Mission and Values
The mission of the Healthy, Equitable, and Responsive Democracy (HEARD) Initiative is to:
Connect faculty within and beyond Swarthmore whose research has the potential to improve the health, equity, and responsiveness of U.S. democracy.
Support student-faculty research collaborations and student research on topics related to U.S. democracy.
Communicate the results of HEARD-affiliated research to broader publics.
Our definition of democracy is broad: It includes not only electoral politics and their consequences, but also the cultural norms, social structures, and everyday practices that facilitate or impede democratic inclusion and decision making. We believe that stark racial and economic inequality are particularly important challenges to a truly inclusive and healthy democracy, and that activism and social movements, formal and informal education, and community engagement are central aspects of democracy, alongside campaigns and elections, politicians, policies, and laws.
HEARD is proudly interdisciplinary and includes research and researchers focused on a wide array of aspects of U.S. democracy, from the hyper-local to the national level, from work that facilitates communication and connection across racial and class divisions to work that examines the decision making of political professionals.
