As Dan Slater and I intimate in our book, development and demo do go hand-in-hand. The erosion of democracy today is a reflection of the failure of development, and specifically, I'm convinced, of inclusive development. The JD Vance-ification of politics reflects this.

Headlines like these just seem so wrong. #putin #trump #europeanunion

Reposting for Canada Day! Investing in a Canadian elbows-up strategy. My June op-ed in @thestar.com, on Canada's middle power moment on the global stage. www.thestar.com/business/opi...

Congrats to all @uoft.bsky.social grads! It never rains on convocation day! #uoftgrad25

This is Canada's moment. My Toronto Star op-ed on what Canada needs to do to assert our global leadership amidst huge changes to the international order. www.thestar.com/business/opi...

Strategy to bring back manufacturing to #America: by levying tariffs on #steel and aluminum, key manufacturing inputs, making them more expensive for American manufacturers. Makes total (non)sense. #MAGA www.politico.com/news/2025/06...

Let me get this straight. Trump wants to reassert American dominance by turning away the best, most talented ppl in the world, because #Trump believes those in the #MAGA base who voted for him are the only ones who can make #America great again?

This piece in the NY Times correctly hones in on why international students are vital to US interests Kicking them out will destroy the research & development pipeline that has propelled the US into global leadership in science & tech

Just came back from visiting Oliver, who's doing an internship in Accra, Ghana. I was his age when I went to Asia by myself. Changed my life: thought I was going to be a lawyer, then decided to devote my life to studying that part of the world. #impact #growingup

Trump's health secretary, the guy who claims a worm burrowed into his brain, ate part of it and then died there. Explains alot. #rfk www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/u...

Four years ago I wrote a globeandmail op-ed on micro-aggressions and racism. Re-sharing it for #asianheritagemonth #AAPIHeritageMonth www.utoronto.ca/news/call-ou...

My 83 yr old mom lookin' like she's running for the Liberal Party of Canada!

Guns n Roses over cocktails. @uoft.bsky.social

Don't poke the polar bear. #CanadaStrong

A meeting of minds (coauthors and friends), Dan Ziblatt, Dan Slater, and Rachel Riedl, in Boston, conspiring to strengthen global democracy.

I assign #PopeFrancis encyclical in my class b/c in it he makes the simple yet powerful point: unfair inequality and environmental degradation are morally wrong and we need to do something about it. Flawed as popes are, he was a rare one #RIPPopeFrancis

30 years ago we met as first-year PhD students @UWMadison. Spending this past weekend together at my cottage, reminiscing and realizing how our profs back then, who seemed so old, were younger than we are today! Grateful for these guys! #gradschool #phdlife

The notion that Trump defying the courts poses a constitutional crisis is misleading. The fact we have to contemplate that at all is the crisis. His defiance would be the death knell of democracy. #SCOTUS

I talked on @cbcnews-rss.bsky.social about the economic and political implications of the trade war which the U.S. started www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

It's so weird to find myself quietly cheering on #Harvard and #China these days.

The Trump regime is claiming tyrannical powers. Not an exaggeration, not hyperbole, not a partisan statement. The reality we now face.

Political economy 101 -- non-tariff barrier: when a country in the midst of a trade war decides it's just not going to sell you things you need anymore. #TrumpTariffs #TradeWar www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/b...

China will suffer, to be sure, because it will lose sales and export revenue. The US, however, likely to suffer more because it can't make the things that China makes and #America needs. #TariffWar #China

Tariffs 101: America imports alot, thus huge trade deficits. It's not getting ripped off, just doesn't really make anything Americans want/need. #TrumpTariffs make imports (i.e. everything) cost more, so that Americans will make stuff for themselves. Make sense? Didn't think so.

I find the two 4-letter words that explain much of what's going on with and in the Trump administration are "dumb" and "evil."

"You want to live in TAIWAN?!?" exclaims Parker Posey's character on #WhiteLotus3 ep 5, confusing #Thailand with #Taiwan yet again. Sigh.

Taking Jackie Robinson down from DoD site, then restoring him, but not because of his contributions to combating #racism is like saying ... #JackieRobinson did not break the racial color line in baseball, transforming pro sports & #America forever.

Anything that is not racist is now considered DEI.

Got my burners for China. Got my burners for Russia. Got my burners for Turkey and Hungary. Getting my burners for...the US. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

The Department of Defense deemed a story about baseball hero and civil rights leader Jackie Robinson's time in the Army as "DEI" and deleted it.

Five years ago, almost to the day, I thought my son was going to be off school for 2 weeks and that I'd be teaching online for a while using Skype. #Covid #memories

JD Vance says in 2021: "We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country. The professors are the enemy." Welcome to America's cultural revolution. #Trump #JDVance #highereducation

America's disengagement from the rest of the world signals its unwillingness to be a global leader; but surely, cutting programs like #fulbright, #USAID, and diplomatic ties will have national #security implications too, from no intel to waning influence.

Calling all talented researchers, students and higher ed leaders in the US - there's this great country called #Canada just north of you that welcomes you. Just let us know. #CanadaStrong #Canpoli @UofT

If democracy were to die it would be the shortest regime type in human history, a blip and barely a footnote. We need to make sure that doesn't happen. #Democracy

Looking forward to giving this lecture at my UG alma mater, McGill University, next week. Democracy's promise has never been more imperiled. Keen to have a great discussion with profs and students.

Apparently, I am one of the several hundreds of thousands who've cancelled my Washington Post subscription since #bezos sought to restrict its editorial autonomy. www.npr.org/2025/02/28/n...

Of course, the irony is that both JD Vance and his wife would be #EDI candidates. #Vance #Trump

Foot dragging, slowing things down, gumming up the works, sowing division, dragging thru the courts -- the new resistance. #RESISTANCE www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/n...

Headline from @theonion.com or the broadsheets?

A prof's POV: Recruiting international students without the commitment & resources to support them is exploitation; supporting #internationalstudents at @UofT and drawing on their diverse lived experiences is enhancing the university's research & teaching for everyone. #onpoli

#Kanye proclaims he's a Nazi. #Musk re-hires a racist. #Trump surrounds himself with rapists. The pendulum has swung from "virtue signalling" to "vice signalling" and the normalization of exclusion. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

How do you mobilize, oppose and resist a regime that doesn't care if you oppose or resist it? #Trump

The thing with #autocracies is that they don't last forever, and when you create a retributive system to destroy #democracy and eliminate your enemies, you should be prepared to be eliminated when no longer in power. #Trump will be old and frail. #ElonMusk, on the other hand...

I recall how Chairman Mao was similarly fixated on China's domestic steel production during the disastrous Great Leap Forward. Hmm. #TrumpTariffs www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/u...

So pleased to share the link to my latest, on the East Asian Welfare State, part of the @cambridgeuppolisci.bsky.social Element series. Free to download til Feb 12th! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

"Apartheid has fallen, we die right next to each other now. It's just the living part we still have to work out." Picked-up this Booker Prize winning novel in Cape Town. Just finished reading it. Humanity, grace, family, tragedy, epic, spare and seamless writing.

Elon Musk DOGE army the 21st century SA Brownshirts www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Just accessed our health system for routine medical tests. Bloodwork, ECG, X-ray. Just had to show my #health card, all free. Reminder of how good we have it in #Canada, not having to ask - as I did when I lived in the US - "does my insurance cover this?" #HealthcareForAll

Where is the resistance?