Larry Jacobs: >> Good afternoon.

I am Larry Jacobs.

I'm a professor here at

the Humphrey School
of Public Affairs,

which is University
of Minnesota's

School of Public Affairs.

Just a couple of announcements
to begin with first,

please silence your phones.

A lot of our programs
are broadcast by media,

including public radio,

and I really don't
want you to be

embarrassed by all of us turning

around staring at you
if your phone goes off.

If you can shut them
off, that's great.

Thank you. I just want to give

a overview where we're going.

We've got a lot of
programs coming

up in the coming
weeks and months,

and I just want to
briefly mention them.

We've had a series
over the last 4, 5,

6 years on healthcare
and health reform.

I know many of you have

been coming to those.
There'll be more of those.

We've got several in the works.

I'm very excited to
have Curtis Sittenfeld.

Those of you who read fiction or

interested in First
Ladies will know her

as the author of

tremendous books
about First Ladies

, her fictional accounts.

I've been able to
convince Curtis,

who's moved to town,
to do a sit down.

I'm going to try to introduce

reading from some of her work,

but also talk about some
of the First Ladies,

of course, my agenda is

to talk about the
current First Lady.

Curtis has not entirely
bought onto that,

but I think I'm going
to get her there.

I'm excited about that.

We've had an enormous
issue in Minnesota

about enduring
racial disparities

with regards to education,

healthcare, and many
other core indices

of life circumstances.

We've been talking
with Sondra Samuels,

who is the person

responsible for the
Northside Achievement Zone.

I think we've got an
incredible program

coming up in the
next month or so.

We also are talking
about putting together

a program on media bias,

and we'll have
details out about.

One of the luminaries in
social sciences is Gary King.

There are very few people who

are well regarded in terms
of quantitative research.

Gary has launched a project
called Social Science One,

which is directed at making

Facebook's data
publicly available

in a way that protects privacy.

Now I've got to tell you this

has gotten a lot of attention,

and it's working its way
through the various levels.

I'm skeptical because I tend
to be a privacy absolutist,

but Gary is brilliant, so
I'm looking forward to that.

In the coming months,
we've got Vin Weber coming

in and talk about conservativism
during the Trump era.

My colleague, Kathryn Pearson,

has got several programs
on women in politics.

Briana Bierschbach will
be back talking with

legislative leaders and
hopefully the governor.

Then in the spring,

we've got Steve Skowronek
and Shanto Iyengar,

who are two of the leading
scholars of American politics,

who I admire and have
admired for a long time.

That's a lot. That's
coming attraction.

This is like
Avengers, like, wow.

I want you to be very excited.

At least Avengers for the geeks.

This is a tremendous
program today.

I've been looking forward to
this for a very long time.

We know a couple things about
American politics for sure,

and one of them is that not
everybody participates.

Whether it's voting
or other forms

of political engagement,

we see remarkable unevenness,

and that unevenness
is tied to race

and income and education
and other factors.

A lot of the research
that's gone on

about why is it that
Americans don't participate,

tends to look at
the downside rather

than why is it that people

participate and what
could be done about it.

Today's program
features a scholar

and an activist who asked,

how is it that we can work on

non-participation
to engage people

and organize them into politics?

It's with great excitement

that I'm pleased to
welcome Hahrie Han,

who's currently
at the University

of California Santa Barbara,

but is moving in the fall the
Johns Hopkins University,

which is a big coup for
Johns Hopkins University.

Professor Han is the author of

three books and a
forthcoming book,

which is in my series
at the University

of Chicago State
turned for that.

We're excited about
that as well.

She's also published
a number of articles,

including in the
preeminent outlets.

One of the really
unique features of

Professor Han's work is that she

blends research with
actual community activism.

I think you're going to get a

good feel for what
that looks like.

I think she is quite unique.

Moderating and
really entering into

a conversation with Professor
Han is Kara Carlisle,

who is at the
McKnight Foundation.

She's been there since 2017

as vice president of programs,

focusing on
diversity, inclusion,

equity and community engagement

before coming to McKnight.

Ms. Carlisle was worked at
the Kellogg Foundation,

and before that, she held

various positions
in Los Angeles.

Please give a very
warm welcome to

Professor Han and Ms.
Kara Carlisle. [APPLAUSE]

Kara Carlisle: >> Hopefully,

I'm doing okay
with the mic here.

Great. Well, I'm so excited.

We had a moment to meet

by phone just a couple of weeks
ago, and it was exciting.

We found out a couple
of different things

about our personal lives that I

thought would be interesting
to share as we kick off,

so to why we both have
engaged so long and so

deeply in this topic of
engagement professionally,

research-wise, and personally.

Maybe I'll start with you and

have you kick off
a little bit about

your background and
what catapulted

you into this field of study.

Hahrie Han: >>
Sure. Well, first,

let me just say that it's
so great to be here today,

and I really appreciate
everyone taking

the time to come
out and to Larry

and to Mike and everyone who
helped organize the visit.

It's been really great so far.

How did I get into this work?

Actually, I grew up in Houston,

Texas as a daughter
of Korean immigrants.

My family was very apolitical.

It was not something

that we talked about
at the dinner table.

Getting involved
in community life

was just not something
that we did.

But I think one of the ways in

which growing up as a
child of immigrants

really shaped my thinking was

that a lot of what I
saw growing up was

the experience of my
parents trying to figure

out what it meant to raise a
family in the United States.

They had immigrated to the
United States in 1973.

I was born here.

We used to have conversations at

the dinner table that
were things like,

how do Americans
butter their bread?

How do you do it without
getting crumbs everywhere?

Do you rip it first or
do you not rip it first,

and do you slice it
or when do you rip,

those things that you

take for granted if
you grew up with it.

But if you didn't
grow up with it,

it's this huge complex thing,

and that's what we would talk
about at the dinner table.

I tell that story only because
I think what it taught me,

which I think is still relevant

to the work that I do today,

is that transformation is

not only possible, but
it's a way of life.

It's what we do as humans.

We try to transform ourselves

so that we can transform

our families and the
world around us.

I think that the
experience of watching

my parents pick up and
uproot themselves,

move them to United States,

and then raise a family

here taught me that that's
just a part of what we do.

I think it's really no
accident that a lot of

what I study is
about organizing.

It's about movement building
because I got involved

or first discovered that work

when I got involved in
student activism in college.

I think it made a lot of
sense to me because at

the core of what makes

social movements work is
this idea of transformation,

and that's what makes
social movements different

from other forms of social
change because they're

fundamentally trying
to work by getting

people to transform what
they think is possible,

so that they can begin
to change things.

Kara Carlisle: >> Well, thank
you very much for sharing.

I should also say
thank you to Larry,

to Lee, to Kate,

and also to Mike for
the invitation here.

I forgot that there
are going to be

note cards that you can
actually write down questions.

