Policy Advocate
Jennifer Dresden is a policy advocate at Protect Democracy, where she helps teams leverage leading social science research to inform their work in defense of democracy. She was previously a member of the faculty and the Associate Director of the Democracy and Governance Program at Georgetown University. Jen has published and lectured on democratic and authoritarian politics for both academic and policy audiences and has conducted research in the United States and overseas.She holds an A.B. from Harvard University, an M.Litt from the University of St. Andrews, and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University.
Learn more about Jennifer’s work on Political Violence.
Weakened political parties are contributing to democratic backsliding in the United States, but research shows that we need healthy political parties fulfilling critical functions to make our democrac
October 28, 2022
A new 28-page report by Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group, proposes guidelines for news outlets to help them distinguish between “normal political jockeying” and truly dangerous conduct. Its primary author was Jennifer Dresden, a former scholar at Georgetown University who has studied democracy around the world.
In an interview, Dresden said she was driven by the conviction, backed by decades of research, that “authoritarianism doesn’t happen overnight.” Like a stalagmite, it develops from the slow drip of infringements on freedoms and breaches of longstanding democratic rules and traditions. That process is now well underway in the United States, she worries.
Defeating authoritarianism is going to take all of us. Everyone and every institution has a role to play. Together, we can protect democracy.
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