𝙼𝚎𝚐𝚊𝚗 𝙺𝚊𝚗𝚐

Home - JHU School of Government and Policy Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy advances governance with research, data-driven analysis, and innovative solutions to today’s challenges.

Deep breath.

I'm honored and excited to join the faculty of America's oldest research university, Johns Hopkins.

I'll start this summer as a full professor, one of the founding faculty at the brand-new School of Government and Policy.

We're building something unique & important, even historic.

Yesterday, those who teach Intro to Sociology at Florida colleges (as opposed to universities) received a ready-made curriculum from the state and were ordered to teach it.

Yes, you read that correctly. The *state* is enforcing a curriculum on college profs, complete w/ the following restrictions:

Excited to share that I'll be joining Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy as an Assistant Professor this summer! Looking forward to moving to DC and the work ahead. Thankful to my amazing partner, friends, family, and mentors who have helped me get here.

Update your syllabus and stay on the frontier - it will increase your students’ wages. Epic work by my colleagues @barbarabiasi.com and @profsongma.bsky.social #linkoftheday

www.barbarabiasi.com/uploads/1/0/...

Fantastic! Theory in violence interventions is often weak and simplistic. Qualitative work with programme participants is the way to improve.

Why Might READI Chicago Work to Reduce Gun Violence? Qualitative Evidence from the Field - University of Chicago Crime Lab Building on a body of evidence showing that behavioral science-informed programs can reduce violence among youth and adults, this report highlights findings from a qualitative analysis to understand w...

How does a violence intervention program actually work? We interviewed 99 READI participants to find out.

Key finding: They came for the job, stayed for the therapy.

crimelab.uchicago.edu/resources/wh...

“True scholars often work in loneliness, compelled to find reward in the awareness that they have made valuable, even beautiful, contributions to the cumulative structure of human knowledge, whether anyone knows it at the time or not.” — George F. Kennan

Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Just Extortion

"It is not hyperbole to say that the future of higher education in America requires that every university reject it. If any schools capitulate, the pressure will be enormous on all to fold. The only solution is solidarity & collective action against this effort at federal control over higher ed."

Weaker the gang, harder the exit This study draws on 95 interviews and observations with gang-affiliated individuals in Chicago to examine how gang structures shape disengagement and desistance from crime. During the last two decade...

As Chicago’s gangs have weakened, it’s become easier for members to leave their groups but harder to avoid violence. My research in Criminology reveals why.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

@mkang.bsky.social was instrumental in pulling this together. I’m damn proud of her

She also happens to be on the academic job market. So if you’re hiring this year, consider hiring her!

www.megankang.com

Vital City | State Gun Laws Matter In our federalist nation, regulation in 50 capitals makes a huge difference.

Check out our latest @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social piece on the role of states in regulating the proliferation of guns throughout the U.S.

www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/sta...

Vital City | The 80/20 Rule of Gun Supply Why focusing on the small fraction of problem dealers offers the clearest path to reducing violence

When it comes to dealing with illegal guns in the US, the Pareto Principle reminds us that the vast majority are supplied by a small number of bad dealers. So what can we do? Find out in my new @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social piece, out today in a brand new issue.

www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/the...

Vital City | When Products Can Kill The unfortunate limits of legal gun regulation

Latest issue of @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social is on gun supply, lots of interesting contributions, here is mine (with Dan O'Flaherty) www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/whe...

Vital City | Gun Culture Then and Now Firearm ownership meant something very different when the United States was founded.

Excited to see my essay "Gun Culture Then & Now" appear today in a special issue of @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social. Thanks to @mkang.bsky.social for making this issue happen. Please read and share - the whole issue is packed with wonderful essays about the past, present, and future of guns in America.

Check out the @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social issue on gun supply! This volume is a tour de force on how the U.S. got to have so many guns and what can be done about it. Thanks to @everytown.bsky.social for their support.
www.vitalcitynyc.org/issues/issue...

Guns don’t just enable violence; they produce the “shooter” as a durable social identity. Our hidden gem of the week details how the collapse of corporate gang governance and social media’s permanent archives turn youth violence into lifelong stigma.

By @mkang.bsky.social

buff.ly/98uFxpT

Thanks @the-syllabus.bsky.social for featuring my paper, and @benhr.bsky.social for the heads up. What a cool honor!