As you have really
difficult questions,

she's told me beforehand
she can take any questions.

If you have questions,
please feel

free to start writing
those down as we talk,

and then we'll walk through

those the second half
of our discussion.

Hahrie Han: >> Great.

Kara Carlisle: >> What was
interesting about our stories

as we were talking is
that I was adopted,

and I know I moved here just
two years ago to Minnesota,

but that's part of the
history of this state.

But I actually moved
to Los Angeles

and into the heart of Koreatown.

In the early '90s,

1992, in particular, was Saigu,

which is 4/29,

which was for locals a
lot of different things.

Some of them described
it as the LA riots.

Some of them talked about
Rodney King specifically.

Some talked about it
as LA civil unrest.

Having my background, having
grown up in a multi-racial,

Black, White, and Korean family,

I went to LA both to
understand my own identity as

a Korean American and also to

understand the community
and that experience.

It's interesting because I
think we probably know of

the same people in the
field in that moment.

Having spent about
10 years working in

immigrant communities
was this moment

when you had a whole bunch of

immigrants that came after
'65 and the Immigration Act,

and they came in as merchants,

as a lot of immigrants do.

They don't speak the
language, isolated.

Basically, there are only
a few places that you can

afford or are welcome
to run businesses.

In this case, before 1992,

as I understand it and from

spending so much
time in communities,

you had these enclaves of folks

who really were able
to have a way of life,

businesses, churches,
religious organizations.

But when the unrest happened,

you hear these
stories and I heard

these stories of adults
at that time saying,

you had guns all over the place.

The police really
didn't respond.

They protected the suburbs
and the wealthy areas.

It was for the first time
Edward Cheng, you may know,

who talked a lot about and has

spoken and written a lot
about this experience,

was the first time
that this community

began to call themselves

Korean Americans
and began to say,

we actually need to
lead and be part of

social change because if
not we're really forgotten,

and there's no one that
will speak for us.

That really shaped a lot
of my early interest in

watching that along with

African American communities,
Jewish communities,

and others began to think about

how do you organize,
what is power,

what is leadership, and

what impact can that
have over time.

A lot of disappointments,
I would say,

and a lot of
different strategies,

so I come to this conversation
really excited about

the ways that you've
been able to observe

patterns and civic life.

As we dive into this and
shifting from the personal,

I'd love to hear you talk a
little bit to ground us all

in as we think about civic
organizations or civic life.

Hahrie Han: >> Sure.

Kara Carlisle: >> How would
you describe that for

everybody here so we can start
with the same definition?

Then we'll narrow from there.

Hahrie Han: >>
Sure. Like I said,

I came to politics late.

I didn't grow up in a
family that assumed that

political activity or civic life

would be something that
we'd be a part of.

But as I got into it,

I think one of the things
that I appreciated is

this idea that democracy has

never been a spectator sport.

From the very earliest days
of American democracy,

there's always been this idea

that we are going
to engage people.

I really think of civic life as

being the public spaces through

which people get pulled
into public life

and begin to learn how to

exercise their voice in
the political process.

When I think about civic
associations or civic life,

I think nowadays a
lot of times people

think about certain
parts of that process,

but not the whole
part of the process.

What do I mean by
that? I think that

what it means for democracy
to not be a spectator sport

is the idea that we are not

just consumers of democracy
in the same way that

we're consumers of cereal or

ketchup or bread or any
of these other things.

The effort of trying to build

civic life is the
effort of trying to

move people from being

mere consumers up to
being agents within it.

It's the process of helping them

learn the skills and
the capacities and

the practices that they
need to be able to be

agents of exercising
their own voice

in the political system.

That's the challenge, I
think, in a lot of ways.

The question is, what are

the spaces through which
that work happens?

I think there's a
real broad range.

It can be everything from

soccer clubs, and garden clubs,

and things like that to

more explicitly
political organizations.

But there's a range of skills
and capacities that we want

people to develop to be able
to be agents in that way.

Kara Carlisle: >> As you've
just captured very well,

there are different
varieties of engagement,

and oftentimes we get
really lost in trying to

understand the multiple ways

that people think
about engagement.

Is it volunteerism? Is it

being part of a faith community?

Is it PTA?

One of the things that I
really like is that you've

actually been able
to observe and

actually create from
patterns that you

see repeated in lots
of different kinds of

organizations a continuum of how

people think about engagement

from low engagement
to high engagement.

I think it's really helpful
for me as I looked at it.

This is a really great way

to be able to identify
and pattern spot.

I'd love for you to
talk a little bit

about what that looks like,

and then you have some pretty
interesting terminology

that I think is
pretty memorable,

so we'll get to
that in a second.

But if you could start
with the engagement

continuum and then
we'll walk from that.

Hahrie Han: >> Yeah. I think

some of the research that
you're talking about is

some research that I started in

the mid 2000s or
something like that.

I'll talk a little bit
about how it was motivated.

I remember it was like 2006,

'07, somewhere in that range.

I was thinking about what
I want to take on is

I just finished one
project and what

I want to take on
is my next project.

I was looking around,
and I saw that there was

this funny paradox out in the
world. Here's the paradox.

On the one hand, it felt
like it was easier than

ever before to get people
engaged in public life.

We had stories about all
these viral outbursts

of activity that were
emerging all over the world.

This is everything
from, I don't know if

you all remember,
Trayvon Martin,

which is one of the early

viral uprisings in
the United States,

to the Arab Spring where
it felt like, gosh,

with a Twitter handle and
a couple of Google docs,

you're able to get

hundreds of thousands
of people out into

Tahrir Square to topple
the Mubarak regime.

There was this outcry

of all this activity
that was going on.

But on the other hand,

even as we were observing that,

when I was talking
to friends and

colleagues who were working on

the front lines a lot of this,

they were saying that they felt

more powerless than ever before.

That's the paradox that
seems interesting to me.

How is it that on the
one hand it seems

like it's easier
than ever before

to get people involved,

but on the other hand

the people who are
doing the work of

getting people
involved are feeling

more powerless than ever before?

The work that I was
trying to do in

trying to differentiate
the different kinds of

participation in
a way was really

trying to speak to that
paradox and try to

understand what
differentiates organizations

that get people involved in

ways that help
realize the power and

the voice that they're trying to

develop versus
organizations that don't.

That's what originated the
conversation or the research.

I ended up going out and

doing this study with a bunch of

organizations across the US,

where I was trying to
look at organizations,

some of which were really
good at engaging people in

sustained action over time
and some of which weren't,

but they were working
on similar issue

areas and similar communities,

and what made it different.

That's where I began to

unpack some of the
strategies that they use.

Kara Carlisle: >> I think
it would be helpful to walk

through these three categories.

I imagine that people

here as we hear them
will be able to say,

I have been part of maybe
all three of them in

some way or I've been

a leader or a participant
in any one of these.

The first one is lone wolf.

Can you talk a little
bit about lone wolves.

