🎙️ NEW CASBS PODCAST EPISODE "Immigrant Cities and Democracy's Future" Audio of a CASBS event held in May. With CASBS board member & fmr fellow Tomás Jiménez, Oxford economist & 2025-26 fellow @iangoldin.bsky.social & Welcoming America exec dir Rachel Perić 🎧 bit.ly/4xKOaOm or on any podcast app 😏

Excited to share the cover and an early endorsement from @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social for my forthcoming book, "The Carbon Wave." It's out Sept. 1! Preorders help the book travel further. The book is on sale this week with free shipping at Bookshop. Order your copy today! bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

Former Stanford PACS PhD Fellow @salmamousa.bsky.social is an assistant professor of political science at UCLA, where she serves on the Bedari Kindness Institute’s faculty advisory committee and leads research on #SocialCohesion, religious integration, and conflict resolution. #PACSFellows

In the United States, arts and culture work has long relied more on philanthropy and civil society than government support. The organizations that support bookstores usually do so within the constraints of the for-profit model.

What responsibilities accompany extraordinary wealth in a time of civic decline? In @ssir.org, Priya Shanker discusses the potential for #CivicLeadership in today's era of billionaire #philanthropy and why the cross-sector, coalition-building work of legacy foundations may point the way forward.

New in @ssir.org, Stanford PACS Executive Director Priya Shanker discusses the roles of civic leadership and foundation expertise in this evolving era of billionaire #philanthropy ⤵️

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, Faculty Affiliate @persily.bsky.social joined the Stanford Legal podcast to discuss the decision and its implications for racial representation, partisan gerrymandering, and anti-discrimination law. Listen via @law.stanford.edu ⤵️

"We hadn’t done user research or tried to optimize an experience. We had identified an invisible social rule that every previous intervention had either missed or accepted as fixed. And then we designed a mechanism that worked with the culture, instead of against it. That’s norm design."

Stanford PACS Faculty Advisor @robreich.bsky.social joined the Council on AI Governance’s AI Rules podcast to discuss the evolving landscape of #AI governance, the national security risks posed by frontier models, how to involve #CivilSociety in setting standards, and more. 🔗 podcast.caigov.org

Investing in refugee-led enterprises, companies supporting refugees, and the communities welcoming them can transform tragedy into economic and social gain for all. Read this new in-depth feature from our Summer 2026 issue.

Glad to see this WP from our lab out today, a labor of love over last year. Kudos to @davidbroska.bsky.social and @jonnekamphorst.bsky.social for their hard work on it! Please share any comments, suggestions, or criticisms of the research. All are welcome!

How can #philanthropy help scale #MentalHealth? We spoke with Neerja Birla of Aditya Birla Education Trust about her work to embed mental health support within education systems and advance early intervention models that can operate at scale in resource-constrained contexts. 🔗 stanford.io/4325Kzf

Starting soon! Join us live at 9 PT, or register now to watch the recording later.

How can today's mega-rich philanthropists build a new generation of civic institutions and infrastructure? Join us tomorrow for an SSIR author conversation with Sarah Cone, author of our latest cover story "Why Don't Philanthropists Build Anymore?" stanford.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

"To invoke the term now is not to romanticize the first Gilded Age ... It is rather to note a structural resemblance: extraordinary private wealth amassed amid public strain, and a corresponding question about what, if anything, that wealth owes the society from which it was extracted."

"I believe schools have oriented young people to almost a democratic cosplay: we know how to make signs; we know to protest what we don’t like. But it is very different from the problem-solving that previous generations were prepared to undertake."

How will #AI reshape politics—and political science? A new volume co-edited by Faculty Affiliate Nate Persily brings together contributions from more than 50 political scientists and scholars to explore the intersections of AI with #democracy, #elections, public opinion, race and gender, and more.

