I’m celebrating the first day of spring by finalizing grades for this quarter.

2026 APCG Award Nominations The 2026 APCG Award nominations are now open and due May 1st! Nominate scholars for Best Dissertation, Best Graduate Student Paper, Distinguished Africanist, Best Article and Best Book.

The call for 2026 APCG Award Nominations is live! The deadline for nominations is May 1st.

Nominate scholars for Best Dissertation, Best Graduate Student Paper, Distinguished Africanist, Best Article and Best Book!

www.afpol.org/blog/2026-ap...

thank you!

Forget soft power; Aid is now just another blunt tool in the arsenal of a transitional president devoid of a moral compass.

Things are not okay.

This morning I signed a contract with Cambridge University Press for my book, The Repression Dilemma: Trust, Political Violence, and the Politics of Policing in Uganda. Grateful to everyone who supported this project along the way. @africanpoliticscg.bsky.social

photo of march, signs for renee good and against ICe, crowded street.

this photo. minneapolis. 💜

📷️ Alex Kormann/Star Tribune

The exhibits about slavery at the President’s House in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park have been removed amid pressure from the Trump admin www.inquirer.com/politics/nat...

The actual story is that a family of American citizens trying to evacuate from a neighborhood that ICE had made unsafe, and then ICE tossed munitions into the car, causing three kids to be hospitalized and a six month old to stop breathing. DHS called the family “radical agitators”

A Minneapolis couple said that ICE agents deployed tear gas and stun grenades around them and their six children — the youngest only 6 months old — as they tried to maneuver their car out of a tense protest on Wednesday night. Shawn Jackson and his wife, Destiny, both 26, said they were driving home from a son’s basketball game when the family found themselves caught in a clash between protesters and federal agents in North Minneapolis. The couple sensed the encounter could quickly spiral out of control, they said, but when they tried to turn their car around to exit the blocked-off street, they were surrounded by federal agents. “From the side, the front and from behind me, it was nothing but ICE,” Mr. Jackson said in an interview on Thursday. One agent told the couple that they needed to get out of the area. Ms. Jackson said she and her husband responded that they were trying to do exactly that, but their path was blocked by agents coming up the street. Then, agents let loose on the crowd, the couple said. The crowd-control grenades went off around them and one tear gas canister rolled beneath the car, Ms. Jackson said. A concussive blast — from the tear gas canister or another device, she wasn’t sure — rocked the vehicle, she said, setting off the airbags and trapping the family as acrid smoke billowed around.

"A Minneapolis couple said that ICE agents deployed tear gas... around them and their six children — the youngest only 6 months old — as they tried to maneuver their car out of a tense protest on Wednesday night."

They were driving home from a son’s basketball game.

www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01...

For better or worse, public law schools have to account for state politics when making decisions about who to hire as their next dean.

But hiring someone and *then* rescinding the offer is something else altogether, and ought to be a huge black eye for the University of Arkansas.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission (an independent nonprofit, not the statutory body) now estimates that up to 3,000 people might have been killed by the police and armed forces in post election violence in Tanzania.

Opinion | Trump’s Most Lethal Policy

Nick Kristof travels to Uganda and shows that the Trump DOGE cuts to foreign assistance and humanitarian aid are killing kids who are dying unnecessarily from hunger and disease b/c Elon needed a tax cut. Many stories of suffering of little children. GIFT LINK. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

Couldn’t be more proud of @kaitlincurtice.bsky.social. Here’s the Kirkus Review for her upcoming children’s book.

www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...

Bumping this back up -- deadline is about 24 hours from now. The application is short. Please consider applying!

So many smart people seem to believe that higher ed. should be job training, explicitly. The rise in business (undergraduate) majors is one byproduct of such a perspective. And watching universities cut humanities is another.

I find this approach incredibly shortsighted, and ultimately defeating. 🧵

I’ll be climbing there with my family next month.

It was a joy to review Rebecca Tapscott’s @ox.ac.uk book, Arbitrary States: Social Control and Modern Authoritarianism in Museveni’s Uganda. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Almost to winter break.

South Korea's president briefly declared martial law. President Yoon’s approval rating hit a record low, at just 19 percent, last week. So what's behind his declaration of martial law?

In an explainer for @goodauth.bsky.social, I share some historical and contemporary context to martial law in South Korea and Yoon's botched attempt yesterday.

goodauthority.org/news/martial...

APSR will start inviting replications for a random subset of accepted papers. I really like this as well as the constructive tone around it 👏 (from the latest Notes from the Editors)

Just finished my fall quarter teaching intro to comparative politics and the politics of policing.

Even with the many challenges in higher education and academia, teaching remains such a privilege.

Applications are now open for IPSI 2025! June 8-12, 2025 Washington, DC.
IPSI is a five-day professional development program for professors and post-docs in the field of international affairs who want to build the tools and networks to produce and disseminate policy-relevant academic research.

Want some good news? However bad the next administration is going to be, very few models of strongman authoritarian rule start with the strongman losing publicly on his first picks as minister of war and head of law enforcement

Lee Jae-myung, Leader of South Korea's Democratic Party, live-streamed himself scaling the walls of the National Assembly to bypass military barricades so that he could vote to overturn the President's martial law.

Untitled - November 19, 2024 at 11.34.29 See the story

Applications for “Politics, Markets, and Governance in Africa”, a conference in honor of Nicolas van de Walle. Abstracts due March 1. Please join @cornellupress.bsky.social w the Center on Global Democracy, the Institute of African Development, & Govt Dept
new.express.adobe.com/webpage/VYps...

From our new issue: "In the Eye of the Storm: Hurricanes, Climate Migration, and Climate Attitudes" by Sabrina Arias (@sabrinabarias.bsky.social) and Christopher Blair (@chriswblair.bsky.social). www.cambridge.org/core/service...