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.

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 :).

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.

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.

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.

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 YouTube video by Movieclips

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?...

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:

An measures at X

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.

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

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

Easily a top 5 foghorn

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!

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.

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.

Democracy Dies in Snark-ness?

Oh man now you gotta make a recommendation

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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!

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

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...

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