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Stuart Russell @stuarterussell.bsky.social · 12d

I'd think that the most elite meal in Charlottesville is a dozen cookies from ABC?

Reposted by Stuart Russell

MIT Center for International Studies @mit-cis.bsky.social · 16d

Mai Hassan, associate professor of @mitpolisci.bsky.social and faculty director of the MIT-Africa Program, co-authored a guest essay in @nytimes.com discussing the consequences of the international community recognizing Sudan’s juntas.
Read here: nytimes.com/2025/09/21/o...

nytimes.com

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Joshua Tucker @jatucker.bsky.social · Jul 23

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🚨 What if intro political science textbooks were better and cheaper?

We built one:
✅ $1/chapter
✅ Modular & flexible
✅ Written by top scholars
✅ Full (free!) instructor resources

🌐 www.politicsexperiment.com

Help us spread the word! @rudalev.bsky.social & I are the editors!

Home Page - A Political Science Experiment

www.PoliticsExperiment.com

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Stuart Russell @stuarterussell.bsky.social · Jun 20

Congrats, Nick! Sounds very interesting.

Reposted by Stuart Russell

David Evans @daveevansphd.bsky.social · Jun 16

You have to bring the teachers along when you implement educational reform! waynesandholtz.com/pdfs/PSL_PE_... by @wsandholtz.bsky.social

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Evan Lieberman @evlieb.bsky.social · May 1

JOB ALERT: Come work as lab manager / research associate at the Global Diversity Lab at MIT -- a great opportunity for recent undergraduates considering a PhD in political science #development #climate #diversity Recent LM's went to Stanford, Yale, Berkeley
careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl...

Research Support Associate 2

MIT - Research Support Associate 2 - Cambridge MA 02139

careers.peopleclick.com

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Daniel Laurison @daniellaurison.bsky.social · Apr 7

JOB! Please RT.

Swarthmore is hiring for our Social Science Quantitative Lab Associate to support & do teaching quant methods to undergrads. Especially looking for people familiar with sociology and/or political science, and R. Apply by 4/18.

apply.interfolio.com/165892

Happy to answer questions.

Responsibilities (continiued)
Providing statistical support to students during regular office hours and by appointment, including assisting students with the identification, manipulation, and analysis of data sets for their empirical research projects

Planning and hosting stand-alone workshops to train students to work with statistical software commonly used in the social sciences, such as R, Stata, Python, Matlab, and/or Geographic Information System (GIS)

Collaborating with social science faculty teaching quantitative courses on how best to support their courses and their students

Creating additional opportunities for students with less experience in quantitative and computational methods to develop skills and confidence

Offering supplementary workshops in quantitative social sciences to help students develop skills for success as research assistants and to prepare them for quantitative careers and job markets

Qualifications
A Master of Arts or Science (MA or MS), or equivalent, in Political Science, Sociology, Economics, Public Policy, Statistics, Data Science, or a related field is required; a PhD in one of these fields is preferred.

Familiarity with statistics/econometrics, causal inference methods, and preparing data for quantitative social science research is required. Familiarity with computational and simulation methods is a plus.

Programming expertise in R and Excel and ability to learn new technical skills are required. Expertise in Python, Matlab, GIS, and/or other related software is a plus.

Demonstrated excellence in inclusive and equitable teaching practices that support the success of students from diverse backgrounds and with varying levels of preparation in quantitative skills. We seek applicants who cultivate welcoming classroom environments and use pedagogical strategies that promote belonging, engagement, and academic growth for all students.

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · Apr 1

Any senator is free to use the rules of the chamber to take up Booker’s filibuster after he collapses in exhaustion.

Who will step up?

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · Mar 17

If you're young and are interested in international development, it is hard to beat doing an ODI Fellowship

careers.odi.org/postings/71e...

It is a rare opportunity for foreigners to work as a civil servant in a low or lower-middle income country

Why is this a good idea? 👇

ODI Fellowship Scheme 2025-27

Job Opening: ODI Fellowship Scheme 2025-27 at ODI Global in Global.

careers.odi.org

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Stuart Russell @stuarterussell.bsky.social · Mar 7

Welcome, @tanukumar.com! Really excited to have you onboard!

Tanu Kumar @tanukumar.com · Mar 7

I'll be starting at the World Bank as a Governance Specialist in the Public Institutions and Data Analytics Unit in May. Excited to work with a great team on important work, and to be back in my hometown is a dream. Thanks to everyone at CGU for all you've taught me.

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · Mar 6

This tariff strategy makes sense if your only goal is to have everyone talking about you all the time.

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Ray Fisman @rfisman.bsky.social · Mar 5

I just can't get it out of my head why this isn't a much bigger story. I guess it's because people are generally so totally cynical about US politics already.

Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · Mar 5

www.wired.com/story/people...

People Are Paying Millions to Dine With Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago

Business leaders are paying as much as $5 million to meet one-on-one with the president at his Florida compound, sources tell WIRED, while others are paying $1 million apiece to dine with him in a gro...

www.wired.com

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Tom Pepinsky @tompepinsky.com · Mar 4

There are two views of US politics right now:

1. The fight is electoral. It implies, wait for thermostatic public opinion to kick in in 18 months
2. The fight is bureaucratic. It implies, stop the pillaging of the economy and the evisceration of the state right now

I’m Team 2 all the way

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Dave Itzkoff @ditzkoff.bsky.social · Feb 26

you're free to cover whatever topic you wish, as long as it's the topic I want. that topic? freedom

max tani @maxtani.bsky.social · Feb 26

New: Jeff Bezos emailed staff at the Washington Post this morning announcing that the Post opinion pages going forward were largely going to focus on defending personal liberties and free markets. Current opinion section editor David Shipley is out.

