The people who profited most from the cancel culture/free speech panic were less interested in actual freedom of speech than establishing their own control over public discourse. You don't even have to take my word for it. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

This is why I regularly teach the difference between opinion and fact.

The entire american "free speech" panic was about elites being criticized, which is why anyone who ever took it seriously should be ignored forever

3. Leadership is about doing what is necessary, not just what is popular. Read literally anything our founders wrote about virtue, and the inherent risks to a society based on democratic processes to sustain the rule of law to the extent that unvirtuous people gain power.

4. Yglesias instead seems to implicitly argue that politicians should only do what wins elections, virtue be damned. One wonders what he thinks of those foolish 1850s abolitionists. As Condleeza Rice once said, politics is the art of making the impossible inevitable. That ain't this.

1. First, let's talk about the elephant in the room that he doesn't mention explicitly but haunts the whole piece: climate change is real, we've overshot the goal and the only way to turn the corner is to leave fossil fuel in the ground. To ignore that is to talk about rocketry and ignore gravity.

If you haven’t yet watched it , I very much love Spirited as a great Christmas Carol rendition. This song explains a large portion of the social psychological study of intergroup conflict and political communication. youtu.be/_lOU_HN5bY4

This woman left after this exchange

can’t understand why women hate these guys

Exactly this. When I was department head and we were hiring I’d say “this is the most important work we do this year. You can divorce if you marry the wrong person. Hire/tenure a difficult person and you are stuck with them for the rest of your life.”

For the rare jobs that do exist, faculty get to vote on who to hire. Many have an unofficial “no assholes” rule, which makes the working environment so much more pleasant for everyone. If you’re a grievance-obsessed weirdo, and there are 10 equally-qualified normal people, the decision is easier.

This is the kind of news I’d like to see more of in 2026

I have so much empathy and solidarity for those struggling with the painful and structurally unjust academic labor market, but this racial grievance shit is simply not the way.

Our neighbours at @tcdpoliticalsci.bsky.social are hiring 3 (!) tenure-track faculty members: – Assistant Professor in Political Economy – Assistant Professor in International Politics – Assistant Professor in Political Science Deadline: 15 Jan 2026 More details: jobs.tcd.ie @tcddublin.bsky.social

matt & co’s theory of how public opinion on immigration would respond to new information was simply empirically wrong. at this point the only reasonable conclusion is they refuse to update their priors w/ new data because the data is inconvenient for them www.gelliottmorris.com/p/the-cost-o...

if tumblr dies I need this video to make it's seasonal rotation here instead just in case, Happy holidays 🎄

Interested in pursuing a career in climate governance, policy or politics research? Do you have a relevant PhD degree in political science, public administration or international relations? Then you should check out this opportunity! www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

I’m hiring a predoctoral fellow for the 2026-2027 AY with possibility of a second year. This is a great position for someone interested in pursuing a Ph.D. or who wants more hands-on experience doing research. Please apply/share! Happy to answer questions! tobin.yale.edu/opportunitie...

Also, many of us didn't "smell" the fascism; we painstakingly researched & reported on the infrastructure of the growing anti-democratic movement, starting well before 2015 & with relative restraint. Some Very Serious Editors called us "shrill" and "resistance-y." newrepublic.com/article/2042...

And my second caveat in response to a lot of responses—this isn’t an argument that men being lonely isn’t happening. This is an argument that loneliness is not exclusive to men and that the reigning discourse around MALE loneliness is really about unmet expectations for women

One consistent theme of the anti-institutionalists is that they have not run the institutions they despise. The is akin to Rufo overseeing the implosion of New College, despite both institutions been handed massive financial resources.

Just say women. This is taking forever.

NEW: Humanitarian officials staged a last-minute plea to Trump officials at their fancy hotel to re-start food aid $ for a huge refugee camp in Kenya. The Trumpers blew it off and babies starved. @annamaria.bsky.social & Brett Murphy www.propublica.org/article/keny...

I just said “it’s just clothes” to my 13yo daughter freaking out about her outfit this morning. Rookie mistake.

