Please repost: We're looking for an excellent writer/editor with strong data journalism skills to join the religion team at @pewresearch.org. pewtrusts.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Center...

Working on a dissertation in American political behavior and need money for survey research? Apply for a grant worth up to $15,000 from the Rapoport Family Foundation. They’re planning on awarding up to 15 grants this cycle. Deadline Oct. 22. www.rapoportfamilyfoundation.com/phdgrant

Fun to read!

Zelenskyy: Intelligence agencies have reported that the russians are using tankers to control drones launched against European countries. This is further evidence that the Baltic Sea and other seas must be closed to russian tankers.

Or, to put it another way, debate, in the sense of the formal or informal defense of largely fixed positions, comes quite low in my list of goals/priorities as a history teacher. Most college classes are not "free speech fora" but highly structured contexts that allow experts to help students/

📉 Religion’s decline in stages A global study finds secularisation often follows three steps: less public ritual, then weaker personal belief, and finally loss of religious identity. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #SciComm 🧪 #Religion

My colleague Ferran Martinez i Coma has a three year, full-time postdoc available for his Australian Research Council project "Resilient Elections: How to Strengthen Our Democracies." Great project ✔️ Awesome supervisor ✔️ Excellent department ✔️ Lovely City ✔️ jobs.smartrecruiters.com/GriffithUniv...

This morning, opposition circles in Turkey are discussing the possibility of the Turkish courts preventively removing the CHP leadership before the hearing on 15 September (allegations of fraud on the 38th Congress), in order to avoid counter-measures by the party. yetkinreport.com/2025/09/05/a...

Breaking news: Pentagon officials last week informed European diplomats that the US would no longer fund programmes that train and equip militaries in eastern European countries that would be on the frontline of any conflict with Russia. on.ft.com/4mNocUo

Radical right accommodation really does not work. New paper out with this exceptionally talented team @katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk doi.org/10.31235/osf...

“But come with old Khayyam and leave the Lot,” FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:9

This is a great (and rare) opportunity for senior scholars who work on democracy to move to a safer academic environment (by contemporary U.S. standards).

Taking the competitive out of competitive authoritarianism

These are incredibly useful tips for all teachers and professors starting a new academic year...

WORK! The Sociology Department at Utrecht University is hiring a new assistant prof, with expertise on migration/integration/polarization/stratification. Come join us! www.uu.nl/organisatie/...

Over the next few days, postal services in the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Italy and Austria will stop shipping to the USA, because of Trump's new import duties.

The hits keep coming. “The departments that won’t be accepting Ph.D. students now include art history, cinema and media studies, classics, comparative literature, East Asian languages and civilizations, English language and literature, Germanic studies, linguistics, Middle Eastern studies…”

Obviously, a Russian attack on a US company deep into Ukraine's rear was deliberate and a clear signal of Russia's true attitude towards US and European peacemaking efforts. Previously, Russia has launched deliberate attacks on Polish and Azerbaijani companies. Conclusions must be drawn.

The US electorate is used to thinking of partisan combat as a choice between two slightly different flavors of constitutional liberalism deal...vanilla vs. strawberry...rather than a choice between constitutional liberalism or authoritarian illiberalism...vanilla vs. arsenic. Messaging that is hard.

I don’t usually quote Al Jazeera, but this analysis of the Putin-Trump summit is the best and most accurate…”how a former intelligence officer uses his skills of manipulation on a self-centred narcissist.” www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/202...

"Mr Witkoff favours striking a grand deal between America and Russia. His involvement in negotiations has usually been to the detriment of Ukraine. It has also been marked with extraordinary incompetence" www.economist.com/europe/2025/...

A New Zealand woman who works in Washington state and her six-year-old son have been abducted by ICE at the Canadian border, trafficked to Texas, and imprisoned for three weeks in abhorrent conditions. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Comparative Politics Folks, we have a position at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. If y'all have any questions, send word. Great collegial department in an affordable urban location, plus there's the Smokies and outdoors. jobs.chronicle.com/job/37867857...

"If you live in Alaska, I need you to buy a Ukrainian flag and turn any area that Putin is going to be into a sea of Ukrainian flags - so many that, when Putin lands, all he's going to see is just yellow and blue."

Lund University is hiring hard: www.lunduniversity.lu.se/shape-future...

Beloved Turkish cartoonist MK Perker and I have a new book out this week, and this one is special--it's set here in the Pacific Northwest. THE STONESHORE REGISTER is about a declining fishing village on the Washington coast that has secrets--and a newcomer who is determined to solve its mysteries.

