic Life, students take this seminar class for two semesters. Those taking it for the first time will engage in several relatively-short community engagement activities in which they practice putting ideas from the class into practice. Those taking it for the second time will be taking it as a capstone class, and be required to independently develop, implement, and present a more extensive community engagement project.
Prerequisite(s): AS.196.201 can be taken prior to or at the same time as AS.196.320.
AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Around the world, from Italy to Brazil, and from Hungary to the United States, populist candidates are fundamentally changing the political landscape. In this course, we explore the nature of populism; investigate whether populism poses an existential threat to liberal democracy; explore the causes of the populist rise; investigate the ways in which populism is a response to demographic change; and discuss what strategies might allow non-populist political actors to push back.
Distribution Area: Social and Behavioral Sciences
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
We live in an era of disinformation’ mass persuasion and media manipulation run amok. More information was meant to improve democracy and undermine authoritarian regimes- instead the opposite seems to be happening. This course will take you from Russia to South Asia, Europe to the US, to analyze how our information environment has been transformed, why our old formulae for resisting manipulation are failing, and what needs to be done to create a model where deliberative democracy can flourish.
Prerequisite(s): Students who took AS.191.364, AS.196.310, OR AS.196.610 are not eligible to take AS.196.364.
Distribution Area: Social and Behavioral Sciences
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
The Civic Life Capstone engages with foundational questions of civic life and supports students in developing frameworks for and practicing skills that are needed for active citizenship. Weekly sessions will involve a mix of reading, presentations by guest speakers, discussion, and reflection. Capstone students will be required to independently develop, implement, and present a civic engagement project.
Prerequisite(s): AS.196.201 AND AS.196.320
AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1), Projects and Methods (FA6)
This is an independent reading and research course at the undergraduate level on topics related to democracy, measurement, and/or social statistics. Registration and syllabus must be agreed upon in advance and prior to College add deadlines, and must include contact hours requisite to the credit level.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Science and Data (FA2)
This student research internship offers undergraduates an opportunity to engage in collaborative research with a civil society practitioner who is serving as SNF Agora Visiting Fellow for the academic year.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Projects and Methods (FA6)
This course requires instructor approval. There will be administrative work to complete with some hands-on field research.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)
This is a research opportunity around disinformation for undergraduate students. This course requires instructor approval.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)
We will gain experience with data-analysis geared towards understanding the social world. Our scope ranges from simple descriptions and predictions under strong assumptions to intervention analyses that provide a more trustworthy foundation for quantifying causal effects. The course will be offered in a hybrid modality and will have a heavy focus on computation. We will alternate between discussion sessions devoted to fundamental concepts, and lab sessions devoted to a combination of web- and instructor-led data-analyses. Whenever possible, examples using both R and Stata and using a range of national and cross-national data-sources relevant to the study of democracy will be provided.
Distribution Area: Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences
We will gain experience with data-analysis geared towards understanding the social world. Our scope ranges from simple descriptions and predictions under strong assumptions to intervention analyses that provide a more trustworthy foundation for quantifying causal effects. The course will be offered in a hybrid modality and will have a heavy focus on computation. We will alternate between discussion sessions devoted to fundamental concepts, and lab sessions devoted to a combination of web- and instructor-led data-analyses. Whenever possible, examples using both R and Stata and using a range of national and cross-national data-sources relevant to the study of democracy will be provided.
Distribution Area: Social and Behavioral Sciences
This seminar is designed to provide students with an overview to one approach to conducting publicly-oriented, academically-rigorous, community-engaged, reflexive research with organizers. Learning how do this kind of work is a craft; as with all research, there is no formula for doing it well. Instead, researchers have to develop motivational, ethical, conceptual, and technical capacities: to do the work well, researchers must want to do the work; they must develop an ethical framework and a set of animating values; they must understand the theory and concepts that underpin reflexive research; and they must have the technical skills necessary for carrying out the research. In other words, as with many complex capabilities, there is a head, hands, and heart component to the research. This seminar is designed to introduce students to all of these aspects of the work and equip those who are interested to practice doing a concrete project. It is important to emphasize, however, that because doing this work is a craft, we expect that this is one part of on an ongoing journey— not the end.
Once, many believed the information revolution would undermine autocracies and energize democracies. Instead, we live in an era of unprecedented disinformation, propaganda and media manipulation. Can we reverse these developments? How do we fight back? This course will look at examples of propaganda and disinformation in the past, especially in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, as well as the present: Russia, Latin America, Europe, and the US. We will analyze how our information environment has been transformed, and think about how to create alternatives that will help deliberative democracy flourish.
Prerequisite(s): Students who took AS.196.364 OR AS.196.310 are not eligible to take AS.196.610.
Distribution Area: Social and Behavioral Sciences
This is an independent reading and research course at the graduate level on topics related to democracy, measurement, and/or social statistics. Registration and syllabus must be agreed upon in advance and prior to College add deadlines, and must include contact hours requisite to the credit level.
This is a graduate-level course that will focus on the field research of civic engagement.
This course requires instructor approval. There will be administrative work to complete with some hands-on field research.