A peculiar irony sits at the heart of modern philanthropy: The richest generation in history, commanding more wealth than the pharaohs, Medicis, and Carnegies combined, has proven surprisingly unwilling to convert that wealth into new, durable civic institutions. Our new cover story asks why...

VIDEO 📹 Watch CASBS's May 6 event on what immigrant cities teach us about democracy, hosted w/Stanford's Institute for Advancing Just Societies Features 2025-26 CASBS fellow @iangoldin.bsky.social , Welcoming America Exec Dir Rachel Perić & IAJS dir Tomás Jiménez www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEpg...

If an investment is making something happen that otherwise would not—for example, funding new climate technology or building social housing where the market has failed—it is less likely to have a ready-made, liquid market. And therein lies the problem...

What is education for? What kind of citizen should education aim to cultivate? In a moment when curricula are contested and civic life is shot through with conflict, @dsallentess.bsky.social calls for a rethinking of the role education plays in our democracy:

Catch up on the conversation: Kevin Starr responds to what he calls the "predictable backlash [against scale at SSIR], ranging from the plaintive 'Does Everything in the Social Sector Have to Scale?' to the unhinged 'Scale is a Myth! Embrace the Long Defeat!'" ssir.org/articles/ent...

For decades, most organizations treated major giving as a specialty function: important but separate from the broader fundraising operation. But that logic no longer holds. In a new excerpt from "A Better Way to Fundraise," Derric Bakker explains why.

Continuing this forum on the purpose of public education: Kim Smith, CEO of LearnerStudio, writes about choice, agency, and balancing justice with freedom. "A new social contract is not only a set of promises from the system to families. It is also a set of obligations that flow the other way."

NEW from our forthcoming summer issue: Nimesh Ghimire profiles Ashesi University in Ghana. Beginning in 2002 with a class of 30 Ghanaian students, the school now enrolls over 1,800 students from more than 30 nations across Africa.

What motivates collective action, political participation, or civic engagement? Stop by our symposium at #APS26BCN with talks from @dgoldwert.bsky.social, @anasabherwal.bsky.social, @smconstantino.bsky.social, and me. 🗓 May 29 | 12:30 PM 🌐 Room 129, (P1 Level, CCIB) Hope to see you there!

The Draft Volume of the APSA AI Task Force, cochaired by Josh Tucker and me, is now available. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, POLITICS, AND POLITICAL SCIENCE will be published by Cambridge Press later this year, but the draft chapters are available today: apsanet.org/wp-content/u...

"Today, teachers are expected to guide students through complex, interdisciplinary challenges; to help them use technology and AI ethically and creatively; and to cultivate curiosity, compassion, and critical thinking. But the systems around them haven’t evolved to match those expectations."

Timely event yesterday at CASBS on what immigrant cities can teach us about democracy, featuring CASBS fellow @iangoldin.bsky.social , Rachel Perić, Exec Dir of Welcoming America & Tomás Jiménez, Faculty Director of Stanford's Institute for Advancing Just Societies 📹 video & 📷 photos coming soon 😏

#CollaborativeFunds are emerging as a powerful, yet underutilized, philanthropic asset class. A new article from @bridgespangroup.bsky.social explores how collaboratives enable donors to access specialized expertise, share risk, and pursue impact at a scale most could not achieve alone.

Announcing the 2026 Andrew #CarnegieFellows! Selected from a record 381 nominations, 24 fellows will each receive $200K to examine the causes of political polarization — and how to reduce it. 🔗 Read more: www.carnegie.org/news/article... #Polarization #Research

Arguing against the proposition that modern #philanthropy is a tool for reputation laundering, former Stanford PACS PhD Fellow Megan Tompkins-Stange led a winning debate team at the Oxford Union, the distinguished debating society at @ox.ac.uk. Read the news via @umfordschool.bsky.social ⤵️

In a time of widespread change, what is public education for, and how can it evolve to meet its promise? In a new SSIR series, authors agree that public education needs to transform, but there is far less agreement on what transformation looks like.