Hahrie Han: >> Sure. I first

got involved in an
activism in college,

and I will say I
was a lone wolf.

That's with a lot of student
organizations that I see.

In doing this research

with these different
organizations,

I began to develop
these three types of

different activists and
leaders that we saw.

One of them, which is
probably the easiest

to pull out, is the lone wolf.

This is the person who

basically takes on all
the work themselves.

This is the person who's
a super volunteer,

but they're not sharing

that work with
anyone around them.

The organizations
that I was looking at

did a lot of work on
environmental issues.

These are the ones
that become the expert

on public management of
forests in their community.

They go to every public
hearing and they show up for

every event and they have
long detailed briefings,

but the strategy for

change is really about
mastery of information.

>> It's not really

about engaging other people,

but it's through
the sheer force of

their expertise
that they're able

to get the ruling
that they want on

public activity
on a public lands

hearing or something like that.

But the limits of that
begin to emerge when

the information is not enough to

shift the decisions in
the ways that they want.

Then the other two categories

are really about
categories where

people are trying to engage

others and activity with them,

but what I found was
that there are really

two different ways in
which they engage them,

maybe I'll start by
telling you a story to

try to exemplify what
the difference is.

I feel like I should be
this guy's agent because I

tell a story about
him all the time,

but there's a guy
named Alex Waters,

I don't know if anyone
has heard of him,

but Alex Waters, he
grew up in the Midwest,

I don't know where
I'm sorry, but

he went to college in Iowa,

and he went to
college thinking that

he was going to be a
professional golfer.

He'd gone to school
thinking he was going to be

a professional athlete and
he goes off to college,

and then one weekend

during his freshman year,
a friend of his says, hey,

a bunch of us are going to
go to my parent's house,

this lake house out
in the country.

Do you want to join us?
He's, sure, why wouldn't I?

He goes off with his
friends to this lake house,

and they're hanging
out one night and

he's standing at the end of

the dock talking to
some other friends,

and it's a little bit windy.

He's got his favorite
baseball cap on and

the wind comes by and it
blows the cap off his head.

He's, shoot, there's my cap.

It's floating away in the lake

and he tries to think,
what does he want to do?

He thinks, I really don't
want to lose that cap.

I've broken it in just
right for my head,

so I'm going to dive in
and I'm going to get it.

He dives in thinking the
water is about 18 feet deep,

and it's not. It's
about 18 inches deep.

It's much more shallow than he

thought, and
everyone's cringing.

He breaks his spinal cord.

He's life lighted out of
there. He's quadriplegic.

His life changes dramatically.

He has great medical
care. He goes home.

He rehabilitates
for a few years and

then fast forward
he's back in college,

but his dreams of becoming

a professional golfer are over.

He's trying to figure
out what he wants to do.

He's getting involved
in different

community organizations

and things like that on campus.

This is around 2007.

Along comes a guy
named Barack Obama,

who's running for president, and

he really likes Barack Obama.

He gets involved
in his campaign,

and you fast forward
a few months,

and the campaign reaches
out and tries to

engage him to hire him
as a field organizer.

They say, hey, Alex,

we want you to become

a paid field organizer
with our campaign.

Alex says, gosh, I

love your guy and I
really want him to win,

but are you guys crazy?

I can't be a field organizer.
They say, why not?

He's, I can't do any of

the things that
field organizers do.

I can't walk a neighborhood.

I can't knock on doors.

I can't dial phone
numbers to make calls.

I can't even get the paper off

the printer to get
my call sheet.

I can't do any of
these kinds of things.

What the Obama campaign
says is, Alex,

you're thinking about a
traditional campaign,

where what the field
organizers do, essentially,

is they're just voter
contact machines,

where campaigns hire a
bunch of 22- year-olds,

then they work them to the bone

for three or six months
or however many months,

and just have them talk to
as many voters as humanly

possible to try to get them
to support the candidate.

We're running a
different campaign here.

If you're a paid
organizer with us,

what you're going
to do is you're not

going to be a voter
contact machine,

but your job is to identify

people who live in

the communities that
you're trying to organize,

residents who live
in that community,

and then develop
their leadership.

Help them become advocates and

leaders for then Senator Obama

so that it's
neighbors talking to

neighbors who then begin

to do the outreach
to their campaigns.

You're not doing the voter
outreach. You're doing

the leadership development
of these other people.

Alex goes on to become
a paid organizer in

both the 2008 and
2012 Obama campaigns,

and just by looking
at sheer numbers,

he's one of the most
productive organizers

of the campaign has.

It turns out that he could not

get call sheets and make phone
calls and knock on doors,

but he was really
good at inspiring

and developing the
leadership of others.

I tell that story only because

the difference between
what Alex thought

he was going to do and what he

ended up doing was really
the difference between

what I call in

the work the difference

between mobilizing
and organizing,

which is not my term,
just to be clear.

This is a term that's out

there with a lot of
organizations and I'm

sure organizations
that some of you have

worked with where with

mobilizing the
strategy is breath.

You're trying to get
as many people as

possible to take action.

That's when you hire
the people who are

the voter contact machines
or something like that.

With organizing, the
strategy is depth.

You want to try

to engage people and
develop the capacities and

the commitments that they
need to be able to develop

other people in action.

What I found is that the
organizations that were the most

effective at sustaining
engagement over time did both.

Because you need both the breath

and the depth to be able
to sustain the work,

but they needed to be really
clear about the difference.

Sometimes it's a moment

for organizing and
sometimes it's

a moment for mobilizing,

but you had to be clear about

the difference between
those because they had

different implications
for what kind

of asks you would
make of people,

how you design the
tasks that you

were asking people to do,

how you structure the leadership
or something like that.

Kara Carlisle: >>
Great. Lone wolves,

mobilizers, and organizers.

What's interesting
having probably

been all of those
things myself in

different times is trying

to think about the
moment of now,

where I would say over

the past few years
there have been

more and more conversations
in every field

around our democracy and
around what we need to

bridge difference and what
we need to bridge divides.

Looking at data here in

Minnesota and all around the
country in the world around

disparities as Larry
started our conversation

around different types of power.

One of the things that struck
me in your book, this book,

How Organizations
Develop Activists,

is really a quote by

another political scientists
around incentives.

There are lots of different
ways we talk about elites,

and there have been a
lot of different ways

that's been politicized

and complicated in
the public realm,

but one of the points that
was made is that when

you want to create change,

you have to organize people
if you don't have power.

Elites, by contrast,

actually need to be
incentivized to engage.

I'd love to hear
you talk a little

bit about this moment
where you have,

it seems from lots
of indicators,

people with all
different kinds of

backgrounds and different
kinds of power,

trying to figure out,

how do we begin to move
forward a country that feels,

in lots of places,

really divided and polarized

and not wanting to stay stuck?

Hahrie Han: >> Yeah.
It's a big question.

