New Article: We Need to Close the Hope Gap

Posted by Stanford Social Innovation Review on June 23, 2026

Many Americans struggle to have hope in these times of crisis. Since COVID-19’s onset six years ago, we’ve lived through mass death, economic whiplash, accelerating climate disasters, an attack on the US Capitol, book bans and curriculum censorship, rollbacks of reproductive rights, mass deportations, defunding of cultural institutions, killings of American citizens by armed federal guards, and the steady normalization of white nationalist rhetoric, amplified by media feeds that turn these crises into endless engagement loops.

To be sure, people and organizations still formulate, and advocate for, bold solutions to address our most pressing problems. But no matter how effective these solutions would be if implemented, we find that people doubt that any of these solutions will plausibly happen, which in turn undermines them before they are even tried. At BLIS Collective, a solidarity and action hub that leverages narrative and storytelling to advance transformative social policy, we call this measurable distance between support for a cause and belief in its feasibility the Hope Gap.

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