There's so much to unpack with Kamala's interview: 1. The People & The System have a broken relationship. 2. By running for a system nobody trusts, nobody trusts her. 3. The way to fix a broken system is to build reform from the bottom up. 4. It starts with The People believing in themselves.

Excellent analysis

Unprecedentedly wild corruption, on a scale that would have ended any other presidency in the post-WWII era, happening right in front of us, every day. Folks look at you like you’re crazy when you say we’re in the midst of the worst Article I constitutional crisis in 🇺🇸 history, &, well 👇🤷‍♂️

Peter Beinart being incredibly eloquent in this video. ⬇️

we're gone from "we're not cutting Medicaid" to "if you lose Medicaid you deserve it"

Aid groups report that Israel is refusing to allow any olives or other “fruits or vegetables with pits or seeds that could be planted” into Gaza. They will only allow in pitted olives.

Really good piece by Sam highlighting some of the finer details of the EU-US deal only trade experts will be able to spot, and putting some of the criticism in perspective - including instances where the 15% tariffs on EU goods may be lower than the 10% one on UK goods:

“Participatory anti-democracy” — good description; it’s not just top down, follow the leader.

The 8th report of the project entitled "Swedish and Finnish Perceptions of Turkey’s Role in European Security" and co-authored by @alanderminna.bsky.social and @paultlevin.bsky.social can be reached at the link below: www.cats-network.eu/publication/...

All of @hcrichardson.bsky.social’s posts are important, but this one feels particularly so. This administration’s embrace of Nazi German policies is becoming more blatant by the day. Most of us ordinary Americans wouldn’t catch the subtle references. I appreciate how this newsletter calls that out.

In recent months, the Department of Justice has been contacting states demanding access to sensitive election and voting data. Democracy Docket is the details of where this happening and what they are asking for. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

I can confirm the PBS Passport is a very good deal for $5/month or $2.50/month if you do yearly. Thousands of hours of top notch content. NOVA is great. The new Ken Burns doc on Leonardo da Vinci is excellent. You can sign up at the link below! www.pbs.org/passport/lea...

it is research destruction that can't be easily revived - lab samples, lab equipment, near-breakthroughs, notes, forced retirees -- all lost permanently. It is a near extinction event for science in the US and restoring it would take generations if it can (and would) be done at all. Lysenkoism

🟠 IPS İletişim Vakfı/bianet, Muhabir arıyor 👉 İş ilanına [email protected] veya LinkedIn üzerinden başvurabilirsiniz. bianet.org/haber/ips-il...

We are hiring at @opensecrets.org! If you are interested in working with and analyzing large datasets - and you care about government transparency and accountability - apply now to join our research team. www.opensecrets.org/about/jobs?1

Also, as a tangent, I'd love to see more of this kind of thing on #academicsky. More sharing of tools, ideas, and resources for teaching, not just endless doom amd gloom. We should share our hard-won knowledge about pedagogy as eagerly and as often as we share our research!

Apply for a Radcliffe Fellowship! Applications in humanities, social sciences, & creative arts are due Sept 11, 2025 Applications in science, engineering, & math due Sept 30, 2025 www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/radcliffe-fe... (I hear they'd especially welcome projects related to climate change) #HPS ⚒️

youtube.com/watch?v=CFH6... I came across this song by accident today, but was very moved by it and thought, this is what we need in these days. Listen to the lyrics. Imagine millions of people singing in the streets, a wall of sound, of fellowship.

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE. This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

NEW: @wyden.senate.gov is pressing DHS and DOJ to answer questions about the collection of children's DNA, which is being added to a criminal database. @dell.bsky.social has the scoop: www.wired.com/story/dhs-an...

Lisel Hintz is one of the true stars of contemporary Turkish Studies. Listen to her hear, talking about media and politics in the "New Turkey" with @diegocupolo.bsky.social for @turkeyrecap.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbcV...

BREAKING: The Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to move forward with the abolition of the Department of Education. It gives no explanation for its order. All three liberals dissent. www.documentcloud.org/documents/25... From Sotomayor's dissent:

UPDATE: Three days on, disabled veteran and US citizen George Retes is still missing after being kidnapped by ICE. His wife has phoned every law enforcement agency in the area, they all say they don’t know where he is. It was his daughter’s third birthday yesterday. This is America now.