[LAUGHTER] Let me start the
story again, and then see.

One of the
organizations that I'm

doing work with right now,

which I'm fascinated by,

is this big church
in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Cincinnati is in Southern Ohio.

This is a huge church.

They get about 38,000

people per weekend
through the church.

It's the fourth largest
church in the United

States by absolute size.

It's the fastest growing
church in the US,

and their congregation
comes mostly

from Southern Ohio and
Northern Kentucky.

It's an evangelical church.

By all markers, they're a
pro-life conservative church.

I got to know them
because they're

doing really interesting work,

this is their language on
racial reconciliation.

Right now, if you
look at the data on

churches or a lot of civic
institutions in American life,

they're getting
increasingly homogeneous.

You have more and more
churches that are

becoming all white or
all black or whatever.

Same with our organizations.

A lot of the civic organizations
that we're a part of

are more and more
homogenous by race,

like all sorts of other
divides that you might see.

In this church, it's 80% white,

20% black, which reflects the
demographics in that area.

There was a shooting of
an unarmed black man

in Cincinnati a
couple years ago.

One of the head pastors in

the church is African American,

and he stood up on

stage in the middle of this
controversy and he said,

I feel like I'm being called to

be a voice of racial
reconciliation in Cincinnati.

I don't know what I'm
going to do, but if you

want to join me, let me know.

He thought he'd get two emails

or something like that,
and they'd have coffee.

He had thousands of
people email him saying,

we want to do something.

We want to figure it
out. They ended up

developing this whole program
that they call Undivided.

So far, they've taken
about 15% of their church,

their congregation through it,

where it's about
engaging people in

conversations around
race and how you

bridge across difference
and things like that.

The reason that I bring
this up in the context of

the question that you asked is,

one of the things that I've
learned from working with

them is the power of what

they were able to
do because they had

this congregation that was
so committed to each other.

In this program, Undivided,

they're bringing together
people who are black and white.

They're bringing
together people who have

very strong traditionally
left views on

race and strong
traditionally right views on

race and they're putting

them into conversation
with each other.

They take them through
a six-week program,

and the last week
of the program,

you're assigned to
a small group and

you have dinner at
someone's house.

The reason why they ended
with that is because they

realized that when they
first started the program,

something like three quarters

of the people who were
in the program had never

had a person of the opposite
race in their home.

We might see each
other in workplaces,

we might see each other
at the grocery store

, different things like that,

but to have invited
someone to share a meal in

your own home with some of

the opposite race was
an experience that

a lot of people hadn't had,

and so they had the
six-week program to end

with this meal in
someone's home.

But anyways, part of the
research that my students and I

are doing is trying
to understand

in the Rust Belt of Ohio,

which is not the People's

Republic of Berkeley or
something like that,

how is it that they're able to

take people through
this journey that

is so contrary to everything
else that we're seeing?

What it is is that
this church gets

38,000 people per weekend,

but everyone in the
church is enmeshed in

this very deep latticework

of relationships
with each other.

Even though I'm one of 38,000,

every single person
in that community

is connected to somebody else.

It's the power of those
relationships and

that commitment
to community that

they're then able to use

to move people to
a different place

on issues that they

don't necessarily agree on
or something like that.

They have this whole idea

about the idea of what they
call the radical middle.

The premise that they're
working off of is the idea

that there's a hunger out

there right now for
the radical middle.

What is the radical middle?

They used the word
radical because we

normally think of radical
as being extreme.

It's the crazies on the
left or the crazies on

the right that are the radicals,

but the root word of radical,

actually, this isn't
the root word of

radical, is actually rootedness.

I don't speak ancient
languages, but if you do,

then apparently the
Greek or Latin root of

the word radical means
to be deeply rooted.

The reason why radical change
means wholesale change is

because you're making change

from the root up. Do you
see what I'm saying?

In their idea, the idea is that

the radical middle are people

who are rooted in relationship.

The middle is not necessarily
an ideological middle,

but it's a bridge
across difference.

That's the idea that
they're trying to find.

Just to get to your question,

when I think back to this
moment that we're in,

I feel like so many of the
civic institutions that we

have gotten us to a place

where we're much
more accustomed to

transactional
mobilizing than we are

to the more transformational
work of organizing,

and so we've lost
that rootedness

because all the commitments
that we're drawn in by

are commitments to issues or
candidates or things that

are more fleeting than

the relationships that we
have to our neighbors,

beyond any one campaign
or anything like that.

It makes it really
hard to do the work of

building across difference
that is so urgently needed,

I think, in a lot
of the challenges

that we face right now.

Kara Carlisle: >>
The transaction

versus transformational,

which is one of the topics
that is pretty common

among organizers here
in the Twin Cities,

having been a lot
of conversations

about what should we do.

Should we organize in

this next election or

should we build
relationships and really

try to understand and shift

our models of who we are
and how we understand one

another and how we
really go to the root

of inequities and
different types of power?

It becomes a pretty
intense conversation,

where the debate doesn't

always flow in the
same direction

depending on who's in the room.

I think that there have been
efforts consistently over

time where people have been

engaged in
transformational work,

and it's also very hard
to sustain because it is

a very different mental
model for a lot of the way

that our civic cycles have
been really designed.

Hahrie Han: >> Absolutely.

Kara Carlisle: >> Can you speak

to a little bit of what you

see happening in your
research and across

the country that
gives you hope about

ways that people have been
for a long period of time,

really looking at
transformation and be

glad to see outcomes
and other ways

where you think we still have
new questions or new ways

to think as leaders
and volunteers?

Hahrie Han: >> One of my
favorite quotes is from,

there's a Jewish theologian

who has this idea where he says,

hope is belief in the
plausibility of the

possible as opposed to the
necessity of the probable.

I think about that a lot in

democracy because
in a lot of ways,

the premise of
democracy is that we

can make the possible
more plausible.

There's decades and decades

of social science
research that shows

if left to their own devices,

people are selfish and
we're self-interested,

and we tend to want to

be around other people
who are like us,

and just all the things that are

anti-transformational stuff
that we're talking about.

The promise of
democracy is that by

building civic and d,
democratic institutions,

that help people realize
they're better angels,

that we can build a
different society in

a different world
than what we have.

The question is is that,

where is that promise right now?

I see this in my
students all the time.

I see this in different
organizations I'm working with.

I think people actually
have a hunger for

more meaningful ways to
engage in public life.

I think there are a
lot of people who

look around right now and say,

this system is not
working for me,

but we don't really know
what the alternatives are.

In that sense, it's "supply

side problem" as opposed
to a demand side problem.

We don't really have the
institutions that are doing

the transformational
work of engaging people

and building their capacities in

ways that help them realize

the plausibility
of the possible as

opposed to just the
necessity of the probable.

The hope for me lies
in the fact that,

I do see organizations out
there that are doing that.

This church in Ohio was
doing it on one dimension.

