Erica De Bruin

Applications for the 2026 Journeys in World Politics workshop (10/1-10/3) in San Diego are being accepted (due 6/1). The workshop features Kathleen Cunningham & Leah Windsor as senior mentors. Christina Schneider is our local host! Visit the site below to apply.

www.saramitchell.org/journeys.html

With a huge thanks to Hamilton College and the Spencer Foundation for supporting this work; the 40+ colleagues that allowed us to experiment with alternate strategies of evaluations in their courses; and our students, whose thoughtfulness in providing feedback we always appreciate /fin

This is a tradeoff most institutions may not be willing to make. But awareness of how unrepresentative student evals may be provides yet another reason to reduce the emphasis we put on them. And in my own courses, it convinced me to set aside class time for students to complete their evals 4/

We find that Black, Hispanic & multi-racial students are less likely than white students to complete traditional evals solicited end-of-semester. When we delay them until the start of the next semester, the overall response rate drops but the racial gap shrinks---making evals more representative 3/

At our selective liberal arts college, we found that Pell Grant recipients, students w/ lower GPAs, & seniors are less likely to complete evals, no matter what prompt/timing is used. A more open-ended prompt does increase the amount students write, conditional on responding. Importantly, 2/

Can student evaluations be made more representative? Testing alternative strategies Student evaluations are regularly used to assess the quality of faculty teaching. However, low response rates and unrepresentative student samples can bias the conclusions drawn from them. We condu...

New article, w/ my colleagues in Econ! We randomized the type of instrument and timing at which student evaluations are solicited to see if either could make the feedback we got more representative of the student body. In one important way, we find that it can 👇
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Very cool to have the piece I wrote picked up by TPM! Hope people find it useful

ICE Not Only Looks and Acts Like a Paramilitary Force—It Is One, and That Makes It Harder To Curb This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and...

ICE Not Only Looks and Acts Like a Paramilitary Force—It Is One, and That Makes It Harder To Curb talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/ice-is-...

Aunt Holly's Banana Bread Aunt Holly's Banana Bread

I love this one! www.epicurious.com/recipes/food...

Thank you! And completely agree about the resonance of "secret police." I had originally worked in mention of @ascharpf.bsky.social & Christian Gläßel's excellent work (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...) on "underachievers" dominating secret police forces but it got taken out in editing

Why ICE is responding to protests with repression Why ICE is responding to protests with repression. ICE’s institutional culture is the problem.

Also highly recommend @hsulli.bsky.social's piece on ICE's protest repression, out today on @goodauth.bsky.social! goodauthority.org/news/why-ice...

Personally I think this is too much money to give to Donald trumps poorly trained but heavily armed Militia

ICE not only looks and acts like a paramilitary force – it is one, and that makes it harder to curb ICE, created in response to 9/11, meets most definitions of paramilitary forces. Critics worry it’s gone beyond its writ of immigration enforcement.

New explainer from me, on understanding ICE as a paramilitary force, in more than one sense of the term 👇
theconversation.com/ice-not-only...

Going straight onto my Intro IR syllabus 👍

Now on #FirstView, Calvert Jones explores whether reforms undertaken by authoritarian governments improve foreign publics' perceptions of their legitimacy.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The admin is proposing indefinite control of Venezuelan oil, but evidence suggests that Venezuelan cooperation will only extend as far as it‘s coerced - and can’t extend past what the crumbing infrastructure can generate. Meanwhile ordinary Venezuelans continue to suffer.
@goodauth.bsky.social

From State Dept transcript of Rubio appearance on This Week w/ George Stephanopolous: SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, we’re not going to judge moving forward based simply on what’s said in press conferences. We want to see action here at the end of the day. Rhetoric is one thing. You see rhetoric for a lot of different reasons. There’s a lot of different reasons why people go on TV and say certain things in these countries, especially 15 hours or 12 hours after the person who used to be in charge of the regime is now in handcuffs and on his way to New York. So what I will say is, moving forward, it’s very simple. We’re not going to be reactive here to statements at press conferences or what people say in a certain interview or what some media post – some media post somewhere. What we are going to react to is very simple: What do you do? Not what you’re saying in public – what happens? What happens next? Do the drugs stop coming? Are the changes made? Is Iran expelled? Is Hizballah no longer able and Iran no longer able to operate against our interests from Venezuela? Does the migration pattern stop? Do the drug trafficking boats end? Do you deal with the ELN and the FARC, two narcoterrorist organizations who control territory and operate with impunity from the territory of Venezuela against the interests of Colombia and the United States? These are the things we want addressed. If they are addressed, that’s how we’ll judge it. If they’re not addressed, that’s how we’ll judge it. QUESTION: And what happens if they’re not addressed?

🧵Day 3 and we have a new meaning for "running Venezuela," courtesy of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the nation's top diplomat, who is in charge of Venezuela as well as the National Archives. We're going to insist they do what's in the US national interest. Time for some principal-agent theory. 1/

Blue Power cover, with blue and red letters for title, and phalanx of police with backs turned to viewer, walking away

Hey folks, you can preorder my new book Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves at a 25% discount right now from @basicbooksgroup.bsky.social: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/stuar... (and it's also discounted at bookshop.org, if you prefer that!). Published in April!

A joyous protest in Utica today! My kid repurposed his Halloween costume 🐓

This is the biggest attack on free speech since the McCarthy era but it also has significantly less popular consensus behind it than the second Red Scare. It's being done on behalf of a minority faction led by the most unpopular president in modern history. Organizing against this can win.

It's truly unhinged. I've been repeatedly billed for an ER visit, in addition to the copay, because my insurer keeps rejecting hospital bills spelling my last name as "DeBruin" rather than "De Bruin." Multiple calls, over the course of months, haven't solved it!

📣 We are searching for a tenure-line assistant or associate professor with a focus on the intersection of technology and global and public affairs @josefkorbelschool.bsky.social — please share across your networks.
#polisky #psjobs #poliscijobs Apply by September 15.
jobs.du.edu/en-us/job/49...

We are hiring in American Politics at Hamilton College this year! We're seeking a scholar of political institutions, broadly understood. Hamilton's been a wonderful place to work, & I'm happy to answer any questions about the position, department, life in upstate NY, etc. apply.interfolio.com/171832

Coups in west Africa have five things in common: knowing what they are is key to defending democracy Five years since the Mali coup of 2020, the key lesson is that the international community must move beyond the view of coups as isolated events.

Sharing my latest w/ the Conversation @africa.theconversation.com theconversation.com/coups-in-wes...

I’m currently building a dataset on police forces around the globe. No other country has a force quite like ICE (w/ broad enforcement powers, tactical gear, immigration focus); the most apt comparisons are to secret police in authoritarian regimes rather than border/immigration forces elsewhere.

Trump’s military parade is a warning Trump has caused a crisis in civil-military relations — one that could eventually threaten democracy’s foundations.

Thoughtful piece from @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social , who I believe is the only journalist I have spoken to (in my personal capacity as always) who had read my primer on US civ-mil www.vox.com/politics/416...

Congrats!! Great news

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