iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Adam Lichtenheld, PhD

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The capitulation of civil society organizations is perhaps the most important political story of 2025. For every 1000 pundit pieces on what Democrats need to do to win moderate voters, there is 1 piece on the politics of civil society--businesses, unions, congregations, universities, nonprofits, etc

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Adam Lichtenheld, PhD @alichtenheld.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Sanctions are among the most widely used tools of US foreign policy and, according to most research, among the least effective. To learn about why that verdict may be misleading, check out my new co-authored article in @isq-jrnl.bsky.social

tinyurl.com

Balancing Act: Coercion, Terrorism, and Regime Stability

Abstract. A substantial literature seeks to understand the drivers and consequences of foreign policy instruments that states employ to change the behavior

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Reposted by Adam Lichtenheld, PhD

David Rothkopf @djrothkopf.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

The amount of money in Musk's bank account is not a measure of his genius or even the "value" of his companies. It is rather a measure of the gullibility of investors and the greed of the industry that is designed to harness that to fuel their own wealth creation.

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Brad Simpson @bradleyrsimpson.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

This would put Elon Musk in the company of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and the great mass murderers in history.

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Anjali Dayal @anjalikdayal.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

“The dismantling of USAID, according to models from Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children,” Gawande wrote.” hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-s...

hsph.harvard.edu

USAID shutdown has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, accord...

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Reposted by Adam Lichtenheld, PhD

Andrew Blum @ablum.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

A lot of critics of various kinds of aid should be reflecting right now. A faux-savvy question people often asked in DC to make themselves look hard-noted and results-based, was, "Would it matter if tomorrow you no longer existed? What would be different?" Well... thehill.com/homenews/adm...

thehill.com

USAID shutdown linked to sharp increase in violence across Africa: Research

New research suggests the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) led to sharp increases in violence throughout Africa. African countries that received the most supp…

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Adam Lichtenheld, PhD @alichtenheld.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Honored that "Guilt by Location" has received a 2026 Distinguished Book Award from @isanet.bsky.social for best book in the study of the international politics of ethnicity, nationalism, & migration. Big thanks to the award committee & @unileiden.bsky.social for the write-up: tinyurl.com/4wpdpz4j

staff.universiteitleiden.nl

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Elizabeth N. Saunders @profsaunders.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

🧵Feels like shouting into the void, but it is essential to note that the Trump/Rubio gutting of the State Department and blowtorching of US diplomatic capacity and credibility is an accelerant to this spiraling war and will seriously undercut US/allied efforts to pick up the pieces after. 1/

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Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 11/02/2026

I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.

It must be very hard to publish null results
Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.

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Reposted by Adam Lichtenheld, PhD

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

I see this take around from time to time and totally disagree. ICE just murdered a woman standing up to them. No Kings is among the largest protests in history. The complacency is coming from elites in media, business, universities, and the Democratic leadership

Nicholas Kristof
@NickKristof
X.com
I'm struck by the contrast between the passion for democracy shown by Iranians willing to die for it and the complacency with which many Americans have accepted an authoritarian slide.
Americans should cheer for Iran's democrats--and also learn from their determination.

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Reposted by Adam Lichtenheld, PhD

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

There’s a Silicon Valley billionaire freak out happening about a potential wealth tax ballot initiative in California. I hope everybody understands—the only way to make billionaires pay a similar *income* tax rate as their secretaries is via taxing unrealized cap gains or wealth

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

A legend indeed

TS: Well, I anticipated a lot of what would happen if Trump were reelected, but I did not anticipate the quick acquiescence of almost every American elite sector. The universities are part of a larger story. In many ways, it started with law firms - or you could say it started with the fact that we no longer have corporations so much as we have megalomaniacal multibillionaire tech bros who operate as individuals - sycophants trying to buy their way in. Musk is the most obvious, but they're all that way right now. They're inescapable because they control huge sectors of internet-enabled stuff that everybody needs. In some ways, Musk is the most vulnerable because of Tesla.