In Minnesota, I think there are

a lot of organizations that are

doing really good
work in helping

people realize a different
vision of what it means

for them to be their own agent
of social change and then

creating vehicles around
that for people to be able

to realize the reality of that,

but until we can

imagine or understand
what the alternative is,

we can't work to
make it possible.

Part of what we have to do
is tacking back and forth

between what's possible and

what's common right now,
if that makes sense.

Kara Carlisle: >> I
think this concept of

authentic co-creation

and I was convinced

years ago that, I
really love the name,

but how do we begin to think

about the next iteration of
what it means to be American,

this identity that is

multi-ethnic, multi-racial,
multi-religious?

For lots of the country
and lots of towns,

there's just not been a lot of

transformational
relationship to even

imagine that outside
of a political party

or a particular issue,

but who we are and
who we're becoming.

How do you do that
together when who we're

becoming has not yet
emerged in a coherent way?

Before I get too philosophical,

I'm going to shift
to some questions

here and from the audience.

Let me start with this one.

Could you speak a bit about

organizing around a
positive message?

This builds on a little bit

about what we're talking
about about what we're

for versus organizing around

a negative message about
what we're against.

This person said that we seem to

be seeing a lot of the latter,

but people are hungry
for the former.

This really ties in to
this last conversation.

Hahrie Han: One of my mentors

is a guy named Marshall Ganz,

who was a long time organizer

of the civil rights movement,

the migrant
farmworkers movement.

He now teaches
organizing at Harvard,

and he has this line
where he talks about

the fact that most,

or I think he says every.

I say most because
I'm always bit

cautious because I'm
a social scientist.

But almost every social movement

that we've seen
around the world has

been led by young people.

The reason why is because
young people come

of age with what he calls

a critical eye and
a hopeful heart.

I love that phrase.

That phrase always sits with me.

Because they're young and,

as I'm learning with
my own children,

they're very critical
of what us adults do,

but they're not jaded.

They have hope that there's

a different world
in front of them.

In a lot of ways, when
you're organizing people,

I think what a lot of
the research shows

around the role of
these narrative

in campaigns is that it's

the juxtaposition of

the critical eye and
the hopeful heart.

It's the juxtaposition of what's

the critique and the problem
that we're trying to

solve so that people

understand why they're
being called to action,

but you also have to have a
plausible pathway for hope.

I think that's where a lot

of campaigns that I
see struggle right now

because it's often not

that plausible or it feels
implausible to the people.

In some cases, it's like
rested on a candidate.

Let's get this person
elected, and then they

will be our savior
of all things.

No candidate is ever
go to be our savior.

If we get 100,000 people out,

then everything's
going to change,

which a lot of evidence
shows that it's not.

I think people are really

skeptical of those
kinds of things.

The movements that we've
seen in the past that have

been most successful are

able to balance that vision with

pragmatism in a way
that creates a pathway

that gives people a
sense that I actually do

want to give up my Thursday
evening to show up

because this feels like it

could actually
make a difference.

People have to understand that.

It's the juxtaposition of
those two things, I think,

that make a
difference. Thank you.

Kara Carlisle: The next one.

Has your research examined
the professionalization

of community organizing and

activism by community-based
organizations?

Then are there good
examples of trainings or

development for both leaders

and staff? Two-part question.

Hahrie Han: Yeah, definitely.

I haven't necessarily done
a lot of this research,

but certainly there's a
lot of great research

from people out there.

There's a woman
named Theda Skocpol,

who wrote this great book
called Democracy Diminished,

where she looks at

the professionalization of
the civic sector over time.

There's another book
called Building a

Business of Politics
that looks at

the rise of consulting and how

it began this political
consulting and how it

began to dominate our
political system.

But what's common
across all these is

that in this late 20th century,

our civil society has begun
to be run by paid staff.

The challenge with that,

there's nothing wrong
with professionalization

and there's a lot of
good things about it,

which I'm happy to
talk about, too.

But the challenge with
it is that when you

have this professionalization
of the civic sector,

it's that a lot of the
staff who are running

these organizations
are accountable to

their donors or accountable to

their board as opposed to

being accountable to
their constituencies.

It shifted, and

this is why I think of it
as a "supply side problem".

It's shifted

the organizations that
we have because you have

more organizations that
are accountable to donors,

and boards, and other
kinds of things than they

are accountable to
constituencies.

You don't have as many
spaces for people

to exercise a voice in,

hey, you're not speaking
for me or those spaces.

The challenge, I think, is to

create organizations that hold

the tension between

all the benefits of
professionalization.

It's good to have
organizations that are

run and managed professionally

that have all the tools of
professional organizations,

but that are also
grounded in constituency.

A lot of what I've been thinking

about is the importance of

creating these
self-governing organizations

that are accountable to the
people that they're hoping to

stand with as opposed

to the people who

give them financial support
or something like that.

Kara Carlisle: Yeah. It's
a very left topic in

the field. Very good point.

Hahrie Han: Yeah.

Kara Carlisle: A
slightly different take

but also on the organizing.

When have you seen organizing

involving civil disobedience,

example blocking highways,

and when have they
been effective

and when have they not and why?

Hahrie Han: Yeah. I have
a seven-year-old son,

and I remember he came home from

school a year or so
ago and he's like,

have you heard of this
person named Rosa Parks?

I'm like, yeah, I've heard
of her. [LAUGHTER] We

just learned about
her in school today.

She didn't want to sit
in the back of the bus,

and so she sat in the
front, and then she got

arrested and then they
had this boycott,

and then they
integrated the buses.

Very familiar story, of course.

But the way it was taught
for him is that there is

this act of civil disobedience

and then the bus
company is like,

man, we're going to
integrate the buses.

The thing that we forget is

the Montgomery bus boycott
lasted for like 390 days.

It's a really long time.

It's more than a year.

For more than a year,

you had people who

under the threat of
losing their jobs,

under great economic distress,

and social approbation
were not taking the buses.

The reason why I tell that
story is that, to me,

what's so interesting is
I think a lot of times as

part of the rise

of this professional class
and stuff like that,

sometimes you have
these moments of

civil disobedience where
people are really angry

because the system doesn't
feel like they're working for

them and they engage
in civil disobedience.

But then the hard and patient

work of then
negotiating for power,

we don't really have a
lot of theory around that

right now or we don't have
a lot of examples of that.

With the Montgomery bus boycott,

it's like this very
concerted effort

around civil disobedience
and boycotting was going on.

But during that time,

there was a leadership,

Martin Luther King
and other leaders

in the coalition of organizations
that were running it,

that were in constant
negotiation with

the bus companies and the
city leaders in Montgomery.

I think the challenge
that we see with

a lot of the situations

with civil disobedience
right now is that

they can generate the
civil disobedience,

and sometimes that
can generate over

a long period of time.

But then at a certain point,

where does that negotiation
for power happen?

