Scrivner Faculty Affiliate Newsletter - Fall 2025 Recap

Naaz Barma, Professor; Director of the Scrivner Institute

In August 2025, the Civic Nation–ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge team reached out to Naaz regarding their new civic discourse initiative. With a $5,000 grant to the Scrivner Institute, they commissioned a review of the landscape of civic discourse programs at U.S. higher education institutions. Dalton Oberfoell (MPP ’26) and Sinduja Raja (PhD ’26) worked with Naaz and the ALL IN team to produce this review. In turn, ALL IN invited Naaz to present the report at their kickoff Civic Discourse Forum in Washington (November 2025), where it was received and discussed with a good deal of interest by assembled participants (including university presidents, civic education experts and civic discourse initiative directors, and education funders). The ALL IN team aims to launch a new Civic Discourse Challenge in 2026 and we anticipate the Scrivner Institute will continue to be involved as this initiative moves forward. Read the report here.

Stefan Chavez-Norgaard, Teaching Assistant Professor of Public Policy

From West Harlem to Manhattanville: Columbia University as Planner, Occupier, and Developer, Progressive City
Territorial Memory: Political Interventions, Spatial Contestations, GeoHumanities
Denver study shows removing parking requirements results in more affordable housing being built, The Conversation
- Co-written with Sturm College of Law Professor Susan Daggett, based off their July 2025 Parking Minimums Report.
- This article has been discussed or re-posted in various outlets including the Boulder Daily Camera, Westword, Planetizen, and The Minnesota Post.
Quoted in Sports-led developments could reshape Denver's housing market, Homes.com
Selected, in partnership with Cara DiEnno and DU’s Center for Community Engaged Scholarship and Learning (CCESL), as one of 25 Community Host organizations for the 2026 Weaver Awards, an initiative of the Aspen Institute’s Weave Project. The Weaver Awards are part of a constellation of activities designed to celebrate and support weavers—everyday neighbors who are building relationships, strengthening belonging, and weaving trust into the social and civic fabric of their communities. As Community Hosts, Chavez-Norgaard and DiEnno will build a culture of weaving in Denver, CO by distributing microgrants to local individuals and nonprofits through the annual Weaver Awards, hosting gatherings, sharing stories of local weavers, and teaching the skills of weaving. From Stefan: "It's an honor to partner with Weave and we can’t wait to celebrate the incredible weavers in the Denver community."

Ajenai Clemmons, Assistant Professor of Public Policy

Interviewed for Narrowing the gap: Golden police chief aims to build trust with community, The Denver Gazette
- Republished in Colorado Politics
Nominated three different judges to the bench in 2025—a magistrate, county judge, and district court judge—in her capacity as a Commissioner for the Seventeenth Judicial District Judicial Nominating Commission (serving Adams and Broomfield Counties). She was appointed by Governor Jared Polis in recognition of her non-attorney criminal justice expertise and academic research on police-community relations.

Seth Masket, Professor of Political Science

Taking over as co-editor, along with Sara Chatfield, of The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, an online political science journal.
His Substack newsletter Tusk, on "understanding U.S. political parties, who they nominate, how, and why" continues to grow, and new followers are always welcome!

Linda Mendez-Barrientos, Assistant Professor

(De)centralized Water Futures: Key Dimensions of Infrastructure, Governance, and Operations, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water
Presented at the fall Scrivner Policy Series session on a paper currently under review: "Diverse dimensions of power challenge collaborative environmental governance"

Francisco Rodríguez, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research; External Scrivner Faculty Affiliate

Venezuela After Maduro: A Conversation With Francisco Rodríguez, Foreign Affairs Magazine
How Machado Lost Her Chance to Lead Venezuela, The New York Times

Kaitlyn Sims, Assistant Professor of Public Policy

Why protecting Colorado children from dying of domestic violence is such a hard problem, The Conversation
Practice and Practicalities: Challenges To Housing First Implementation across Nine DV Service Providers, Journal of Family Violence
COVID-19 Structural Transformation and Program Adaptation in Emergency Domestic Violence Shelters, Violence Against Women
Hot tempers: Differential effects of heat and drought on domestic violence, Review of Economics of the Household
Cited in Can Trump's Orders Stop The Rise Of Cashless Bail?, Law360
Dr. Sims received a grant from Arnold Ventures to study crime victim compensation reform in New York State, extending her research at the intersection of applied economics, public policy, and violence prevention.

Lolita Tabron, Associate Professor and Department Chair, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

Curriculum wars: A critical policy analysis of K-12 critical race theory bills in state legislatures in the United States, Education Policy Analysis Archives

Benji Xie, Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Submitted a proposal to the Federation of American Scientists Policy Sprint on "Fair and Trustworthy AI Futures” with proposed revisions to CO Consumer Protections for AI Law (SB24-205) to expand coverage to students, include law enforcement as a context for high-risk uses of algorithms, and introduce a notion of a long-term support period for algorithms (in alignment with support for computer operating systems). View the proposal here.

Stefan Chavez-Norgaard, Jennifer Greenfield (Associate Professor of Social Work), and Kaitlyn Sims

Colorado Cash Dividend Pilot Program Parameters, Costs, and Potential Benefits
- In this white paper, the authors model several different programmatic options for a potential Colorado Cash Dividend (CCD) program and weigh relative strengths, weaknesses, and tradeoffs between them. The authors consider different, modular options geared toward specific populations with a recommendation to ultimately pair universality with targeted, high-need population scaling. This white paper was prepared for the Denver Basic Income Project.
A Colorado guaranteed income program could help families, but the costs are high, The Conversation
- Based on the above white paper.