Sam Vortherms

Social Mobility and Stagnation | Los Angeles Review of Books How the university entrance exam and residency permits structure life for in China.

Thrilled that my book was reviewed alongside Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li' new book on the gaokao in the LA Review of Books
lareviewofbooks.org/article/mani...

OU College of International Studies professor reportedly arrested by ICE U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly arrested an OU professor at Will Rogers International Airport Saturday.

My colleague, Dr. Vahid Abedini, was illegally detained by ICE on Saturday. He is currently being held without a court date in sight, despite being in the country legally. Please spread the word! We must ensure his due process rights are upheld. www.oudaily.com/news/ou-prof...

The White House has ordered the US Dept. of Justice to prioritize denaturalization: voiding the citizenship of US citizens.

Who will it denaturalize? "Any" case that it "determines to be sufficiently important".

Point 10 leaves the criteria opaque and arbitrary.

substack.com/redirect/169...

I received a promotion to Associate Professor with tenure at UCI. And we welcomed our second child this month. It'll be hard to top this year, but I look forward to the next chapter, in all respects

As the academic year comes to a close, I am delighted to reflect on all that happened this year, even in these stressful times. My book came out in October, completing a decade long research and writing process.

This link should work

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

*is likely experiencing a rapid acceleration in...

This is a sickening and illegal perversion of power.

The damage being done right now is incomprehensibly large and permanent.

Carving out the heart of Americans’ future.

5. This is of course directly in line with the Project 2025 vision of destroying expertise, institutional knowledge, and independent thought within the federal agencies so as turn the entire federal government into an extension of the President's agenda.

Fulbright-Hays Grants Canceled for the Year The grant programs have supported the international research of students and scholars for more than 60 years.

The Fulbright Hays program was essential for supporting me while I did fieldwork for my PhD. Every day, a new blow for the furtherance of science and research.

www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...

One of the small ways you can have an impact: comment opposing the politicization of career civil servants. This proposal would dramatically accelerate the politicization of a huge range of federal offices, including the politicization of scientific research.

Postdoctoral Scholar - China Data Lab at the 21st Century China Center - HigherEdJobs Jobs in higher education. Faculty and administrative positions at colleges and universities. Updated daily. Free to job seekers.

Oops the pasted link didn’t work. Here it is www.higheredjobs.com/region/detai...

By the way, we are searching for a postdoc for China-focused data analysis at our China Data Lab, would love to have you join us! higheredjobs.com/region/details…

A 50% cut to science funding (which is close to what Trump is proposing for NIH) would result in huge negative long-term economic outcomes:
*7.6% cut in GDP
*8.6% cut in federal revenues
*equivalents of making the average American $10,000 poorer

Chinese Politics Research in Progress Call for Paper (Fall 2025) Timing: Fridays on 1-2PM (EST) / 12-1 PM (CST) / 10-11AM (PST) in Fall, 2025 Venue: Zoom Contact us at cnpoliticsresearchinprogress@gmail.com

We invite you to submit presentations for Fall 2025. We welcome working papers by scholars at various career stages, using any method, in the fields of comparative politics and international relations. Please fill out the form below by May 15:

APARC Jobs Stanford University

🤝 Come work with us!

APARC is #hiring:
🔸 A full-time China Program Coordinator
🔸 A full-time Center Administrative Associate
🔸 A research assistant for a project on the economics of robotics in nursing homes in Japan (for Stanford students only)

Learn more ⬇️

What DEI threatens isn’t merit. It’s monopoly. Political science professor Hakeem Jefferson argues for DEI's importance to de-monopolizing universities.

A colleague at Stanford’s business school used The Stanford Daily to argue—poorly—against DEI. The piece was riddled with historical errors and left one searching for fact, so I broke my public writing hiatus to respond.

I hope you’ll read and share the piece.

stanforddaily.com/2025/04/22/w...

So research on, say, women's health, our ridiculously high maternal mortality rate, or any such research, not to mention any other group who has been excluded by the research industry for decades is out.

Updates on NSF Priorities

NSF's new research "priorities" seems absurd:
research should not "directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups. Research projects with more narrow impact limited to subgroups of people based on protected class or characteristics do not effectuate NSF priorities."
www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...

jesus christ they want her dead

Sometimes I feel like I've woken up in another authoritatian country I know well...

Propaganda and Blame Attribution during Economic Downturns: Evidence from China - Studies in Comparative International Development Amidst sluggish growth, Chinese authorities have sought to spin the narrative about their economy. But does “soft” propaganda—positive messaging, selective presentation of facts, redirection of anger—...

Xiaojun Li and I have a new article in @scidjournal.bsky.social. China's economic growth has slowed. We use a survey experiment to examine the effects of state media messaging on who and what people blame for their difficulties. #chinasky #china 🧵 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world.


I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.

I wish university leaders would a) read this, and b) reconsider their silence.

This administration is coming for higher education. Failing to point out the illegality, the violation of basic legal rights, and attacks on research and what they mean isn't going to save us.

Chuck Schumer Helps Pull Democrats Back From Brink Of Courage

Chuck Schumer Helps Pull Democrats Back From Brink Of Courage

This is who was fired from the union workforce at the Department of Education yesterday. Every single number is a person who served the nation and whose life was wrongly disrupted. That's the first tragedy, but it's clearly not the only one.

Columbia Disciplines Students Who Occupied Campus Building Last Year Sanctions for the Hamilton Hall occupation include expulsions and suspensions.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms any university that would sacrifice its own students to the demands of an authoritarian government.

This is absolute cowardice & capitulation to an administration hellbent on the destruction of American higher education.

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/n...

I’m told this is a real letter. It basically says, “We’ll destroy Columbia unless you destroy it first.”

Since the 1950s, Summer Language Workshops at Indiana University have provided training in Russian, East European, and Central Asian languages. Generations have come to Bloomington to study Romanian, Polish, Kazakh, etc.

Rubio just cancelled all of them
languageworkshop.indiana.edu/summer-langu...

Scatterplot titled “Empirical Evidence of Ideological Targeting in Federal Layoffs: Agencies seen as liberal are significantly more likely to face DOGE layoffs.” • The x-axis represents Perceived Ideological Leaning of federal agencies, ranging from -2 (Most Liberal) to +2 (Most Conservative), based on survey responses from over 1,500 federal executives. • The y-axis shows Agency Size (Number of Staff) on a logarithmic scale from 1,000 to 1,000,000. Each point represents a federal agency: • Red dots indicate agencies that experienced DOGE layoffs. • Gray dots indicate agencies with no layoffs. Key Observations: • Liberal-leaning agencies (left side of the plot) are disproportionately represented among red dots, indicating higher layoff rates. • Notable targeted agencies include: • HHS (Health & Human Services) • EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) • NIH (National Institutes of Health) • CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) • Dept. of Education • USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) • The National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE), despite its conservative leaning (+1 on the scale), is an exception among targeted agencies. • A notable outlier: the Department of Veterans Affairs (moderately conservative) also faced layoffs despite its size. Takeaway: The figure visually demonstrates that DOGE layoffs disproportionately targeted liberal-leaning agencies, supporting claims of ideological bias. The pattern reveals that layoffs were not driven by agency size or budget alone but were strongly associated with perceived ideology. Source: Richardson, Clinton, & Lewis (2018). Elite Perceptions of Agency Ideology and Workforce Skill. The Journal of Politics, 80(1).

The DOGE firings have nothing to do with “efficiency” or “cutting waste.” They’re a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as liberal. This was evident from the start, and now the data confirms it: targeted agencies overwhelmingly those seen as more left-leaning. 🧵⬇️