That's where I think
some of the work

that we were talking about

earlier in terms of the
practices of self-governance,

the knowing how do you make
a bid for the kinds of

change that you want
to see while staying

rooted in the values and

the constituency that
you're trying to.

It's a really tricky thing.

It's a balance between
pragmatism, and ideology,

and all these different
things that are

really hard to negotiate.

Kara Carlisle: On that
last point around power,

one of the observations looking

at a lot of these
large movements

have been, where did they go?

Where did all of the
globalizing lead?

Was there a formal leadership
structure or was there

a strategy around formal power,

or institutional power,
or economic power?

It's just interesting
to think about

some of the things
that have happened

in the past couple of years,

these massive marches and
then where they stand.

I wonder if you've
looked at some of

those and where you've
been able to track,

are there instances
where some of

these larger social
mobilization efforts

have been able to shift

from mobilization
into organizing

around real power and
when where have they not?

Hahrie Han: Yeah.

Kara Carlisle: Can
you talk about

any differences within some

of these larger even
thinking globally?

Hahrie Han: Yeah, definitely.

I just want to clarify
one point before I get

into that question that
I was just thinking

about when you were
asking your question,

which is sometimes people
around the women's march or

some of these big marches that

are protest events that we have,

people will say like, I

just don't see what
the strategy is.

They don't seem like it's
going to be going anywhere.

I just want to be clear,
I'm not advocating.

Jane Adams has this whole
idea about the snare of

preparation and how
you don't want to

get caught in the
snare of preparation.

I don't think that
movements need to

have this articulated
strategy of,

first, we'll go to plan A.

Step 1, we get 100,000
people out to the march,

and then step 2, we're
going to do that.

It doesn't happen that way.

I think it's more an argument
about leadership than it is

about having a stated strategy.

If there are people
who are leaders

that are accountable to

clear constituencies and
that can speak for a group

of people that are expressing
outrage in some sense,

then that pathway for

negotiation is a lot
clearer than if you don't.

I think the challenge
that I see with some of

the the movements that we

have nowadays is
that it's not clear.

It's not clear where
that negotiation would

occur of what we saw
historically. That's one thing.

On the question of movements

that change from just sheer
mobilizing to organizing,

I've definitely seen
that. It's really hard.

But the place where I've seen

it the most is when you have

organizations or
movements who feel like

their back is up against
the wall somehow.

When I first started doing
this work, I was like,

I'm going to publish
this study and

then we're going to figure out

what's right, and then
it's going to change.

It's like egocentric
and naive way

of looking at the
world, of course.

Of course, it doesn't
happen that way.

The reason why it doesn't
happen is many reasons,

part of many of which have
to do with my own fault.

But part of which is that
change is really hard.

It's really hard to
change an organization.

It's really hard to
change a campaign.

It's really hard to shift
someone's theory of change,

and then change all
the structures and

people that you have working
for you as a result.

The places where I've
seen it work the most is

when you have organizations that

feel the urgent need for
status quo not being right.

In some ways, that's why I think

the accountability and
constituency is most important.

There's a moral reason why you

want to be accountable
to constituency

because you're grounded in
the people who you speak for,

but I think there's also just
a purely strategic reason,

which is where that's where
your urgency comes from.

One of the places, for example,

where I feel like I've seen

that switch from mobilizing to

organizing would be with some

of the immigrant rights groups,

where you have young people

and families who feel like
they're under threat,

and they have no choice but
to figure out the problem.

They can't say,

gosh, we tried this thing
and it didn't work.

Because they feel there's
this urgent need.

It's like, if something
doesn't work,

they're going to try plan B.

They're willing to try lots of

different things because there's

this urgent need to
solve the problem,

whatever that problem might be.

I think you see it on the right
and the left, by the way.

It's not just on the
left that we see that,

but we see lots of

places where people that
are the most grounded

in this urgency is where

that shift from one strategy
to another becomes visible.

Kara Carlisle: On
that last point,

one of the questions really

wanted to probe into,

are there differences in
terms of liberals and

conservatives in terms of
how organizing happens,

and if you could speak to that.

Hahrie Han: Yeah. Actually,

one thing I meant to say
earlier that I forgot

was there's this one study
that's not my own research.

It's a guy named Ziad Munson,

who did this study at
the pro-life movement,

where he was looking

at people who are

on the front lines of
the pro-life movement.

These are people that run
groups in their churches.

They attend marches.

They stand outside clinics,

all the different things,

all the very active roles
in the pro-life movement.

He wrote this great book called

The Making of
Pro-life Activists.

I should be his agent, too,

because I talk about
him all the time.

I read that book when I was

first designing some
of my own research,

and it really shaped
my thinking because

there's a lot in the book
that's really interesting.

But one of the things that
was most interesting that he

found was he was trying to

understand what
was the trajectory

that got people to
the place where

they were these leaders
within this movement.

A lot of the research that
we have is cross-sectional.

We just look at people
at a snapshot in time,

and he wanted to understand what

the pathway over time
was that got them there.

One of the most
interesting things that he

finds is that something

like 43% of the people

who are on the front lines
of the pro-life movement,

when they first
joined the movement,

they were either pro-choice
or they're indifferent

to issues of abortion,

which should be shocking.

Because if you're an
environmental organization,

who do you think you're
going to go out and recruit?

Other environmentalists.
If you're

a women's rights organization,

who you can go out and recruit?

Other women's rights
activists, people like that.

To be clear, if 43% were not,

then that means 57% of

people were pro-life when

they first joined
the organization.

But for 43% of people,

one of two things happened.

Either they were experiencing

what we call this moment of
biographical availability.

Maybe they had just
moved to a new town,

maybe they just
switched churches,

maybe it was a working woman who

had her first child and
became a stay-at-home mom,

maybe someone who just retired,

but there was a moment

of change in their
life when they were

open to something
new and they were

looking for new things,

and/or a friend invited
them to an event.

Hey, after church on Sunday,

can you join me at this
meeting for a group?

They were brought
in either through

social connection or through
this moment of transition.

What I was so
interested in is when

I read that, first of all,

it's amazing that people's
views can be so transformed.

But what I want to know is
what happened at that meeting?

Because there are a lot of
things that I'll do for

my friends once because
I feel bad saying no,

but to devote my life
to an issue because I

felt bad saying no is
like a pretty big lift.

What I wanted was
like, what happened at

that meeting that then
made that person say,

I don't even agree with
what you stand for,

but I want to come back.

A lot of the work on the

organizing/mobilizing
stuff I've been

talking about, I think,

is trying to open up that
black box of what happens in

those meetings and those
organizations that

give people the experience.

In the end, the answer
is not that surprising.

What these meetings and what

these organizations
that are really good

at this do is they speak to
things that we all want.

We want belonging.

We want to feel like
we're meaningful.

