The rule of law can’t survive this

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

The Economy These Days capital: AI labor: caring for the elderly h/t @maiamindel.bsky.social

The thrill and frustration of knowing you're so close to finishing something but the only things left to do are the difficult parts you've been putting off...

It's The Onion, and yet: "In every industry, companies are drastically increasing the amount of work that needs to be completed, as well as tacking on thousands of assignments previously performed by departed employees." theonion.com/report-emplo...

Join us on March 5th in Washington, DC, for the Peopling Politics symposium!

Curling has completely dominated my household's attention this past week. Love the mix of physics, logic, and physical technique that the sport requires. This is so cool!

God bless América

Vital reading for all scholars, regardless of discipline, institution, region.

I am so excited to share that registration for the first-ever PEOPLING POLITICS SYMPOSIUM is now open! Please join us on March 5 at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington DC for an amazing lineup of speakers and discussions. RSVP at go.rutgers.edu/peoplingpoli...

The Trump Admin just put out a rule that would reclassify federal workers as "Schedule Policy/Career" (previously Schedule F) if they work in policy-relevant roles. Potentially huge swaths of the civil service could become at-will employees. public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-02375.pdf

I am so excited to share that registration for the first-ever PEOPLING POLITICS SYMPOSIUM is now open! Please join us on March 5 at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington DC for an amazing lineup of speakers and discussions. RSVP at go.rutgers.edu/peoplingpoli...

Wise words from WEB DuBois to gird us today: "It would be shame and cowardice to surrender this glorious land and its opportunities for civilization and humanity to the thugs and lynchers, the mobs and profiteers, the monopolists & gamblers who today choke its soul and steal its resources."

“Most Americans don’t agree with Mr. Trump’s trying to buy Greenland, and many more oppose the idea of taking it by force. Fantasies deflate quickly once real costs become obvious, but it is impossible for Europe to impose costs without incurring risks itself.” www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/o...

🧵 Trump administration AI policy is widely described as deregulatory. This description is misleading. What's happening is not the absence of governance but its rearrangement--intensive state intervention operating through mechanisms we don't typically call regulation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Greetings check this out: Amplifying voices is a new Cambridge grant to help under-represented scholars publish. Apply!!! www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

The constant rejection that we deal with in academia can be very psychologically damaging. Sometimes I direct that hurt inward and blame myself for the jobs I don't get; often I focus on the things I can't control: funding, idiosyncratic tastes, internal dynamics, luck...

Planning a two week trip to Japan, mostly based out of Tokyo and Osaka. First time in the country. Please share food & drink recs, travel tips, other suggestions! We eat everything & will do some history/sightseeing, but prioritizing wandering and experiencing local cultures.

Each semester I go in my classroom and I try to figure out what we would use to block the doors, if it would be safe to crawl out the windows, where we could hide if there was a mass shooter in campus. It’s such an indictment of this country how we have normalized these preventable tragedies.

It has become received wisdom in Brussels and Washington that there is a new “euro-sclerosis”: that the EU economy is lagging the US This view is wrong A little primer on the measurement of productivity – and why reports of the economic death of Europe are greatly exaggerated🧵

the unitarian notion of accountability is, in general, very strange as it holds that a single election — the president’s reelect — is more democratically accountable than the rolling process of democratic assent produced by legislative elections and congressional oversight.

New, from me: by embracing unitary executive theory, the Supreme Court is moving towards making all public employees fireable at the will of the President. This will not just hurt government competence, it will aid democratic backsliding. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/at-will-wh...

Trying to come up with pseudonyms for my research participants and I really wish we still had phone books.

Lane Kiffin's LSU contract will pay him the equivalent of my Louisiana public university annual salary every two days

Planning a two week trip to Japan, mostly based out of Tokyo and Osaka. First time in the country. Please share food & drink recs, travel tips, other suggestions! We eat everything & will do some history/sightseeing, but prioritizing wandering and experiencing local cultures.

New: A grad student at Johns Hopkins has been stranded in Canada for months after his visa was canceled at the border. He’s been incurring thousands in expenses without being paid by the university, which says it won’t petition officials for six months: www.thebanner.com/education/hi...

Cowboys Eagles is coming down to who kicks themselves in the groin last

I also know a thing or two about the American elite, ahem, and they are very good at ignoring, compartmentalizing, and overlooking the bad behavior of others to advance their own careers

Reporter: Are you affirming that you think the president is a fascist? Mamdani: I've spoken about -- Trump: Just say yes, it's easier than explaining.

Will be interested to see the bill text, but worry this may focus too narrowly on rulemaking. The most insidious forms of influence often come from informal lobbying outside of rulemaking, while less resourced groups rely on rulemaking for info, access, etc. As one of my respondents stated:

Will be interested to see the bill text, but worry this may focus too narrowly on rulemaking. The most insidious forms of influence often come from informal lobbying outside of rulemaking, while less resourced groups rely on rulemaking for info, access, etc. As one of my respondents stated:

I spoke with the Boston Globe about the Summers situation TLDR: other professors like myself can no longer trust Summers to perform a key duty of a university professor, which is to advise & mentor students www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/18/m...

People are holding administrative burden parties to collectively take on tasks www.wsj.com/lifestyle/re...

“All misdeeds are not the same, and there is a real difference between the unseemly revolving door between business and government […] and a new status quo in which business leaders and heads of state give the president actual tribute in order to put themselves in the good graces of the White House”

Is national policy more responsive to the preferences of white Americans than to those of people of color? When Republicans control the presidency and/or the Senate, yes. White voters are more likely to see legislation they support become law than are Black, Latino, or Asian American voters.

"academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it... The dominant four collectively generated... $12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024."

I literally thought this was an excerpt from a romantasy novel at first

To negotiate a trade deal with the President of the United States, the Swiss government arrived with a "special Rolex desktop clock" and "a 1-kilogram personalized gold bar" www.axios.com/2025/11/14/t...

Yes. This is another reason why public funding is what we want - why the government should support science with democratic mechanisms of oversight. Public support means not having to beg toxic billionaires for money.

“The prohibited activities would include joint research, co-authorship on papers, and advising a foreign graduate student or postdoctoral fellow. The language is retroactive, meaning any interactions during the previous 5 years could make a scientist ineligible for future federal funding.”

The new rules require presidential approval for courses that "advocate" race or gender ideology and ban material outside approved syllabi. Students can use a hotline to report course content. bit.ly/3XxszrC

I think the banal answer is: he’s very rich and powerful and good at networking and this how people act around very rich and powerful people.

If the shutdown disrupted your life, everything that happened this year was likely also incredibly turbulent and unsettling for you, and it unfortunately, probably will continue to be. Thinking that things could go back to "normal" (whatever that means) is an exercise in denial and delusion.

Quick — someone tell the New York Times that the situation in early October, when the shutdown began, was not “normal.”

Looking for reading recs on the sociology/political economy of college football. (Went to the Alabama/LSU game this weekend; marveling at how much the university feels like a professional football team with academics attached. The stadium & tailgate setup is bigger/better than a lot of NFL teams)

my hometown 🥲

“It has been complete cowardice on the part of industry,” [Vecchione] said. “What about an alternate world where all the importers — all the Amazons, all the Walmarts, all the Targets — what if they had all said, ‘No, we’re not going to take this.’”

Previously I was hesitant to describe what I study (corporate lobbying) as corruption because I saw influence & capture happening through imperfect but valid processes of democratic engagement & expert consultation. Now it is very clear we are talking about corruption. apnews.com/article/whit...