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Anjali Dayal @anjalikdayal.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

moving past this moment in US politics is going to require credible promises to prosecute the authors of all this human disaster. peoples interested in countering US authoritarianism can draw on international tools in this process, including joining the ICC internationalpolicy.org/publications...

screenshot of a text box with the header: "SOLUTIONS,
DISTILLED: El Salvador's actions show
Human Rights law matters" and bullet point below that read
" • Pressure governments to sanction or isolate El
Salvador, the US, or both
• Call for investigations by multilateral human rights bodies, building a body of evidence that might later help move the levers of international justice.
• Demand signatories refer El Salvador to the International Criminal Court
• American opposition leaders can and should credibly signal that there will be accountability and consequences for the Trump administration's human rights abuses
• Democratic presidential contenders should promise to join the ICC it they come to power

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Reposted by Adam Lichtenheld, PhD

Alexander Kustov @akoustov.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

I don't care what Bari Weiss was thinking. But as someone who moved from Russia to America for freedom, I didn't have "passing around a pulled 60 Minutes segment like Soviet-era samizdat" in 2025 on my bingo card. Anyway: watch what our government is doing, and share it widely.

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Reposted by Adam Lichtenheld, PhD

The Upshot @upshot.nytimes.com · 23/12/2025

On DOGE’s watch, federal spending did not go down at all. It went up. But is still led to cuts that closed offices, canceled programs and deprived people of food, medicine and other aid. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...

nytimes.com

How Did DOGE Disrupt So Much While Saving So Little?

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Bad things happen when you hire opinion hacks to run media outlets Bad things happen when you hire non-academics to run universities Bad things happen when you hire businessmen to run the government Etc. Etc. Experience & expertise matter. And actual relevant expertise.

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Reposted by Adam Lichtenheld, PhD

Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 21/12/2025

suspect a big reason why many academics and others who work in areas where getting facts RIGHT is key are disinterested in using LLMs for research: they’ve tried it, they keep noticing major errors in output, and they conclude that having to verify all that doesn’t actually save them time.

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Reposted by Adam Lichtenheld, PhD

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Not that it will but the willingness of Americans to obey is a very funny contrast with our self-image and should probably prompt some reflection bsky.app/profile/jonf...

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Reposted by Adam Lichtenheld, PhD

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

No one who has ever witnessed a single faculty meeting could ever again claim that college professors are part of some sort of coordinated conspiracy to accomplish anything, let alone turn the entire US into a Marxist utopia/dystopia with an assist from their great pals in corporate boardrooms.

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Adam Lichtenheld, PhD @alichtenheld.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

"Efficiencies are easy to promise, but difficult to realize in the stubbornly human-centered endeavor of education. And that is because education is, by necessity, inefficient." Preach! www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...

publicbooks.org

Four Frictions: or, How to Resist AI in Education - Public Books

We are calling for resistance to the AI industry’s ongoing capture of higher education.

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Reposted by Adam Lichtenheld, PhD

Elizabeth Picciuto @epicciuto.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Another way to restart the world’s idea machine is to restore funding and grants to universities, researchers, and artists.

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abbey steele @abbeyst.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

I am indebted to colleagues & friends, esp @stephrschwartz.bsky.social, @alichtenheld.bsky.social & the staff @aissr.bsky.social @uva-fmg.bsky.social

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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 04/12/2025

This fetid landmark, this historical stain on humanity is primarily due to the stunningly reckless obliteration of America's foreign assistance agency earlier this year. Led by the richest man on earth. In secret, on a weekend. With zero analysis or discussion of its catastrophic impacts.

wsj.com

For First Time in Decades, Child Deaths Will Rise This Year

Almost a quarter of a million more children around the world are projected to die in 2025 than in 2024.

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Elad Nehorai @eladn.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

This is always the plan with authoritarians wielding militaristic power. They create their own enemies to justify their power grabs. Netanyahu loved October 7th for this exact reason. His failures led to it, and instead of being held accountable, he got more power than ever.

