Molten water

South Asia has seen 3 governments fall due to mass protests in as many years. But returning to the status quo or simply holding elections isn't enough, real change is needed, @pstaniland.bsky.social on the current wave of protests impacting the region. www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclu...

Plus more info from university yesterday suggests a lot of the internet coverage of this stuff - "UChicago goes bankrupt in MAGA-inspired self-immolation aimed at annihilating human knowledge while becoming nothing more than a start-up incubator" - was not correct

A key takeaway, including from the budget town hall today, is that the UChicago debt situation is getting better rather than worse, plus some of the spicier internet claims appear to be hyperbolic/inaccurate. Still challenges, but not a cataclysm (i.e. my dept is hiring 2 lines):

I have a new article out in the Journal of Democracy comparing mass protests and government collapse in 2025 Nepal, 2024 Bangladesh, and 2022 Sri Lanka: www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclu...

Some clarification from UChicago admin about finances; the most amusing bullet point is the "No, the University has not lost money on cryptocurrency" one: provost.uchicago.edu/announcement...

I have a new article out in the Journal of Democracy comparing mass protests and government collapse in 2025 Nepal, 2024 Bangladesh, and 2022 Sri Lanka: www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclu...

An H-Diplo/ISSF Jervis Forum Roundtable on Roger Petersen's "Death, Dominance, and State-Building" (I wrote the introduction): issforum.org/roundtables/...

Excited to be joining the @global-affairs.bsky.social as a nonresident senior fellow in Asia Studies:

President Trump’s recent levying of tariffs has prompted India to reassess its relationship with the US. The Council was pleased to host a roundtable discussion led by @pstaniland.bsky.social and @kfriedhoff.bsky.social on what shifting US-India relations mean for the US, China, and the region.

Nepal's government steps down in face of spiraling protests and police violence, unclear who is running the show and what comes next.

unclear whether Trump hates India or Chicago more.

a thoughtful op-ed from the computer science/data science part of UChicago: "These are challenging times for higher education. The right response is not to pit disciplines against one another but to work together to serve our students and the public." chicagomaroon.com/48362/viewpo...

The Nobel Prize and a Testy Phone Call: How the Trump-Modi Relationship Unraveled www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/u...

now with an updated link for the American search: academicjobs.uchicago.edu/positions/16...

The University of Chicago Department of Political Science is hiring at the junior level in American Politics and Quantitative Methods; links below:

dystopian Chicago sinks further into unchecked violence and collapse, desperately crying out for the liberatory hand of the Trump administration:

architectural reflections #chicago

New blog post: "Views of India among the global public" paulstaniland.com/2025/08/18/v...

"These are not the first signs that American higher education is losing its dominant position. . . . With more appealing alternatives, the Trump administration’s hostile stance may hasten the decline in U.S. higher education pre-eminence" www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/b...

Chicago, morning and night

Perhaps relevant to today’s politics (from Gary Kristy’s “City of Scoundrels” about 1919 Chicago):

Daniel Diermeier is as close to to a comic book super-villain as I've met in higher ed (he spent some time at UChicago doing publicity-hunting things that then blew up, but only after he moved on to his next promotion), so his position here is extremely unsurprising: archive.is/6yuU4

Now that I've finally gotten my Mexican residency I guess I can announce some very good news. I successfully defended my dissertation at UChicago in July and soon I'll start as an assistant professor at Tec de Monterrey. I'm so excited about this new chapter!

New blog post on "The perversity of Trump’s India policy": "Donald Trump’s approach to India over tariffs will be bad for US foreign policy. . . . it’s a gratuitously insulting, counterproductive way to run a country’s foreign policy" (link below)

Not on here much since S Asia is still on the other place, but worth noting how disastrous and counterproductive Trump’s India tariffs approach is likely to be in the long run. Massive blow to trust in a country that historically has often been very skeptical of US foreign policy.

Trump’s Tariff Gamble Puts America’s Ties With India at Risk www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/w...

US bureau of statistics next year:

Trump's newest thoughts on India:

The Bean

K-12 education choices are a useful lens through which to understand a city's power structure: paulstaniland.com/2024/10/29/t...

Chicago sunset

"But the fundamentals remain unchanged. The planned elections, which will not be credible, will not resolve Myanmar’s political crisis or reduce the intensity of the armed conflict." www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-e...

very curious (also dreading) how this turns out. Chicago has a structure where the social sciences are separate from humanities, which means Hum doesn't get help from big majors like Econ, PoliSci, Psych, & History: chicagomaroon.com/48215/news/u...

Residents of the central Myanmar town say they face a daily risk of abduction by both pro-military and pro-democracy militias, with perpetrators increasingly targeting children to force families to pay steep ransoms. www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/we-are-li...

How does major power rivalry play out for South Asia’s “swing states” – and what does that mean for U.S. policy in the region? @pstaniland.bsky.social highlighted a few policy recommendations in his new Carnegie paper. Read the full paper here: carnegieendowment.org/research/202...

Really good documentary on Hannah Arendt: www.pbs.org/wnet/america...

A Father Braces for Life After a Plane Crash Took His ‘Everything’ www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/w...

Interested in major power competition? Small states navigating a complicated world? The intersection of IR & comparative politics? Asia? This publication is for you:

NEW survey findings from the global team at @pewresearch.org show how international attitudes about the US and China have changed in the second Trump administration: "Views of the US have become more negative while views of China have turned more positive."

Interested in major power competition? Small states navigating a complicated world? The intersection of IR & comparative politics? Asia? This publication is for you:

My new report from the Carnegie Endowment offers a framework for understanding how major power competition plays out within "swing" states - focused on South Asia but with applicability beyond - and a set of implications for contemporary US foreign policy: carnegieendowment.org/research/202...

just unbelievably grim

Spectacular photo series from Ukraine, Sudan, DRC, and elsewhere as finalists in Leica Oskar Barnack Award: www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com/en/shortlist...

Can attest that this is highly useful for people (i.e. me!) not very familiar with Vietnam and its foreign policy: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

"The Americans play a pivotal role in Nepal’s geopolitical chessboard. . . This is why the latest news that the MCC funding for Nepal will be continued under a special exemption is a cause for cheer" Meaning of MCC kathmandupost.com/editorial/20... via @kathmandupost

"If the legislature and the ICHE are really concerned about how the state’s young minds are being educated, they should pack away their numbers nonsense and engage with the state’s faculty on the future of Indiana’s great state university." www.chicagotribune.com/2025/07/07/e...