The Maryland Democracy Initiative | Division of Research

April 11, 2025
Maryland Democracy Initiative
Truth Under Siege: Building Information Resilience (One-Day Conference)
Knight Hall, University of Maryland, College Park 7765 Alumni Drive, College Park, MD 20742
What is the future of American democracy when seeing isn't believing? In an era of disinformation, it becomes increasingly difficult for citizens to tell fact from fiction. Join University of Maryland scholars, students and working journalists for a one-day conference to explore research into the ever-critical work of information resilience.

October 10, 2024
Living Democracy Symposium
A day of learning, engagement, and dialogue. This event is organized by UMD Libraries, with support from the Maryland Democracy Initiative (MDI) and will feature MDI’s Sarah Oates, who will be speaking about the First Amendment and "the Fourth Estate."

November 20 - 22, 2024
National Student Vote Summit
The Maryland Democracy Initiative (MDI) is once again co-sponsoring and co-hosting this event with partners Terps Vote and the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition. Hundreds of students, faculty, campus staff, administrators, and non-profit leaders are expected to attend from across the country. The summit aims to build connections within the nonpartisan student democratic engagement space, share valuable lessons learned, provide comprehensive training and resources, and ignite a shared momentum toward our collective goals for 2025.

Summary

American democracy is in crisis. The lack of trust in democratic institutions—including in our election system, our public schools, and the news media—represent major threats.

Deep and growing polarization threatens to thwart any understanding of the common good. Dangerous rhetoric begetting political violence threatens our nation’s stability and jeopardizes a fundamental principle of democracy, the peaceful transfer of power. These threats as well as metastasizing misinformation and disinformation have significantly exacerbated inequalities and tensions across racial, ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic lines, putting in question our two-century long experiment in self-governance. Without a vibrant and healthy democracy, we stand little chance of tackling other urgent policy issues facing the nation and the planet such as the climate crisis, structural racism, and poverty.

The Maryland Democracy Initiative will catalyze interdisciplinary innovation in three core areas: cutting-edge research, inventive teaching and learning, and impactful civic engagement. This initiative will establish University of Maryland as a force to empower students, faculty, and staff on campus—and our Maryland Democracy Initiative community partners throughout Maryland—as co-creators of solutions that remove barriers that threaten our future as nation and that ensure a better democracy for all.