These organizations
that are really good at

this work are really
good at making people

feel welcome and
embedding them in

a network of social
relationships

at giving them responsibility

for work that feels like
it actually matters.

You're not a cog in a machine.

I feel like I can't miss
that meeting on Thursday,

even though I'd really rather
stay home and watch Netflix

because if it's not for me,
then who's going to do it?

You start to become
an actual agent that

has real human capacities as

opposed to just an
interchangeable cog.

Sorry, I remember.

The question was, is it different
than right or the left?

We see a lot of examples of

organizations on
the right that have

historically been really
good at doing that work

at knitting together those
social relationships.

Another stat that I
throw out a lot is

that I grew up in Texas,

big gun culture in Texas.

There are more gun clubs and

gun shops in the United States

than there are grocery stores.

There's all sorts of reasons why

the NRA is so powerful,

but part of it is that
there are these sites

of civic life where

people come together
to join with others.

I think that in the past,

in the most recent decades,

what we've seen is that

you've seen more of those
spaces on the right than you

have on the left in terms of

the interstitial relational
work that exists,

churches, gun clubs,
that kind of thing.

We're beginning to see
more of it on the left,

but the left is grappling
with issues of difference and

the opening of a lot of

new voices into the
political system

in a way that makes
it much more complex.

In my mind, the challenge is,

how do we build the relationships
that ground people in

a willingness to navigate

all the challenges that we have?

In some ways, it's like,
where are the spaces where

people come together
to do that work?

Kara Carlisle:
That actually ties

into one of the questions

here that was trying to get at.

We have these small groups
of intense engagement,

really high engagement,
relationship building.

Hahrie Han: Yeah.

Kara Carlisle: How does
that relate to scale?

Mobilizing, you can get scale,

but the sustainability
is questionable.

Usually, the research
says it doesn't

sustain or morphs
into something else.

Is there another
pathway, I guess,

to scale is maybe
another way to ask

the question in terms
of of sustained change.

Hahrie Han: Yeah.
The organizations

that I've studied that have been

successful are really the ones

that do the mobilizing
and the organizing.

The mobilizing helps
build the breath

and the organizing
builds that depth,

but the challenge of how
you do the organizing at

scale is really one about
how you create structures.

If I am someone who's doing
the work of organizing,

then I might have four leaders
that I'm working with,

but each of those four leaders

then has their own four leaders,

and each of those four leaders

has their own four leaders.

You can imagine
that pretty soon it

begins to grow exponentially.

But that only works if we have

the structures that enable

all those expanding
layers of people.

All the ships have to be sailing

in the right same direction.

The challenge of building that

out is that you start to get,

what's the word that
I'm looking for.

But people start to go off in

all their own directions
because you don't

have that shared sense of
where we're moving together.

The strategic challenge for

the leadership is how you
build structures and engage

people in a shared agenda

that continues to chunk out

the work in ever
expanding circles.

Then at the end
of those circles,

you're always going to
have people who just

show up for the big event or

show up on election
day or something like

that and don't do anything else.

That mobilizing is
part of any movement,

but what sustains it
over time are these

, we call it, think about it,

it's like snowflakes that
can expand and contract

as a political
circumstances demand.

Kara Carlisle: Thank you.

A couple research-oriented
questions.

In your research,
you talk a lot about

building relationships.

People are interested or

someone is interested
in how you establish

the trust so that from

a research perspective
they'd let you win.

[LAUGHTER]

Hahrie Han: That's a
good question. I worked

in Democratic politics before
I went to grad school.

After college, I went and I

worked in politics
for a few years,

and then I was working
on a campaign that lost,

and I lost my job because
the campaign lost.

I didn't know what to do,

so I decided to go
to grad school.

[LAUGHTER] Honestly,

the reason I chose a PhD program

was because I didn't
have to take on debt.

Because if I did

a master's program, I'd
have to take on debt.

But if I did a PhD program,
they would pay my way.

I tell that story
by way of saying

that I always thought
that I was going to

go to grad school and
then I was going to

come back into politics.

I maintained a lot of
the relationships that I

had with people who were
involved in political life.

That's early on in

my career when I was beginning
to do this research.

A lot of it was not
necessarily cold calling,

but asking people
who I knew to make

an introduction so that I
wasn't just some stranger.

What I will say, though,
is over time now,

I do a lot of work that's
in partnership with

a lot of organizations.

What I have found is that
the organizations are

actually hungry for researchers,

and this is what we're

talking about a
little bit earlier,

who are willing to work in

authentic partnership with
them to co-create learning.

I think that there's

so many researchers on my
end, end of social science,

that think about
partnerships with

community-based organizations in

very tactical or
transactional ways.

I'm going to partner with
you, you give me your data,

I'm going to write you a
report, and then we're done.

That's dissatisfying for
both sides in the end,

and you don't really
find those partnerships.

What I find is that
early on it was

about having the introduction

and the relationships for sure,

but now I have so
many organizations

who come to my lab
and they're like,

we want someone who
can think with us

on this question in that
process of thinking together,

then we develop
research projects.

I only wish that there
were more researchers

out there that are
doing that work.

I think there's a real
appetite for it if there were.

Kara Carlisle: That may be
good for the Humphrey School.

Hahrie Han: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

Kara Carlisle: A couple

of other questions in just
different directions.

These get a little
bit political.

Hahrie Han: Sure.

Kara Carlisle: I'll
try to group these

together a little bit.

One question really is around
forces or agendas that

are really pushing for

divisions and what
your perspective is.

Are there, from
your point of view,

specific forces that are
pushing to divide us?

If so, what would be the root

of the interest of these forces?

Very philosophical.

Hahrie Han: Yeah.
I'm an optimist.

I do think that
political power is

a real thing and that

certain groups have
more power than others,

and that's always been a
reality in political life.

The number one most
likely outcome of

any change campaign is failure.

The number one most
likely outcome of

any change campaign
is status quo.

There's a ton of data
that shows that.

What that means is that

if you're on the
side of status quo,

then division can be a very
strategic thing to do.

Because part of the ways
in which you squelch

the possibility of change is by

dividing the forces that
are trying to make change.

I think historically,
throughout time,

we've always seen that division
can be a useful strategy

because of the power of

status quo and because status
quo has time on its side.

Status quo just has
to wait for whatever

the change effort is
to die down over time.

That's 390 days of the
Montgomery bus boycott.

They had to really sustain
that for a long time

before they were
willing to make change.

I think there's
definitely an interest in

protecting status quo, for sure.

I do believe that that's true,

but I also believe that I

think people are
inherently good.

I think that we're
in a moment of

tremendous political
and economic

and demographic
uncertainty in this world,

and I think that change
can be very fear-inducing.

The promise of
civic institutions

is to be able to help people

find ways to choose hope over

fear in their
response to change.

I think that the possibility
for that is there,

but it's the work
of people to build

the organizations that help
people choose that as opposed

to just retreating into fear.