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

bostonreview.net

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review

Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

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Reposted by Adam Lichtenheld, PhD

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

the research is clear: get yourself exposed to female peers nber semigated version: www.nber.org/papers/w34269

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Adam Lichtenheld, PhD @alichtenheld.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

It was an honor to discuss my book at the @thecrs.bsky.social's annual conference, and I am grateful for "Guilt by Location" receiving this year's CRS book award. If you missed the keynote, don't worry, you can still order the book today! cup.org/4gOE8Cy www.amzn.com/1009523473

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Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

I would especially recommend the political science article referenced in the piece. Accommodation by mainstream parties of far right immigration policies does not win votes by taking the issue off the table, it loses votes for the mainstream parties www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

cambridge.org

Does accommodation work? Mainstream party strategies and the success of radical right parties | Political Science Research and Methods | Cambridge Core

Does accommodation work? Mainstream party strategies and the success of radical right parties - Volume 11 Issue 1

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Rana B. Khoury @rbkhoury.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

The proofs are in. It has a website. It has blurbs from amazing scholars. So I guess my book is real, and @cornellupress.bsky.social must agree! Civilizing Contention: International Aid in Syria's War is coming out later this year 🤓 www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

cornellpress.cornell.edu

Civilizing Contention by Rana B. Khoury | Paperback | Cornell University Press

In Civilizing Contention, Rana B. Khoury asserts that to understand civilian and refugee activism in war, we must regard the international actors and organizations that enter the scene to help. When.....

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Jane Coaston @janecoaston.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

one of the stranger phenomena in American life is that hate is supposed to flow in one direction (rural people get to hate urban people, Republicans get to hate Democrats) and if the hate goes the other way people pretend as if this is very upsetting.

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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 30/06/2025

The White House has ordered the US Dept. of Justice to prioritize denaturalization: voiding the citizenship of US citizens. Who will it denaturalize? "Any" case that it "determines to be sufficiently important". Point 10 leaves the criteria opaque and arbitrary. substack.com/redirect/169...

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Daniel Radosh @radosh.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

I feel like I'm losing my mind. Here is the transcript of what Zohran Mamdani actually said about the phrase "globalize the intifada." This is his "refusal to disavow it." This is what has people terrified. Just fucking read it. Source: podscripts.co/podcasts/the...

Q: So I wonder what you think about that, about the phrase “globalize the intifada” and what we've seen as some anti-semitism coming from the left-wing protesters.

A: The first thing as you were saying is anti-semitism is a real issue in our city and it's one that can be captured in statistics, the ones that you're citing. It's also one that you will feel in conversations you have with Jewish New Yorkers across the city. And I remember one conversation I had with a friend of mine after the horrific war crime of October 7th. He was telling me that he went for Shabbat services at his temple and he was facing forward when he heard the door open. And he turned back with a chill going up his spine because he didn't know who was coming in. And that's more than a year ago.

And then just a few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a Jewish man in Williamsburg who told me that the same door he would keep unlocked for decades is one that he now locks out of a fear of what could happen in his own neighborhood. And I think that this is something that has to be the focus of the next mayoral administration, is not just talking about it, but tackling it. And these are the conversations that have informed our commitment around increasing funding for anti-hate crime programming by 800% in our Department of Community Safety.

To the question of language that's being used. I am someone who I would say am less comfortable with the idea of banning the use of certain words and that I think it is more evocative of a Trump style approach to how to lead a country. And-

Q: Does that just make you uncomfortable? Like the phrase globalizing intifada. And like the phrase from the river to the sea, does that make you uncomfortable? Or do you think-

A: Okay, those are different. Those are super different.

Q: They're not really.

A: Those are like different genres.

Q: I'm sorry, I'm asking so wrong. Then they're not really different to me. And to some people they are not different.

A: I know people for whom those things mean very different things. And to me, ultimately, what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights. And I think what's difficult also is that the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw ghetto uprising into Arabic because it's a word that means struggle. And as a Muslim man who grew up post-911, I'm all too familiar in the way in which Arabic words can be twisted, can be distorted, can be used to justify any kind of meaning. And I think that's where it leaves me with a sense that what we need to do is focus on keeping Jewish New Yorkers safe. And the question of the permissibility of language is something that I haven't ventured.

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Scott Shapiro @scottjshapiro.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

Great job everyone

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Molly Knight @mollyknight.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

Job Garcia’s kidnapping by the Trump administration is the top story on the LA Times website right now. www.latimes.com/california/s...

