US Universities are about to have their biggest public megaphone of the year (March Madness). Huge opportunity for a unified message from American college presidents (NOT NCAA!) explaining the attack on higher ed. Get Duke and UNC to lead the charge.

New from me at Cato: in its demands that Columbia surrender its academic and administrative independence to federal overseers, the Trump administration has violated one law after another. And there's every reason to think it's planning to roll out the same game plan to other universities. /1

Hang together or hang separately.

The detention of Mahmoud Khalil puts all Americans fundamental rights at risk. And if you can’t see that because you oppose his politics, well that’s exactly the reaction Trump and his cronies are counting on. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The Department of Health and Human Services has granted associates of the U.S. DOGE Service access to a sensitive child support database with troves of income data, overriding the objections of career employees, according to four people familiar with the matter. wapo.st/4ielu88

Let's talk about this Nature piece in more detail. I've rarely read something so anti-scientific anywhere short of the National Review. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Sure, I jot down notes as I read. But those notes aren't my review. It's the process of thinking about those notes and figuring out what my commendations or objections are that I figure out what I think about the paper and how I can best advise the authors and the editors. This is the hard part.

Immediate follow for Przeworski's Substack, lifelong scholar of democracy

Yup. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/elon...

Even as small donors flooded in, campaign finance inequality hit record highs in 2024. For the first time, the top 0.01% (1 in 10K voters) share exceeds 50% of $s. The top 400 donors now exceed 25%. Citizens United opened the door, but soaring wealth inequality is what's driving these extremes.

RIP, kahneman.

Seems relevant to recent conversations between @radleybalko.bsky.social, Coleman Hughes, etc. academic.oup.com/socpro/advan...

Recruiting postdocs! Work with me, @pamherd.bsky.social @giannella.bsky.social & Sebastian Jilke at the Better Government Lab at Georgetown University. We are looking for scholars with good evaluation skills to help us study RCTs to reduce administrative burdens. apply.interfolio.com/143281

🚨 SCOOP: Here’s the unsealed, 1,300-page report showing how Harvard Business School concluded that dishonesty expert Francesca Gino committed research misconduct. www.chronicle.com/article/here...

Checking google scholar for recent articles with the phrase "certainly, here is a":

ICYMI, here are the links to my series about George Floyd, Derek Chauvin, and the deeply problematic documentary, The Fall of Minneapolis. Part 1: radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retcon... Part 2: radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retcon... Part 3: radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retcon...

Hello, police? Cancel the EMTs, the victim was actually dead on contact.

Please everyone make sure to be responsible in using this Indiana Tattale-a-Teacher website to which you can *UPLOAD FILES*

‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything - on.ft.com/49mxmjE via @FT Cory Doctorow lays it out

The Affordable Connectivity Program provides low-income Americans a $30 broadband discount which will soon end. Republicans are refusing to fund a $4-$7 billion extension: FCC To End Broadband Discounts For Poor People After Republicans Undermine Program www.techdirt.com/2024/01/23/f...

Thanks, American Dialect Society, for choosing "enshittification" as the 2023 Word of the Year. Cory Doctorow's apt term describes how online platforms decay by showing users less and less of what they came for, while keeping them trapped and unable to exit for better alternatives.

hello, world.

ICYMI: @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social and coauthors have a neat new paper looking at the relationship between local level union density and the availability of ballot drop boxes (important measure of local democracy) in the 2022 election. More unions, more ballot access! www.epi.org/publication/...