Working paper here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Live: Neighbors describe volley of gunfire in attack that killed two children, wounded 17 Sources identified Robin Westman, 23, as the shooter, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene. One source told the Star Tribune Westman’s mother once worked at Annunciation.

As we mourn today's Annunciation Church shooting, the reporting and photojournalism are almost too much to take in; sharing this gift link for those seeking good local coverage from Minneapolis. www.startribune.com/minneapolis-...

Thank you @njgvrc.bsky.social for your invaluable support for my dissertation research!

Sounds awful

Join us on August 8 at UIC for this year’s Junior Theorists Symposium (JTS)! #asa

(In suppressed voice) Also it’d be great if folks can make a small donation so that we can buy coffee for everyone ☕️

On Juneteenth, we celebrate freedom and recommit ourselves to the work that remains undone. We remember that even in the darkest hours, there is cause to hope for tomorrow’s light.

We’ve updated the FSS proxy for household gun ownership to include 2020–2023. The dataset now spans 1949–2023 and includes state-level estimates of gun ownership, homicide, firearm homicide, and suicide rates.
dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtm...

If you're interested in understanding why honour killings happen, my paper with @aksoyundan.bsky.social has some answers. We also suggest ways to reduce them: journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

Details of the publication with abstract which reads: Honor killings, which occur when women are perceived to have broken purity norms and bring “dishonor” to their family, pose profound moral and societal problems and underrecognized sociological puzzles. Given the immense cost, why do families murder their own daughter, niece, or cousin? Conversely, given the tragic consequences, why are norms broken in the first place? Drawing on accounts of honor killings, we characterize the key actors, actions, and incentives, and develop two interlinked theoretical models, one on norm-enforcement and another on norm-breaking. The former specifies the conditions under which honor norms should hold, the latter, counterintuitively, predicts that honor killings occur most frequently when honor norms are contested; not when they are strictest. Analyzing data from 24 countries and ~26,000 individuals and building a unique dataset of honor killings from Turkey, we find support for the hypotheses. Honor norms are stronger when laws offer leniency for honor killings, families’ loss of reputation is more consequential, and community cohesion is higher. Actual killings have an inverse-U-shaped link with the prevalence of honor norms. Our work advances the theoretical understanding of honor norms and killings and offers one of the most comprehensive empirical analyses of the factors influencing honor killings.

Figure 1 from the paper. Within-Family Interaction and Probabilities of Interaction Outcomes Note: Panel A shows an interaction within a family. Panel B shows the probability of breaking a norm (p2) in the game tree in panel A; the probability of the existence of an honor norm in the repeated norm-enforcement game (p1, i.e., conditions given in Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 obtain); and the probability of honor killing (p3), which is the product of the former two probabilities, as a function of repeated norm-enforcement game parameters.

Figure 3 from the paper. Support for Honor Killings; Coefficients from Multilevel Regressions with Random Intercepts for Countries Data source: PEW (2013) World Muslims Survey. Note: N (response) = 26,458. N (country) = 24. Countries that adopted laws that allow leniency for honor-based violence: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Niger, Palestinian Territories. Countries that have adultery laws: Afghanistan, Pakistan.

Figure 5 from the paper. Results of Poisson Models Predicting the Monthly Number of Honor Killings Note: Predictive margins for the association between support for honor norms and honor killings (top panel) and the average marginal effect of passing law 6284 according to support for honor norms (bottom panel).

📢 My paper w Aron Szekely on honour-based violence is published online (Open Access): journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

We explain this puzzling phenomenon applying game-theory and testing it using large-scale data on norms and actual femicides.

@sriucl.bsky.social @uclsociology.bsky.social

6 yrs ago an economist asked if I wanted to help him write a book about gun violence. It seemed crazy and fun. Working on this book w/ Jens changed my worldview, introduced me to my partner, and clarified what I want to spend my life doing. I’m grateful to have played a small part & hope you buy it!

The Cost of the Government’s Attack on Columbia American universities have given the country prosperity and security. The Trump administration’s attack on academic freedom endangers all of that.

A much needed piece and example of strong leadership www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Dissertating in good company

Excited to be assembling a @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social volume on Gun Supply! If you have an idea for a short op-ed on the topic, we’d love to hear it—shoot me a message. 🔍✍️

Christopher Jencks, a Shaper of Views on Economic Inequality, Dies at 88 His clear prose, illuminating data and novel arguments helped transform debates around issues like public education and welfare reform.

What an inspiring life www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/b...