A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the ground and arrested after filming federal agents at Home Depot on Thursday said he was held for more than an hour near Dodger Stadium, where agents boasted about how many immigrants they arrested.
"How many bodies did you guys grab today?" he said one agent asked.
"Oh, we grabbed 31," the other replied.
"That was a good day today," the first agent responded.
The two high-fived, as Job Garcia sat on the asphalt under the sun, he said.
Garcia was released on Friday from a downtown federal detention center. No apparent criminal charges have yet to be filed. He is one of several U.S citizens arrested during enforcement operations in recent days. Department of Homeland Security officias sav some trave ilegaly

11:04 C
•ll 5G+ 824)
latimes.com
"You wanted it, you got it," the man yelled.
An agent handcuffed him so hard "that there was no circulation running to my fingers," Garcia said.
Pinned down, Garcia had difficulty breathing.
"That moment, I thought I could probably die here," he said.
The agent put Garcia's phone back in his pocket. The recording kept running.
As Garcia was put into a vehicle, his video captured an agent twice saying: "I've got one back here."
"You got one what?" Garcia shot back. "You got one what?"
He said an agent told him in broken Spanish to "wait here,' though it could not be heard on the video. -

11:04 €
• 5G+ 824)
latimes.com
"I f- speak English, you f- dumbass," he clearly shouts back.
No agent asked if he was an American citizen, he said. Nobody asked for identification.
"They assumed that I was undocumented," he said later in an interview.
The video ends after about four minutes, while he is waiting in the van.
CALIFORNIA
Raid at a Home Depot in Hollywood shatters an immigrant refuge
June 20, 2025
Garcia asked an agent to get his wallet from his car, so he could prove he was a U.S. citizen. Another agent retrieved his ID, but he remained handcuffed.
They were so tight, his hands hegan to swell.

Garcia asked an agent to get his wallet from his car, so he could prove he was a U.S. citizen. Another agent retrieved his ID, but he remained handcuffed.
They were so tight, his hands began to swell.
The agents switched him to handcuffs that looked like shoelaces. They took off around a corner, stopped to shuffle him into another van and sped off down the 101 Freeway.
"I smeared my blood in their seat," he said.
And he thought, "They're going to remember me."

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Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

Every time that Elon Musk makes a claim about a near future technological capability, remember he promised people would be on Mars by now but instead his rockets keep exploding

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 19/06/2025

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

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Adam Lichtenheld, PhD @alichtenheld.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

My book, "Guilt by Location," has been selected as the 2025 Book of the Year by the Conflict Research Society. I struggle to muster much delight, given how we're turning our backs on the millions of people affected by displacement. But I am grateful to CRS & everyone who made the project possible.

bsky.app

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Adam Lichtenheld, PhD @alichtenheld.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

What do citizens think about refugee integration? In a new op-ed w/ Mae MacDonald & Tolossa Asrat for @newhumanitarian.bsky.social, we share findings from a nationally representative survey of 3,300 Kenyans on attitudes toward the country's new refugee policy (refugee.go.ke/kenya-shirik...)

refugee.go.ke

The Kenya Shirika Plan: Overview and Action Plan | Department of Refugee Services

The Kenya Shirika Plan: Overview and Action Plan

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Gaia Vince @wanderinggaia.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Brain drain

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Adam Lichtenheld, PhD @alichtenheld.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

I'm thrilled that my book is a finalist for the #CRSBookPrize2025. Some uplifting news during a dark time. If you haven't gotten your copy yet, order today! 📚📚 cup.org/4gOE8Cy www.amzn.com/1009523473

cup.org

Guilt by Location | Comparative politics

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Lee David Dalton @leedaviddalton.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Anyone who thinks any university faculty anywhere in the US is full of Maoists, or has more than one or two Maoist cranks, should try organizing a faculty union—or chairing a faculty senate, or a department, or even just a single faculty committee

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

I get it, but he got 49% of the vote, & the only way to defeat this is for all of these people - the longtime GOP hawks, the university presidents, the CEOs, the societal organization leaders, the religious leaders, etc. - to collectively stand up & speak out. The head-down quiet stuff always fails.

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Jason "Red5" Lyall @jaylyall.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

The Trump Administration Said These Aid Programs Saved Lives. It Canceled Them Anyway. "The move consigns untold numbers of the world’s poorest children, refugees and other vulnerable people to death... Local authorities have already begun estimating a death toll in the hundreds of thousands."

propublica.org

The Trump Administration Said These Aid Programs Saved Lives. It Canceled Them Anyway.

The axing of some 10,000 programs has consigned untold numbers of children and refugees to death, officials say. Documents and interviews reveal that the State Department appears to have made the cuts...

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