THE MACKENZIE LECTURESHIP
Dr. Chenoweth's research is very important to the Unite and Rise 8.5 movement by the LWV. Her research shows how t
he number 8.5 million is the estimated number of voters it would take to bring about change through nonviolent protest.
If you missed Dr. Erica Chenoweth at the MacKenzie Lectureship on 13 February 2026, watch the recording
here. The talk begins at about 25:00. Then comes a short break, then conversation with David Skaggs at about 1:03:15
Erica Chenoweth is a political scientist at
Harvard University, where they are the Frank
Stanton Professor of the First Amendment
at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L.
Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab and
maintains the NAVCO Data Project, one of the world's leading
datasets on mass mobilizations. Along with Jeremy Pressman, they
co-direct the Crowd Counting Consortium, documenting political
mobilization in the U.S. since 2017. Together with Steven Levitsky,
Chenoweth hosts the monthly webinar series The Breakdown, which
explores the ongoing struggle for American democracy.
Foreign Policy magazine has ranked Chenoweth among the Top 100
Global Thinkers for their efforts to promote the empirical study of
nonviolent resistance. Their book Why Civil Resistance Works: The
Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (2011), co-authored with Maria
J. Stephan, won the 2013 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving
World Order and the 2012 best book award from the American
Political Science Association. Their recent book, Civil Resistance:
What Everyone Needs to Know (2021), explores what civil resistance
is, how it works, why it sometimes fails, how violence and repression
affect it, and the long-term impacts of such resistance.
Chenoweth's research has been featured in The New Yorker,
The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The Economist,
NPR's Morning Edition, TEDxBoulder, and elsewhere. They are
a recipient of the Karl Deutsch Award, given annually to
the scholar under 40 who has made the greatest impact on the field
of international politics or peace research. In 2022, Chenoweth
was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.