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Someone had to give it to you straight, my man.

I think our long-form takes are generally better, for sure. I think the incentives and constraints in short-form settings work against our strengths. But reasonable people can disagree.

Obvs academics should have free speech, but saying what you think as an expression of your thoughts on topic A is not the same as saying the most effective thing you could say.

The problem with academics being too online is that it sacrifices what we're good at--offering detailed, critical analysis--on the altar of offering usually just replacement-level takes on platforms that are designed to piss people off.

Sure. I think most ppl think of academics' public responsibility is to call out bad stuff as bad. I think it's to (a) push the knowledge frontier and help (b) identify and (c) solve problems. Calling out bad stuff may be b, depending on the values of our public audience.

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I get that it's wild how much money football coaches make; during my time there, UNL specifically has paid out the nose to FIRE a football coach before his contract was up. But FWIW, I don't think most people would ever hear or think about Nebraska if not for our football team.

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e.g., in-house policy analysis/translation and training for academics interested in policy effectiveness.

Those all sound great! I have some ideas that are aligned specifically w the kind of state I live in, but they essentially amount to making our expertise more readily available to help people solve the problems they're trying to solve that, if solved, would actually improve peoples' lives.

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To the extent that's true, then our approach, including potentially our public presentation, should bear it in mind.

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The problem isn't just the attacks, it's that they're working better now than they used to: bsky.app/profile/geof...

Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

I agree I don't think we'll win many on the right over, but IMO we can make their attacks less successful by shoring up broader public support so that it is more politically costly for them to go after us. See chocolate ice cream theory: bsky.app/profile/geof...

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Or rather, it helped in the sense that it prevented the allegedly otherwise inevitable Nazi phase.

Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Maybe it did not help that as a teenager I was at Dachau in the midst of a total eclipse, but no I did not have a Nazi phase.

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Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

The question is: does going on Rogan reach voters you need to reach? If yes, it's worth considering, and then you just need to calculate the opportunity costs.

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Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

bsky.app/profile/atru... Some folks are using this as an example of why, say, Ds in general or Kamala Harris specifically obviously should not go on Rogan. In doing so, they fail the ice cream test. The point of going on Rogan isn't to persuade Rogan, it's to reach his audience.

bsky.app/profile/jona... @jonathanmladd.com saying a similar (and better!) thing, much more succinctly :).

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So when considering the Yale Report or other proposals on how to defend higher ed, what I will be asking is not whether adopting the recs would make conservatives suddenly like chocolate ice cream (that Thank You for Smoking scene is dope), but whether it'd persuade the public to.

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Let's say that all universities adopted the Yale recs. If that worked, I'd expect that it'd lead to fewer conservative attacks not because conservatives suddenly like higher ed, but because the general public does. The attacks would be less profitable. It'd probably take a while to work though.

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My mental model is that conservatives will attack and try to defund higher ed at some baseline level (which may be zero but varies across states and between state- and national conservatives and among conservatives over time) generally, and will do so even more when they believe it will work.

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The problem universities face now is not that conservatives are attacking them---they've been doing that decades. The problem is that it's working. Conservative activists sense a target-rich environment in the supposed excesses of (wealthy, elite, coastal) higher ed, and follow their incentives.

Thank You for Smoking (3/5) Movie CLIP - Ice Cream Politics (2005) HD

The movie Thank You for Smoking gets a LOT of things wrong about lobbying. Like, very very wrong. Frustratingly wrong. But this scene (while still being very wrong about lobbying) is deeply instructive: youtu.be/xuaHRN7UhRo?...

youtu.be

YouTube video by Movieclips

Danny Hidalgo @dhidalgo.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

The Yale Report on Trust in Higher Education (president.yale.edu/sites/defaul...) does not deal directly with conservative attacks on higher ed, but that does not necessarily mean it has missed the ball. A thread:

president.yale.edu

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Reposted by Geoff Lorenz

We're hiring a Research Support Associate at MIT Political Science. Work with me, In Song Kim, Rich Nielsen, and Naoki Egami on methods and political economy. Great opportunity for those considering a PhD in the social sciences. One-year position with possible extension.

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Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

FWIW the argument is not unreasonable its just the joint probability necessary for that scenario to play out is pretty low.

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Reposted by Geoff Lorenz

Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Term limits are bad. There’s very little waste and inefficiency in government.* Members of Congress are seriously underpaid. * this one may not apply to Trump-headed governments

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Reposted by Geoff Lorenz

Carlos Algara @algaraca.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Many thanks to @mattgrossmann.bsky.social for having me on the @niskanencenter.bsky.social #ScienceofPolitics podcast to talk '26 midterms for the U.S. Senate & House! TLDR; battleground looks expanded for Senate Democrats compared to year ago thanks to candidate recruitment efforts. Take a listen!

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Reposted by Geoff Lorenz

The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 17/02/2026

Many Americans may believe that Democrats support science and Republicans don’t—but research suggests that although the Trump administration’s hostility toward science is real, it isn’t matched by the rest of the GOP's, Alexander Furnas and Dashun Wang write.

bit.ly

The Republicans Made Peace With Science

The Trump administration’s hostility to science is real, but it isn’t matched by the rest of the GOP’s.

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Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Oh man now you gotta make a recommendation

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Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

What do you make of the combination of that first abstract and the last one?

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Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

I mean, my read of the piece you're linking there was not really to dismiss political science out of hand, but rather to caution practitioners/candidates/policymakers that the empirical regularities political science observes are not self-executing. YMMV though fair enough.

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Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

I don't have a good sense of any of the current debate, but FWIW MattY remains the only Discourse-r who has explicitly referenced "lobbying as legislative subsidy" so I'm not sure I agree with that last characterization.... at least, not entirely.

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Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Yeah - I guess the hope (or just, my hope) is that the result of all this is that it grows demand of some alternative districting/electoral system?

Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

(and the reverse is also true I'm sure)

Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

I know who needs to read this: political science does not require natural laws that apply unconditionally to be a science. It needs human beings to not be completely random or idiosyncratic in their behavior. I do agree that political science is hard in a way the physical sciences are not, though.

Geoff Lorenz @geofflorenz.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Thank you for the kind words! It will be a while (I'm not teaching the course until Fall 2026) but I'll try to remember to post the reading list when it's done.

It's really true. I remember observing in his first term that Trump's worst interviews were often with friendly reporters.

Thank you! These are both super helpful!

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Yeah very much the same. This will be really helpful. Thank you for these recs!

Geoff Lorenz | Department of Political Science | Nebraska

That sounds perfect! Thank you! Tbh I don't know if/how DMing works on BlueSky but you can find my email here: polisci.unl.edu/person/geoff...

polisci.unl.edu

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Very helpful! I'll reach out to him separately as well. Thanks!