In this 2025 keynote talk on democracy and participation in organizations at a joint @stanfordpacs.bsky.social & ESSEC Business School forum, Woody Powell is just nailin' it. Totally en fuego on the architecture of participatory styles & configurations 🔥 🔥 www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-m...

Join @ssir.org today at 10am PT ⤵️

Climate change impacts are here, but public support for action remains polarized. Which climate messages move people? In a ~13,500-person megastudy, we tested 10 of the most-cited messages. Six increased pro-environmental attitudes in the U.S.—but only by 1–4 percentage points. 🧵

What role can #philanthropy play in efforts to tackle the gravest risks of climate change? On this #EarthDay, we're resharing a post on our Philanthropy Innovation Summit blog by Mike Schroepfer, Founder of Gigascale Capital and Outlier Projects.

The traditional approach to due diligence, which stems from a widespread corporate mindset, perceives risk primarily as a threat that funders should identify and mitigate, if not avoid. What if funders viewed due diligence principally as an opportunity to develop deeper relationships with grantees?

CASBS event | May 6 What can Immigrant Cities Teach Us about Democracy? Join CASBS fellow @iangoldin.bsky.social & Rachel Perić, Exec Dir of Welcoming America, in conversation w/ Tomás Jiménez, Faculty Director of Stanford's Institute for Advancing Just Societies DETAILS & RSVP: bit.ly/4sJXA9L

Can AI voter guides help voters decide while remaining accurate, nonpartisan, and trustworthy? Very grateful to @stanfordimpactlabs.bsky.social for a new grant supporting our next work on this (building on work led by Joe Mernyk & Jonne Kamphorst): bsky.app/profile/robb...

Congrats to our own @robbwiller.bsky.social on being awarded the 2026 #GuggenheimFellowship for his outstanding and innovative work in #Sociology! Read more about the @guggfellows.bsky.social: www.gf.org/stories/anno...

Congratulations to Stanford PACS Faculty Co-Director @robbwiller.bsky.social for his appointment as a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow! Robb is among the 223 accomplished individuals chosen for the 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows from a highly competitive pool of nearly 5,000 applicants. #GuggFellows2026

What will it take to reverse the recent increasing concentration of charitable giving? SSIR’s David Johnson speaks w/ Mark Dobosz about his SSIR feature, “Beyond the Mega-Gift.” Wednesday, April 29 Register here: stanford.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Airbnb.org is an independent nonprofit that provides free, emergency housing in times of crisis. New on our #PACSSummit blog, Airbnb.org Executive Director Christoph Gorder outlines how tech companies can apply their resources to provide sustained structural capacity for #HumanitarianAid.

"Everybody’s getting ready for the annual social sector lollapalooza in Oxford, and there have never been so many sessions with the word “scale” in the title..." ssir.org/articles/ent...

Join us on Monday, April 27 for a seminar with Siwar Hasan-Aslih of UC Santa Cruz, who will share research examining the prevalence and consequences of #bias in news reports in the context of the ongoing conflict in Israel/Palestine. RSVP to attend in person at Stanford or join us online! ⤵️

Join us on Monday in person or online for our PACS-SCANCOR seminar on #PoliticalCourage with @consueloamat.bsky.social ⤵️

"They say you don’t come to Skoll to scare the horses. But Paul Farmer, for all his grace and gentleness, loved to grab the gate and give it a good hard shake."

As #philanthropy seeks to address today's increasingly complex, uncertain and fast-moving challenges, it also faces questions about its own role, legitimacy and effectiveness. Few leaders have engaged these questions as directly as Cari Tuna, Chair of Good Ventures and Coefficient Giving.

@nature.com has published three groundbreaking papers on reproducibility, analytical robustness, and replicability across the social sciences. Sincere thanks are due to the many folks who contributed to these projects. It’s painstaking work, and a great service to social science.