That's an easier response
in a lot of ways.

Kara Carlisle: As you talk
to me and others here,

who all of us probably
have membership or

association with different types

of power and different
types of people,

what are questions that
you think would be

helpful for us to
take on if we say

we want to be on the side
of hope and we want to help

with carrying forward a new day?

What can we do and what are

some new questions or
new frames that can

challenge how we think about

organizing ourselves or
our time and structures?

Hahrie Han: Yeah.

There's a woman named
Frances Scott Willard.

I don't know if anyone's
heard. She was involved in

the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union.

She was one of

the people who was involved
in the movement in

the early 20th century to

pass the constitutional
amendment for prohibition,

which I'm not
advocating, by the way.

[LAUGHTER] She originally got
into this work because she

was really interested
in women's rights and

she saw domestic violence

as a real problem in
the late 19th century.

She looked around and
she saw all these women

that were victims of
domestic violence.

She thought, what's the problem?

She thought, well,
what's happening

is that a lot of
men are going out

to the bar and they get

drunk and they come home
and they beat their wives.

If we want to get to the root
cause of domestic violence,

what we need to do
is ban alcohol.

That's where that
campaign really started.

What's interesting
is the way that she

organized around the campaign

is she traveled all over the US,

traveled over 100,000
miles by train in a year,

and she would go around
to communities and she

would try to recruit
people to the cause.

If she was recruiting
you to the cause,

the first thing she
would ask you to do is

take a personal pledge
to swear off alcohol.

The first is your own values.

But the second thing that
she would ask you to do,

and this is what I think
is most interesting,

is she'd ask you to join
with other people in

your community to try to shut
down a bar in your town.

Didn't matter if you
won or you lost,

but she wanted you to have

the experience of
shutting down that bar.

Then once you guys did that,

then she would invite you to
join the national movement.

Why are they trying
to shut down bars?

Because the way you pass
constitutional amendment has

nothing to do with
whether or not

there are bars
open in your town.

You pass a constitutional
amendment by

getting three quarters of

the states to
ratify this change.

There's a whole
constitutional procedure

around which constitutional
amendments are passed.

But why did she want
people to do that?

Because she wanted people
before they joined

the national movement to have

the experience of
collective action.

She wanted people to
have the experience

of what they could
do if they joined

with others so that
people would realize in

their bones what they could

achieve if they worked with
others versus working alone.

Those are the people that she

wanted to recruit
into the movement.

For me, when I think
about that story,

I always think is
we look around in

21st century or 2019 America,

what's the Joe's bar?

Where's the place where we

all have the experience of

how and why we need each other?

I think there are a lot of

places where that could happen,

but there's a lot of opportunity
to make it happen more.

As I think about this
question that you pose,

the challenges is like,

what's the Joe's bar?

How do you identify what
that is where people

have the experience of
why we need each other?

Kara Carlisle: Great.
Are we on time?

Sorry, this is my first time,

so I just want to

make sure I'm doing
the time thing right.

We'll just do maybe one
or two more questions

and then we'll wrap up.

These are a little bit more,
again, on the political.

One is very explicit.

The question that everybody's
talking about now

is the 2020
presidential election.

Given your proximity
to electoral politics,

particularly with
presidential elections,

the question is, in 2008,

America elected a former
community organizer.

You can decide to
answer this or not.

But who do you see among

the 2020 candidates that most

reminds you of a
community organizer?

You can also decline for
a number of reasons,

but I did want to try to
get to all questions.

Hahrie Han: Well, given the
95 people who are running,

I like to go through
this right now.

Kara Carlisle: We can speak
more broadly if it's better.

Hahrie Han: Yeah. I
don't know that there's

any one candidate who jumps out.

I will say that.

What I've been really
interested in is I've been

interested in following who

the campaigns are hiring
to run their field program

because part of what

I study is field programs
and electoral campaigns.

Field programs used to
be the entire campaign

before we had mass
communications,

and then television comes
along in the mid 20th century.

Then campaigns moved to
focusing a lot more on TV,

and mass communications,
and things like that.

Then around the
early 21st century,

around the early 2000s,

is when we began to
see the resurgence

of people paying attention
to field campaigns again.

A lot of it started with
Howard Dean in 2004.

Also in 2004, Karl Rove
organized a three-day,

one million person
volunteer operation called

STOMP that was getting out
the vote for George Bush.

All of a sudden,
people are like,

whoa, field might
actually matter.

Then Obama comes along in 2008.

He hires people
like Alex Waters,

and they run this campaign that

innovates on a lot of
different field models.

Then since then, we've
seen this progressive set

of different innovations,

the Bernie Sanders campaign,

Beto's campaign in Texas

that are trying
out different ways

of blending new technologies

with existing methods
to build out field.

I feel like we're in this
moment right now where there's

a lot of flux and not a lot of

agreement necessarily
on exactly what

the right strategy is for
building a field campaign.

It's been interesting
to me is to

see who the campaigns
are hiring as

an indication of what
they think the focus is.

I'm just saying this
because this is

what's coming to mind right now,

so not to say that this is

the only campaign
that's done this.

But I know that Kamala
Harris, for example,

has hired a former
Obama field person

to run her campaign.

Bernie actually has hired
some of his own team

back to run that campaign.

I think that we're
going to see lots of

really interesting
innovations in 2020.

I think the data are
still out on exactly

what's the right "method'.

I think none of them are going

to be probably as rooted in

community organizing as
the Obama campaign was,

but that's because I think
the conversation has shifted.

It's not a good or bad.

It's not a value statement
on that particular approach.

Kara Carlisle: Great.
With that, I think

I will invite up.

We have Kate Cimino
here from the school,

who will make a couple of
comments before we close.

Kate Cimino: Thank
you Kara Carlisle and

Professor Hahrie Han for

this really great
conversation today.

It was so interesting.

If you have not yet had enough

of this and would like
to go a little deeper,

Professor Han's book is
for sale just outside.

The door is here
upon your departure.

Be sure to check that out.

Before we wrap today,

I want to thank you for coming.

Many of you know this is
part of our series here at

the center for the
study of politics

and governance at
the Humphrey School.

We do sometimes over
two dozen a year,

thanks to our great team,

and these are on all
different kinds of

topics across the
political spectrum.

If this is the thing
that you value,

having different perspectives,

different political views
brought into the mix,

a chance to ask questions and do

some deep thinking
on these topics,

we invite you to
consider joining us as

one of our donor circle.

I want to thank, got

our little card here if you
check out on your program.

Thee are a few of our
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But we welcome folks to join

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so that is a charitable
contribution.

I just wanted to let
you know, if you

have any questions about that,

please feel free to look me up.

My contact information
is on here,

and I think that that
wraps it up today.

I want to thank
Kara Carlisle and

Professor Hahrie Han for
a great conversation.

Thank you all for
coming. [APPLAUSE]