Rahsaan Maxwell

The School of Public Policy at the LSE is hiring in political science! Associate or Full.

I was the first political scientist hired by the SPP, come be the second!

jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

Why do rustbelts vote radical right? Studying the German Ruhr area, @nilsblossey.bsky.social, @lstoetze.bsky.social and I show: it’s not just about deindustrialization, but also about the original industrialization. Where coal is buried deeper and mining started later, the AfD is stronger today 1/12

Russell Vought, Trump’s Shadow President From the wholesale gutting of federal agencies to the ongoing government shutdown, Russell Vought has drawn the road map for Trump’s second term. Vought has consolidated power to an extent that inside...

The real danger of MAGA lies not in Trump but in Vought: a zealous Christian nationalist with an encyclopedic knowledge of government bureaucracy who's willing (even happy) to hide in the shadows while directing any glad-hand who wants to focus on winning votes.

www.propublica.org/article/russ...

The over generalization of specific LLMs into ‘AI’ is ridiculous and takes debates in wrong directions. Everyone will use the appropriate computerized tools for their tasks. The real question is which tools are most appropriate for which tasks and how can we make those tools better.

You think computers are not artificial?

I haven’t read paper but seems like an odd research question. Obviously it’s a tool w benefits, but that’s not really the point is it.
Plus, everyone uses AI anyway, unless they’re still submitting papers vis typewriter. The real question is what specific things can be done, how to improve them etc

Isn’t Harvard in the private sector, despite current madness?

But not sure how many academics would actually be successful elsewhere and remaining may be more about fear/anxiety/lifestyle preferences as opposed to relishing ‘prestige’. The other jobs that pay more are usually more prestigious.

Interesting. Maybe I’m out of touch. I can see how the top universities are associated with prestige but never considered the job category/title ‘professor’ to be particularly prestigious.

When I was growing up it was more of a ‘respectable’ job for people who were smart but slightly odd.

The ‘best minds’ part is interesting. I suspect academia always attracted ‘smart’ people with certain personality types that were less of good fit elsewhere. Not sure that makes their minds better or worse.

But yes, if the overall status/rewards decline, then fewer smart people will come.

Harvard (and all universities) must take a stand against Trump's extorionary "compact". Enos and Levitsky.
www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them

@dpzollinger.bsky.social and I are thrilled "Cleavage Politics in Western Democracies" is out as an SI at @wepsocial.bsky.social!

Its papers explore the foundations of the cleavage pitting new left against radical right parties, and how it compares to the classic cleavages of Lipset & Rokkan:

🧵⬇️

How are cultural tastes stratified? Evidence from library borrowing for the entire population of Denmark Abstract. Research shows that cultural tastes are socially stratified. Yet, most of this research relies on small-sample surveys and includes only a few di

Even in Denmark, cultural tastes are socially stratified. With some quite cool library data we find strong gradients by education and wealth - important as wealth is rarely studied in cultural stratification research

doi.org/10.1093/esr/...
OA: osf.io/ar2xc_v2/dow...
@europeansocreview.bsky.social

We issued a press release when the article was published:
👉 www.uni-mannheim.de/en/newsroom/...

For all 2025
@migcitizenapsa.bsky.social Awards please see:
👉 connect.apsanet.org/s43/awards/
2/2

📣 Marc Helbling, @rahsaanmax.bsky.social
, and Richard Traunmüller have won the @migcitizenapsa.bsky.social Best Article Award for
“Numbers, Selectivity, and Rights: The Conditional Nature of Immigration Policy Preferences”.
Congratulations!
👉 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
1/2

The Democratic establishment is clearly betting that Republicans will offer them an electoral victory while they attend the wedding parties of billionaires. The only vision for the Democratic Party originates from its left wing, which is vigorously censured by its mainstream. It may well be that the Democratic leadership is correct in thinking that the best strategy is to do nothing and waiting for MAGA to fail. But this, like MAGA, is a “back again” ideology, one of “restoring” democracy rather than transforming the conditions that generated the present disaster. To restore democracy, it needs to be reformed. This is the project we need.

Przeworski says it cleanly, clearly, and convincingly.

What then must we do?

www.dissentmagazine.org/article/how-...

So many echoes from this article for US politics....

I think you want to come to Sussex in a few weeks for the latest interdisciplinary migration research. Register now! @scmrjems.bsky.social

Tremendous research from Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe finds that "2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing terrorist attacks outnumber those from the violent far right." But don't miss the broader picture — depicted in the below graph... www.csis.org/analysis/lef...

Opinion | The Grand Strategy Behind Trump’s Crackdown on Academia

Enough of the BS. It's not a 'crackdown' on academia. You 'crackdown' on criminals and villains. It's a wild assault and a desperate power grab. And that shouldn't be hard to say, regardless of ideological preferences.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/o...

Jobs | City University of New York

CUNY @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social is hiring two tenured associate professors in Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies! Review of applications begins October 1. See link for more info.

cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/...

We’re at #LDConf discussing 'How can liberals win the argument on immigration?' With @lisasmartmp.bsky.social @markpackuk.bsky.social @sundersays.bsky.social + US migration expert Frank Sharry.

The call for papers for the first ever EPSS conference 2026 in Belfast is open until November 7th 2025.

epssnet.org/belfast-2026/

@rdassonneville.bsky.social and I will be chairing the section on Electoral and Voting Behavior. We look forward to your submissions and to a fantastic conference!

“Queuing in pubs combines the worst elements of communism – yes, the very worst elements – without any of the good stuff, like free housing or hastily built nuclear power stations.”

Alarming.

Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man Exclusive: Instagram pictures of girls as young as 13 were posted to promote Threads site ‘as bait’, campaigner says

So these people are just now discovering the difference between the internet and their private group chat. Adults amaze me.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Trump Still Polling Well With Working-Class American Pedophiles WASHINGTON—Despite the president’s sagging approval rating overall, a Gallup Poll released Tuesday confirmed that Donald Trump’s support remained overwhelmingly strong among working-class American ped...

Trump Still Polling Well With Working-Class American Pedophiles

ChatGPT Is Blowing Up Marriages as Spouses Use AI to Attack Their Partners Across the world, marriages are being destroyed as spouses use AI like OpenAI's ChatGPT to attack their partners.

"Even Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist known as a 'Godfather of AI' — a technology that likely wouldn't exist in its current form without his contributions — recently conceded that his girlfriend had broken up with him using ChatGPT." futurism.com/chatgpt-marr...

Miyagawa Shuntei's 1898 painting, "Playing Go (Japanese Chess)"

How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go!

400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!

🚨 New working paper alert 🚨
Missing summer — and the Tour de France? Don’t worry, we got you covered. 🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️
In this paper, we show that being on the route of Tour de France reduces far-right voting. osf.io/preprints/so...