David Lazer

More people believe in conspiracy theories than you might think, new research reveals The results of a survey after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump show how conspiracy theories spread and lead to believers.

Professor @davidlazer.bsky.social conducted a study on the spread of conspiracy theories after the 2024 attempted assasination on President Trump. In a story for @nuglobalnews.bsky.social, Prof. Lazer says the study reveals mistrust in institutions on both sides of the political spectrum.

My quote of the day

Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.

Linus Pauling

Unprecedented corruption

Job Market - Bocconi University Recruiting, Faculty, Post-doc Grant, Collaboration Contracts

Junior and senior faculty positions in computational social scientists at Bocconi, one of the world's best universiites: Assistant Prof: jobmarket.unibocconi.eu?id=841
Associate/Full Prof: jobmarket.unibocconi.eu?id=843

How common are “survey professionals” - people who take dozens of online surveys for pay - across online panels, and do they harm data quality?

Our paper, FirstView at @politicalanalysis.bsky.social, tackles this question using browsing data from three U.S. samples (Facebook, YouGov, and Lucid):

👏👏👏

My new op-ed with @lkfazio.bsky.social:

Trump sent a 'compact' to our universities. They should reject this devil's bargain.
Any institution that yields to these broad and intrusive demands would forever be subservient to the whims of the government.
www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

EU pushes new AI strategy to reduce tech reliance on US and China Brussels to unveil plan targeting digital sovereignty as it warns technology can be ‘weaponised’ by geopolitical rivals

on.ft.com/48hiEgC "It warns of “external dependencies of the AI stack” — the infrastructure and software needed to build, train and manage AI applications — which it says “can be weaponised” by both “state and non-state actors”, posing a risk to supply chains."

AAC&U Statement on the Trump Administration’s “Compact for… | AAC&U AAC&U Statement on the Trump Administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”

@aacu.org has stepped up & called the Trump "compact" for higher ed what it is: "The compact is, in effect, an ultimatum...This is not constructive engagement." Big question is where is @aau.edu? If your university is part of AAU, write to your president & trustees now.
www.aacu.org/newsroom/aac...

Colleges weigh whether to sign onto Trump plan or forgo federal benefits A new proposal from the Trump administration would give colleges funding advantages if they adopt conservative priorities.

“No self-respecting university could ever accept something like this,” said Lee Bollinger, a First Amendment scholar and former Columbia University president. “Trying to protect conservative ideas against being ‘belittled’ — that’s about as violative of the First Amendment interests as you can get.”

Social media feeds today are optimized for engagement, often leading to misalignment between users' intentions and technology use.

In a new paper, we introduce Bonsai, a tool to create feeds based on stated preferences, rather than predicted engagement.

arxiv.org/abs/2509.10776

Universities Must Reject Trump Admin 'Loyalty Oath' Compacts The AAUP and AFT warn that the Trump administration’s offer to give preferential treatment to colleges and universities that court government favor in exchange for allegiance to a partisan ideological...

The Trump admin’s offer to give preferential treatment to institutions that toe the party line reeks of bribery in exchange for allegiance to a partisan ideological agenda.

This is corruption.

Adherence to ‘loyalty oaths’ would usher in a new era of thought policing in American higher education.

New #chapter from Farmer et al: Social Connection in Contemporary Life: A Case Study of Urban Fringe Suburb Residents
TL;DR: Digital platforms emerge as integral to modern social connection, maintaining existing relationships and building new ones
link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

Trump's higher ed ransom note is here - everyone would have to acquiesce to their unprecedented demands or not be "given priority for grants," plus they can demand "reimbursement" for "violations" www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

A mechanism to enforce fealty. An attack on academic freedom and democracy

A moment that calls for collective action… to reject this transparent attack on academic freedom.

Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries monitors a world out of balance - Nature A revised ‘Doughnut’ providing a visual assessment of trends in social deprivation and planetary degradation over the past two decades shows more than doubling of global GDP accompanied by accelerating ecological overshoot but only a modest reduction in human deprivation.

The richest 20% of nations, with 15% of the global population, contribute more than 40% of annual ecological overshoot; the poorest 40% of countries, with 42% of the global population, experience more than 60% of social shortfall 🧪
A new analysis by Fanning & Raworth
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Educated acquiescence: how academia sustains authoritarianism in China - Theory and Society As a presumed bastion of the Enlightenment values that support a critical intelligentsia, the university is often regarded as both the bedrock and beneficiary of liberal democracy. By contrast, authoritarian regimes are said to discourage higher education out of fear that the growth of a critical intelligentsia could imperil their survival. The case of China, past and present, challenges this conventional wisdom. Imperial China, the most enduring authoritarian political system in world history, thrived in large part precisely because of its sponsorship of a form of higher education closely tied to state interests. Although twentieth-century revolutions brought fundamental change to Chinese politics and pedagogy, the contemporary party-state also actively promotes higher education, cultivating a mutually advantageous state-scholar nexus and thereby reducing the likelihood of intellectual-led opposition. As in the imperial past, authoritarian rule in China today is buttressed by a pattern of educated acquiescence, with academia acceding to political compliance in exchange for the many benefits conferred upon it by the state. The role of educated acquiescence in enabling Chinese authoritarianism highlights the contributions of a cooperative academy to authoritarian durability and raises questions with prevailing assumptions that associate the flourishing of higher education with liberal democracy.

Harvard's Elizabeth J. Perry (2019):

"...authoritarian rule [can be] buttressed by a pattern of educated acquiescence, with academia acceding to political compliance in exchange for the many benefits conferred upon it by the state."

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

In New Book, Nick Clegg Can't Stop Spinning Meta | TechPolicy.Press Clegg's new book fails to accomplish its stated goals and marks a new low for Silicon Valley arrogance, writes Paul M. Barrett.

Paul Barrett reviews Nick Clegg’s new book, which is titled How to Save the Internet: The Threat to Global Connection in the Age of AI and Political Conflict. www.techpolicy.press/in-new-book-...

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Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Targeted Noncitizens Over Pro-Palestinian Speech

Very proud of my colleagues right now--especially @ramyakrishnan.bsky.social and @alexabdo.bsky.social. But we could not have got this far without the superb trial lawyers at Sher Tremonte. Grateful to them for all of the time and energy they put into this case. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/u...

“I’m all for unifying, I’m all for bridging gaps, but not at the expense of my neighbor’s humanity. I just can’t.” Thank you for this, Ta-Nehisi Coates. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ta-nehisi-coates.html

How can local news thrive?
A study by @EmilyVanDuyn and @TaliaStroud finds that engaged journalism — where journalists connect more directly with communities — may be part of the answer.

"Living through the rise of a dictatorship just means inhabiting a space that is gradually shrinking. There’s no point in resisting, not at first. You just make do with whatever breathing room you still have—until you lose that too."

#Mets😔

Trump is building a personalist regime where every university must bend the knee or lose funding and every business must bend the knee or face tariffs, H-1B fees, and regulatory blackmail. You can't cover each domain in isolation; they are all the same story.

Just saying it out loud.

the post office is a public service. it doesn’t need to make money. public transit doesn’t need to make money. the library doesn’t need to make money. some things exist for the public good and we desperately need lawmakers to stop thinking about them in terms of capitalism. these are not businesses.

Tricky issue around joint majors, eg ppe, which have proliferated.

@pengzell.bsky.social asks about the social sciences, which I haven't looked at in a while. Indexing these against 2008 rather than peak, and struck that economics has been on a downslope for 6 years now, while psychology, the worst discipline, continues to rise rapidly.
bsky.app/profile/peng...