For Ph.D students in social sciences studying Southeast Asia, consider applying for the SEAREG Predissertation Fellowship. The fellowship provides up top $5k in funding for fieldwork.
dcid.sanford.duke.edu/seareg-pre-d...
Today we will return to the articles from Issue 14 of 2024, a special issue focusing on the topic of Gender and Authoritarian Politics. Please enjoy!
#polisky #socialscience #ComparativePolitics #academicsky
We have a new article in @cpsjournal.bsky.social theorizing founding leader personality cult emergence in Vietnam, China and Indonesia. It'll be part of a special issue "Imagining Nations" w/ @eunajo.bsky.social, @deandulay.bsky.social, @jiyoungko.bsky.social
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
🚨 Call for Papers: 2026 WPSA Mini-Conference on Authoritarian Politics 🚨
Jun Sudduth, @paulschuler.bsky.social, and I are excited to see y’all in San Diego! We welcome formal and empirical papers on a broad range of topics.
📌 Apply here. Share with colleagues & students:
forms.gle/Dv2SBEduFxSh...
For all Southeast Asianist scholars, please consider submitting a paper proposal for SEAREG at UC-San Diego in December.
dcid.sanford.duke.edu/seareg-thema...
In today’s thread, we will revisit the articles published in Issue 2 of our 2024 volume. We hope you find them insightful!
Cuts have consequences, illustrated. As seen on TV 📺
If this stands, and if it spreads, it would be a crushing blow to higher education in America -- and also a major new contributor to our trade deficits.
Higher ed is one of the most reliable surplus drivers that our country can offer.
Free link www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/u...
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
We started this project nearly five years ago, when we were both graduate students — I had just begun my third year of the PhD program at the University of Arizona. It's incredibly rewarding to see how far this work has come!
“He has simply disappeared,” said a friend.
“I have not heard of a disappearance like this in my 40-plus years of practicing and teaching immigration law.,” said one law prof. “This case represents a black hole where due process no longer exists."
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/u...
David: Are you concerned about retaliation from the Trump administration because of this story? Jeffrey: It’s not my role to care about the possibility of threats or retaliation. We just have to come to work and do our jobs to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, in our society today—we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries—there’s too much preemptive obeying for my taste. All we can do is just go do our jobs.
A fantastically important postscript to this piece: David Graham asks Jeffrey Goldberg about possible retaliation, and Goldberg gives a perfect answer — with perfect swipes. www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
Letter to leadership of universities being targeted, to run in Chronicle tomorrow. Academic friends, pls sign if you are a US citizen and tenured (ie it’s safe for you to do so)
“We Must Leverage the Strength of Our Institutions and Stand Together”
Text in replies
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Chilling report from Brown University.
Administration advises all foreign students, staff, and faculty to postpone or reconsider (ie cancel) international travel, due to federal government's crackdown on universities.
Brown also warns against *domestic travel* -since it's unclear what ICE will do.
Backsliding in the US may be worse than other global cases. Hungary, Poland, and India at least followed Scheppele's "authoritarian legalism" model where laws were manipulated, but followed. Here, the laws are flouted flagrantly. This is more unapologetic and blatant.
www.cnn.com/2025/03/17/p...
Authoritarianism warning:
If the government can do this to universities, we don't live in a free society. Five alarm fire.
Ok I know this is old-man irritability but I don’t care if Mahmoud Khalil has a pregnant wife, I don’t care if he and his wife are childfree, I don’t care if he’s in a fucking polycule with a hedgehog and a jar of mayonnaise, NOBODY should be detained for protected speech, including singletons.
The White House, not even DHS, the White House itself apparently, is directly deciding which permanent residents should be detained and deported based on their political speech.
If this doesn’t scare you about the state of our democracy and liberties, I don’t know what will.
I think this would be a good idea. Undergrads are always concerned about timely grading. Perhaps reminding them that grading relies on grad students, which relies on funding
Nice piece by @thiembui.bsky.social on the reduced role of the Vietnam National Assembly. thediplomat.com/2025/03/the-...
For context, my work on the relationship between the party, gov't and VNA helps explain why it's happening
www.amazon.com/United-Front...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
REMINDER: Cutting IRS spending is not a “cost-cutting” move.
Cutting the IRS lowers revenue.
It’s a move to protect the wealthy, like Elon Musk.
Auditing the rich returns $12 for every $1 spent.
www.nber.org/papers/w31376
Tesla paid $0 in federal income tax last year.
2022: $0
2021: $0
2020: $0
2019: $0
2018: $0
Tesla reported $6.7 billion in profit in those years.
Article title: Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting Article Abstract How do stigmatized minorities advance agendas when confronted with hostile majorities? Elite theories of influence posit marginal groups exert little power. I propose the concept of agenda seeding to describe how activists use methods like disruption to capture the attention of media and overcome political asymmetries. Further, I hypothesize protest tactics influence how news organizations frame demands. Evaluating black-led protests between 1960 and 1972, I find nonviolent activism, particularly when met with state or vigilante repression, drove media coverage, framing, congressional speech, and public opinion on civil rights. Counties proximate to nonviolent protests saw presidential Democratic vote share increase 1.6–2.5%. Protester-initiated violence, by contrast, helped move news agendas, frames, elite discourse, and public concern toward “social control.” In 1968, using rainfall as an instrument, I find violent protests likely caused a 1.5–7.9% shift among whites toward Republicans and tipped the election. Elites may dominate political communication but hold no monopoly.
I’ve been studying civil rights protests for 20 years. With new mobilization against Trump’s agenda, I’m sharing a thread summarizing my research on how nonviolent & violent actions by 1960s activists and police influenced media, elites, public opinion & voters. 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Given the inability for any of these studies to randomize protests and ID the causal effect, the claim that protesting in the streets is "stupid" too certain for the evidence
If you are a Ph.D student studying SE Asia developing your prospectus, please consider this pre dissertation grant for fieldwork. The grant is up to $5000 and sponsored by the Southeast Asia Research Group (SEAREG). Feel free to contact me with any questions.
dcid.sanford.duke.edu/seareg-pre-d...
New summer reading:) Congrats @scottrw630.bsky.social! An awesome achievement 🥳👏
If you are near Boston from December 5-7, consider attending the Southeast Asia Research Group Annual Meeting (SEAREG). It features five outstanding fellows and cutting edge SEA research from top-SEA scholars. To attend, register here: dcid.sanford.duke.edu/seareg-2024-...
