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Reposted by Will Marble

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 1d

My new op-ed with @lkfazio.bsky.social:

Trump sent a 'compact' to our universities. They should reject this devil's bargain.
Any institution that yields to these broad and intrusive demands would forever be subservient to the whims of the government.
www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 1d

Why most polls overstate support for political violence
www.gelliottmorris.com/p/most-polls...

Why most polls overstate support for political violence

Misperceptions about the popularity of violence increase public support for it — but you can help change that.

www.gelliottmorris.com

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Stan Oklobdzija @stano.bsky.social · 25d

Absolutely momentous day for California. We're turning the corner on housing at the very moment America needs us to.

Andrew Bowen (he/him) @acbowen.bsky.social · 25d

SB 79 has the votes!

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Aug 1

Job/life update: Today was my last day at Penn, where I've been lucky to teach amazing students and work with great colleagues for the past 3 years. This fall, I'll join @hooverinstitution.bsky.social as a Hoover Fellow—I'm excited to join a vibrant, interdisciplinary community of scholars there.

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Jennifer N. Victor @jenvictor.bsky.social · Jul 31

I made an event timeline to try to make sense of all the federal overreach at @georgemasonu.bsky.social and whoo boy. When you lay it out like this, the executive over reach comes into focus. open.substack.com/pub/misofact...

Authoritarians are attacking universities. Here's how it's going at one public school.

I'm publicly documenting an event timeline to help bring order to the chaotic nature of events and help other schools plan the responses they are likely going to need.

open.substack.com

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · Jul 31

Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump.

Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt.

Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Jul 17

Universities often serve as "anchor institutions" that deeply affect the character of their communities. In a new paper, we estimate how (and when) the establishment of a college influences local political and civic life. 🧵

osf.io/preprints/so...

Screenshot of title page.

"The Long-Run Effects of Colleges on Civic and Political Life" by Michael J. Andrews, William Marble, and Lauren Russell.

Abstract: Social theorists and education advocates have long argued for the civic benefits of education. As large, durable institutions, universities are especially likely to affect the civic life of their communities. We investigate how the establishment of a university alters the civic and political trajectory of the surrounding area. For identification, we leverage historical site selection processes in which multiple locations were considered for new colleges. We bring together data on social capital, political preferences, and elections to assess the long-run impacts of college establishment. Communities with colleges exhibit higher levels of civic engagement and greater social trust today, relative to “runner-up” locations without colleges. These counties are also more politically liberal — a gap that has grown substantially since 2000. Our findings suggest understanding universities as place-based policies that shape the long-run civic and political development of their communities. They also shed light on current political battles over higher education policy.

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Jul 24

Nothing more American than getting a head start on work by taking a meeting in your car while you commute to work by yourself

More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · Jul 24

Microsoft and Mercedes‑Benz are working together to let people access Teams from the car.

Benz is the first car maker to enable in-car camera use for Teams while a car is being driven.

The companies are also partnering to put Microsoft 365 Copilot into vehicles.

www.theverge.com/news/708481/...

Mercedes-Benz will let you use an in-car camera in Microsoft Teams while driving

The all-new CLA gets this first

www.theverge.com

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Reposted by Will Marble

Alexander Berger @albrgr.bsky.social · Jul 22

Very cool paper about how important social networks are in driving movement
conference.nber.org/conf_papers...

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Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · Jul 21

I just posted a new paper on @ssrn.bsky.social, titled "The Chadha Presidency". Here's the link, and I'll post the abstract in the next post. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

The <i>Chadha </i>Presidency

<p><span>Where is Congress? Why hasn’t it reined in some of the worst abuses of the Trump Administration? This Article argues that a significant part of the ans

papers.ssrn.com

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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · Jul 19

Been a busy year in the data mines.📊 Just published my mid-year roundup: 29 data visualizations on the state of US democracy, tracking everything from judicial resistance to billionaire influence to why Dems have a mobilization crisis, not a moderation problem.