New post-doc position working with me in a new lab at @snfagora.bsky.social ! It's one year appointment, renewable for up to 5 years. The position includes data analysis and independent research, mentorship of lab members, and participation in SNF Agora Institute life. apply.interfolio.com/178796

I wrote about Yglesias “defending liberalism” by joining a right wing moral panic over critical race theory. His vision of liberalism has room for bigots, but no room for scholars concerned about structural racism.

This is a super important, data-driven corrective to some common mistakes by pundits and politicians. Don't miss the punchline:

Rob Reiner: “Silence in the face of authoritarianism is complicity. Speaking out is a patriotic act. Democracy doesn’t defend itself. It requires participation, vigilance, and courage from ordinary people."

The submerged state emerges h/t @smettler.bsky.social

Just a reminder that at least 600 Americans were fired for failing to show sufficient respect after Charlie Kirk's murder.

Brown U kids who survived USA 389th mass shooting of 2025 will now pay out of pocket for their healthcare, because USA guarantees guns but not health. Australians who survived the 1st mass shooting in 29 years will pay nothing for healthcare because Australia guarantees health & regulates guns.

#psjminfo: 2 x 3-year PostDoc positions, deadline Jan 4. We'll study the effects of border change, in ways that overlap with many subfields in CompPol and IR: e.g., HPE, PE of development, state formation, pol. geography, identity, ethnic politics. Also lots of (new) methods (ML, GIS, CausalInf...)!

Amazing choice made at the Hyatt

I think you can still believe that Democrats should move to the center, adopt different campaign tactics, whatever. (Understanding voters is my job. Running Democratic campaign strategy is not.) But it's simply not the case that Trump's electioneering was more effective than Harris's. /4

Historians have discovered there were presidents before Trump who *also* engaged in frequent hand shaking yet they didn't always have bruises and bandages on the backside of their hands. Even Sleepy Joe Biden, who was perpetually just seconds away from dying of old age, came out unscathed. Really!

One of the most blatantly authoritarian threats in a Trump term full of them

🚨New research in SPPS: Call a dish plant-based meat and people think it will taste worse + looks “less manly.” Sexist beliefs made this even stronger. Results of nearly 1400 meat eaters across 2 studies w/ Salmen, @nadirafaber.bsky.social & Krings Open access: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

A reminder that before the Trump admin/RFK took over this year, the U.S. had officially declared measles eliminated in 2000.

I think politicians, political operatives, and pundits should read *more* political science, not less, and in particular enough to understand that empirical patterns (e.g. loss of presidential party in midterm years) are equilibrium outcomes but not self-executing laws of nature.

🚨 3-Year Postdoc in Political Science at Aarhus University 🚨 I’m seeking to recruit a postdoc for my @erc.europa.eu research project 𝑬𝑸𝑼𝑰𝑳𝑰𝑩𝑹𝑰𝑼𝑴 on state-citizen interactions. Link and more information in second post. Position Start: Fall 2026 Application Deadline: ‼️ February 5, 2026, 23:59 CET ‼️

I’d like to frame that story and hang it in the office of every journalist who’s met my skepticism about rw cancel culture stories with a question like “but then why are there so many of these stories?” (2/4)

This is gonna be like the Darwin Award in 3 years

this shit is just beyond parody, man

To be very clear, Kennedy's team is messing with a vaccine which has led to a 99 percent drop in the incidence of hepatitis B, which kills, early and painfully, 25 percent of the people who get it as children. lnk.thebulwark.com/3Xt957M

But who will review the peer reviewer review?

Wild how fast the party of “moral values” had decided to jettison the concept of shame.

Seth Moulton is calling for ICE to be abolished and prosecuted and Jeff Jacoby is writing about the importance of a multicultural society. Wild times.

A really nice figure of population and partisan malapportionment in national legislatures around the world from Beramendi, Boix, Guinjoan, and Rogers (yassified by The Economist) priceschool.usc.edu/wp-content/u...

X's location "transparency" feature showing many MAGA accounts are based internationally reveals what we already knew: The world is using American social media and American politics as a slot machine and social media companies are directly incentivizing this: www.404media.co/americas-pol...

Do Americans judge acts of partisan political violence impartially? No. We show that Democrats and Republicans exhibit clear partisan bias: both see the same violent act as more justified when it targets the other party than when it targets their own side. osf.io/preprints/so... #polisky