Hannah M. Ridge

Interesting AmericasBarometer result from @johnsides.bsky.social in this week's @goodauth.bsky.social newsletter. Strong public willingness to trade features of democracy (free elections, free expression) for material and physical security, with some party differences.

mailchi.mp/goodauthorit...

What do you do if you suspect a reviewer used AI to do the review? (hallucinated citation, inverted conclusions)

Excited to see Contours of Israeli Politics (@templeunivpress.bsky.social) included in the Middle East Institute book list this year! 🧿
t.co/6DT1MFcSU6

New Publication Alert!
Check "Holidays, Religiosity, and Democratic Attitudes" by @hmridge.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1163/1876...

ChapmanU Professor Hannah Ridge (Political Science) published a journal article, "Holy day surveys and political attitudes in Israel," using European Social Survey data in Politics and Religion.

@hmridge.bsky.social
www.cambridge.org/core/journa...

📓 New paper examining the effect of religious cues on (non)democratic attitudes.
Jewish Israelis who answer questions on the Sabbath expressed more openness to non-democratic governance
The effect was strongest among the 'secular' respondents (@ESS_Survey @ElectionStudyIL)
doi.org/10.1163/1876...

Thucydides tells us Athens had extensive public debate about whether or not to commit war crimes. Also, Athens lost the Peloponnesian War -- and its democracy.

📘Excited to see this at the Temple University Press
table at #APSA2025

Tried to explain this to a senior colleague recently, who suggested I was overreacting - thanks to @abuaardvark.bsky.social for saying it more clearly and eloquently

Revealed: Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war Figures from classified IDF database listed 8,900 named fighters as dead or probably dead in May, as overall death toll reached 53,000

"Figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database indicate five out of six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians, an extreme rate of slaughter rarely matched in recent decades of warfare." www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Dear universities,

I am begging you to stop requiring letters of recommendation for master's programmes. You and I both know you don't read them, so stop asking for them.

Instead, have applicants list a name and get in touch if it's a borderline case.

Signed,
Everyone.

The trick to getting a PhD is to be the first person ever to find fascination in a deeply, insanely boring thing.

WHO says Israel attacked its Gaza premises UN agency warns war is pushing health system towards collapse as local officials report raft of deaths from starvation

"The WHO said that both its staff residence & its main warehouse in Deir al-Balah had been attacked by Israeli forces, with soldiers detaining two staff & two of their family members before releasing three of them...which it said was “part of a pattern of systematic destruction of health facilities"

“But they didn’t do that. They lied. Repeatedly. They claimed that they didn’t see evidence of systemic abuses. They resorted to strange formulations such as “too many Palestinians have been killed,” as if there was some acceptable number that had been exceeded.” Excellent by @mattduss.bsky.social

Feeling really grateful and thankful to the Polarization Research Lab at Stanford for agreeing to fund my study with Hannah Ridge on democratic backsliding! More details to come soon.

Asymmetric Polarization: The Perception that Republicans Pose Harm to Disadvantaged Groups Drives Democrats' Greater Dislike of Republicans in Social Contexts
eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/22...

When a journal reviewer says political science articles should not talk about politics, what should you talk about?

Comparativesky
MenaSky

Medical journals like the Lancet have been publishing articles a/b the Gaza Ministry of Health numbers’ reliability since fall 23. Given scale of destruction & recording methods, they were always undercounts. Outside numbers underestimate civilian death b/c they treat all adult men as combatants.

It isn’t as if cheating is new. But now, as one student put it, “the ceiling has been blown off.” Who could resist a tool that makes every assignment easier with seemingly no consequences? After spending the better part of the past two years grading AI-generated papers, Troy Jollimore, a poet, philosopher, and Cal State Chico ethics professor, has concerns. “Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate,” he said. “Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.” That future may arrive sooner than expected when you consider what a short window college really is. Already, roughly half of all undergrads have never experienced college without easy access to generative AI. “We’re talking about an entire generation of learning perhaps significantly undermined here,” said Green, the Santa Clara tech ethicist. “It’s short-circuiting the learning process, and it’s happening fast.”

“Massive #s of students are going to emerge... who are essentially illiterate. Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate + having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”

This isn't the only reason AI is bad, but it's why it is bad for students.

Excellent new paper on the psychological trait of authoritarianism on political attitudes and voting 🚨

Every day the question, “If he was intentionally trying to kill people and destroy the economy, what would he being doing differently?” goes unanswered.

An important takeaway from our research is that people are more likely to discount (or downplay) extreme messages (such as: we are going to install a dictatorship) when the party is normalized.

Let's not normalize radical parties; stigmatization works.

Latest issue cover of "Politics and Religion" magazine, featuring the title in bold red letters over a striped background with a red footer.

Politics and Religion - Volume 18 - Issue 1 - cup.org/4lCxO4s

#OpenAccess

w/ papers by @joribreslawski.bsky.social, @jpsteinmann.bsky.social, @hmridge.bsky.social, @lordrichie.bsky.social, @gertpickel.bsky.social & more

King: listen, if I have to, you know, *prove* stuff against each person I want to deprive of liberty, then I won’t be able to deprive as many people of liberty!

American Founders: Exactly. And, just to be clear, we’re going to write this part down.

Websites tracking the student visa revocations and ICE abductions on college campuses
www.wearehighered.org/campus-abduc...

“The tariffs, like the shuttering of USAID before it, are going to disproportionately hurt not only American allies — but precisely the sectors and companies (like Tunisian olive oil) which American development aid has spent years supporting and promoting” writes @abuaardvark.bsky.social

It's not an unalloyed good for scholars who are not American residents! Canada can be quite slow & stingy about visitor visas. If you don't have a visa already & you live in the Global South, conference access may be hard. This was an issue for Montreal.
(for lists: www.canada.ca/en/immigrati...)

YouTube video by JSSR—Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion When ethnic group becomes religious orthodoxy

Muslim ≠ Arab and vice versa...but for many, ethnicity and religion become conjoined in what's termed "ethnodoxy." Do people who share this view more strongly have different attitudes about immigration? @hmridge.bsky.social explains her findings in this video:
youtu.be/Sz6417k0nGE?...