All charts free to use:

On Data and Democracy (Mid-Year Roundup): Charting the Assault on American Democracy and A Path Forward

A narrative of a democracy in the balance, told through 29 data visualizations.

open.substack.com

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Jul 17

The current administration's attacks on universities risk undermining engines of civic life, just as they harm innovation and prosperity. Places with colleges are more liberal, yes, but colleges also promote the types of social capital that we need.

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Jul 17

These results contribute to a literature that understands universities as place-based institutions. We know that they profoundly affect the local economy, as economists (including my co-authors) have shown. This paper documents how universities contribute to the civic life of a community as well.

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Jul 17

Are universities distinctive, or would any large public investment generate the same results in the long run? Using a subsample where the runner-up location got a "consolation prize" (eg a state capital or penitentiary), we find that universities are indeed distinctive on most of our outcomes.

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Jul 17

There are also differences in contemporary public opinion: people living near colleges are more liberal on a range of issues. These attitudinal differences are not solely driven by the presence of students nor by differences in the average educational attainment in the community.

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Jul 17

From Reconstruction through the end of the 20th century, there were minimal differences in voting patterns between places with a university and "runner-up" locations. Since 2000, though, a gap has emerged, with college counties becoming significantly more Democratic. In 2024 this gap was ~10pp.

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Jul 17

The establishment of a college also leads to a county casting significantly more votes in presidential elections—an effect that's explained by a population growth channel rather than a turnout rate channel.

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Jul 17

We find that places with colleges have significantly higher levels of social capital and trust today, relative to "runner-up" locations that were considered but not chosen.

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Jul 17

How do universities shape the surrounding community? Building on meticulous archival work by my co-author Mike Andrews, we answer this question by focusing on cases where multiple locations were considered for a major university and the winning location was chosen for idiosyncratic reasons.

To further illustrate this methodology, we describe several of the as-good-as-random site selection experiments here. In some cases, which of the finalist locations won the college was literally random, with the winning location drawn by lots (this occurred for the University of North Dakota and North Dakota State University). In other cases, such as University of Illinois, Purdue University, and the University of Florida, multiple towns submitted similar bids to receive the college, with only one ultimately chosen. In still other cases, it took multiple rounds of balloting to find a winner (7 rounds of balloting for University of Mississippi, 8 rounds for Southern Arkansas University, 24 rounds for the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a whopping 111 for what would become University of Nebraska at Kearney). The fact that finalist locations were tied for multiple rounds of voting suggests that both the winning and runner-up locations were similar in terms of political influence and enjoyed comparable popular support. Site selection experiments occur as early as 1839 and as late as 1954, though the majority of experiments are concentrated in the 1880s and 1890s.

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Jul 17

Decades of research documents differences (observational and sometimes causal) in turnout, volunteering rates, office-seeking, political preferences, etc., between those with and without college degrees. But universities are place-based institutions, the effects of which may extend beyond students.

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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · Jul 17

Universities often serve as "anchor institutions" that deeply affect the character of their communities. In a new paper, we estimate how (and when) the establishment of a college influences local political and civic life. 🧵

osf.io/preprints/so...

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Reposted by Will Marble

Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · Jul 10

Horrendous. In attempting to reclassify Head Start as “welfare” rather than education, the Trump administration is trying an end run around Supreme Court precedent that protects undocumented children from limits to education based on their immigration status. 🧵

Lea Woods @lea9223.bsky.social · Jul 10

HHS announced today they will consider Head Start a welfare program, not an education program, and will subject it to new citizenship requirements. This goes against decades of legal precedence that all children in America have a right to education. Announcement here. www.hhs.gov/press-room/p...

www.hhs.gov

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Jun 24

War on universities, war on science, war on knowledge

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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · Jun 24

NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years.

NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · Jun 22

A reminder of how the number of centrifuges in Iran soared after Trump’s 2018 JCPOA withdrawal.

@brendannyhan.bsky.social

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