Honors College 2025 Day 1: Resilience in the Face of Change
Honors College 2025 Day 1: Resilience in the Face of Change
This is the first story in a series of blog posts written by the Fisher Family Honors Program class of 2026 detailing their experiences in Washington, D.C., for CDDRL's annual Honors College.
Our first two meetings to kick off our week of Honors College were with the Organization of American States (OAS) and Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times. We began our day with a tour of OAS’s main building, which pays homage to architectural styles and art from its various American member states. After our tour, we had the chance to speak with Gerardo de Icaza, Director of the Department of Electoral Cooperation and Observation at the OAS, to discuss his insights on electoral observation missions and trends in election integrity over recent years.
De Icaza spoke at length about the history of electoral observation missions — consisting of observers deployed on the ground in various countries, along with specialists on topics like electoral technology and campaign finance. These missions and the reports they produce have given political legitimacy to elections in many countries, while also serving a watchdog function in countries with weaker election integrity. Responding to a question about notable trends that his department may be tracking, de Icaza spoke about increases in political violence and attacks on government institutions.
In our next meeting with Peter Baker, we had the opportunity to discuss his thoughts on the intersection of journalism and politics in recent times. We began by discussing his experience with legacy media institutions like The New York Times and The Washington Post. Our back-and-forth about how journalists can reach newer audiences — particularly people with low trust in traditional media — was a great segue into a longer discussion about the role of the free press in validating or qualifying different types of rhetoric through their reporting. This opportunity to discuss journalists’ role as key members of both the D.C. policy community and local communities all across the U.S. helped us think more deeply about the interplay between policymakers, political appointees in the executive branch, and reporters.
The week as a whole was incredibly impactful, especially as we learned about the ways in which different policy communities are reorienting and rebuilding themselves while the institutions around them are tested.
~ Sakshi Umrotkar
Our second two meetings of the day were with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). At NED, we met with CEO Damon Wilson and Kevin Sheives, director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies. The two shared an overview of NED’s mission and programs and then spoke about the recent attempted funding cuts. Through a long and iterative process, NED has managed to regain portions of its funding, but not without significant losses.
In response to a question from our cohort regarding which arguments they’ve found to be most effective on the hill, Wilson mentioned that the most salient was actually the simplest: that it is the right thing to do — that Americans should be supporting civil leaders around the world fighting for democracy. Other arguments for NED's mission appealed to American incentives — highlighting that Americans can’t invest in areas without rule of law, and that the presence of forced labor undercuts the United States’ ability to compete. I found this breakdown of argumentation quite interesting, as it offered insights into the internal politics required to keep an organization like NED up and running.
At the Council on Foreign Relations, we met with Senior Fellows Paul Stares, Kat Duffy, and Ebenezer Obadare. Like at NED, the meeting started with an overview of the center's work, and then moved to the topic of the current political environment. Center fellows mentioned that their usual audience in the US government has dissipated, and they are no longer invited to policy roundtables to offer advice on pressing issues. This understanding of the inner workings of the DC policy environment and its recent changes was one of the most interesting takeaways from the week — information we only stumbled upon because of the opportunity to meet with these think tanks. Despite the changing norms in the policy arena, the fellows' determination to continue providing evidence-based research on important conflict areas was heartening to see. Overall, the day proved very interesting, offering a lot of insights into the inner workings of the Capitol's think tanks and NGOs.
~ Rachel Owens