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · Feb 20

The DOGE firings have nothing to do with “efficiency” or “cutting waste.” They’re a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as liberal. This was evident from the start, and now the data confirms it: targeted agencies overwhelmingly those seen as more left-leaning. 🧵⬇️

Scatterplot titled “Empirical Evidence of Ideological Targeting in Federal Layoffs: Agencies seen as liberal are significantly more likely to face DOGE layoffs.”
• The x-axis represents Perceived Ideological Leaning of federal agencies, ranging from -2 (Most Liberal) to +2 (Most Conservative), based on survey responses from over 1,500 federal executives.
• The y-axis shows Agency Size (Number of Staff) on a logarithmic scale from 1,000 to 1,000,000.

Each point represents a federal agency:
• Red dots indicate agencies that experienced DOGE layoffs.
• Gray dots indicate agencies with no layoffs.

Key Observations:
• Liberal-leaning agencies (left side of the plot) are disproportionately represented among red dots, indicating higher layoff rates.
• Notable targeted agencies include:
• HHS (Health & Human Services)
• EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)
• NIH (National Institutes of Health)
• CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau)
• Dept. of Education
• USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development)
• The National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE), despite its conservative leaning (+1 on the scale), is an exception among targeted agencies.
• A notable outlier: the Department of Veterans Affairs (moderately conservative) also faced layoffs despite its size.

Takeaway:

The figure visually demonstrates that DOGE layoffs disproportionately targeted liberal-leaning agencies, supporting claims of ideological bias. The pattern reveals that layoffs were not driven by agency size or budget alone but were strongly associated with perceived ideology.

Source: Richardson, Clinton, & Lewis (2018). Elite Perceptions of Agency Ideology and Workforce Skill. The Journal of Politics, 80(1).

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Feb 19

New, from me: I talked with producers from Last Week Tonight about politicization of government, so was looking forward to seeing this episode. Its a good one, worth sharing.
(Plus, what does the research say about politicization and government performance).
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/what-resea...

What research tells us about politicization and state capacity

Also, Last Week Tonight on Trump's government takeover

donmoynihan.substack.com

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Ken Opalo @kopalo.bsky.social · Feb 11

Institutions are not self-executing. Enough people must be willing to do the right thing by the rules.

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Charles Kenny @charlesjkenny.bsky.social · Feb 7

Just to repeat, the White House has provided *no evidence* to back up the President’s claim of widespread fraud in USAID. The evidence it has presented points in precisely the other direction.

www.cgdev.org/blog/white-h...

The White House Demonstrates USAID’s Efficiency

The White House issued a press release three days ago apparently designed to justify the ongoing stop-work orders at USAID, alongside pulling agency staff out of the field and locking them out of thei...

www.cgdev.org

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Scott Shapiro @scottjshapiro.bsky.social · Feb 1

Re: a debate during Trump I, can we all agree that this is a “constitutional crisis”?

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Tim Hirschel-Burns @timhirschelburns.bsky.social · Feb 1

USAID was never pure altruism, not even close.

But to have an agency that exists to help people no matter where they live, because we think it's the right thing to do - that's the kind of country we should try to be, and the country many around the world think we are.

No longer

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Justin Sandefur @justsand.bsky.social · Jan 25

Trump has not just paused new foreign aid. Today Marco Rubio sent a cable to all US diplomatic missions calling for immediate “stop work” orders on *existing* projects.

This is sweeping and reckless. People are going to die.

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Stuart Russell @stuarterussell.bsky.social · Jan 24

Tagging folks who may know potential applicants: @nlnathan.bsky.social @sarahbrierley.bsky.social @dhdannychoi.bsky.social @dhidalgo.bsky.social @guillermotoral.com @hlarreguy.bsky.social @nicolewilson.bsky.social (3/3)

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Stuart Russell @stuarterussell.bsky.social · Jan 24

Remote work is fine, but the RA should have experience working with messy administrative data in R. Knowledge of public finance is strongly preferred. Please circulate and share with anyone interested. Let me know if you have any questions. (2/3)

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Stuart Russell @stuarterussell.bsky.social · Jan 24

As part of an ongoing World Bank project, I am hiring a RA to help clean + analyze administrative data from Ghana's public financial management systems. Please see details and apply via DIME's spring recruitment drive here: datanalytics.worldbank.org/dime-applica.... Deadline is January 31. (1/3)

DIME Recruitment Dashboard

datanalytics.worldbank.org

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Reposted by Stuart Russell

Tom Pepinsky @tompepinsky.com · Jan 12

Straight up looting: let the wealthiest corporations carve up the state’s functions and delegate them to themselves, for profit.

The word for this in comparative politics it “predatory state.” A low autonomy, low capacity, captured state.

EM Simpson @emsetc.bsky.social · Jan 12

This is madness 🎁

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/12/u...

Inside Elon Musk’s Plan for DOGE to Slash Government Costs (Gift Article)

Mr. Musk has turned to Silicon Valley to help recruit executives who will take up unofficial positions across the federal government.

www.nytimes.com

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