Allison Nau

The Shocking Truth About Gen Z Voters Is That They’re Pretty Great Stop panicking: They are the most progressive generation ever, especially on race. If that surprises you, you’ve been listening to the wrong story.

Piece from me and @adambonica.bsky.social in @thenewrepublic.bsky.social today about Gen Z

They have bad taste in music but quite progressive political attitudes (even the men)

newrepublic.com/article/2030...

We are now seeing the first long-anticipated use of AI for semi-autonomous cyberattacks.

"This approach allowed the threat actor to achieve operational scale typically associated with nation-state campaigns while maintaining minimal direct involvement" www.anthropic.com/news/disrupt...

YouTube video by MSNBC Rachel Maddow: Why protesting against authoritarians matters

This segment from @maddow.msnbc.com last night does a good job of laying out the logic: effective protests help strengthen and grow the coalition opposed to the administration and, simultaneously, raise the costs of those aligned with Trump. youtu.be/8xnHWD53w60?...

7 Things the No Kings Protests Accomplished The political emergency isn't over, of course, but who thought it would be. Here are seven things this weekend's protests accomplished.

Political organizing rarely sees as good a day as Saturday, Oct. 18.

No Kings protests brought millions of Americans into the streets, some for the first time. Organizers moved through crowds, getting signatures, passing out info, finding new members.

That's one of 6 things No Kings accomplished:

Second "No Kings Day" protests likely the largest single-day political demonstration since 1970, with 4.2-7.6 million participants Here are the initial results from our crowdsourced crowd-counting estimates

Good evening. We estimate that between 4.2 and 7.6 million people turned out for the No Kings Day demonstrations held around the country on Saturday. This makes Oct 18 very likely the biggest single-day U.S. protest event since 1970. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/second-no-...

Fascinating that those who prioritise winning over fairness in sports also prioritise partisan gerrymandering over a fair political map.

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

UK’s arm’s length public bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation Seven in ten Britons say it is important for top scientific institutions to be independent in exclusive new polling.

🧵🚨

The UK’s independent scientific bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation - over the past 5 months I've been working with @martinmckee.bsky.social to map out their vulnerabilities and it's not good news.

Today our report is published!
www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n...

1/11

This absolutely nails Ohio, and the different cultural context of each of its major cities.

DO POLITICAL PROTESTS MATTER? EVIDENCE FROM THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT* ANDREAS MADESTAM DANIEL SHOAG STAN VEUGER DAVID YANAGIZAWA-DROTT Can protests cause political change, or are they merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences? We address this question by studying the Tea Party movement in the United States, which rose to prominence through coordinated rallies across the country on Tax Day, April 15, 2009. We exploit variation in rainfall on the day of these rallies as an exogenous source of variation in attendance. We show that good weather at this initial, coordinating event had significant consequences for the subsequent local strength of the move-ment, increased public support for Tea Party positions, and led to more Republican votes in the 2010 midterm elections. Policy making was also af-fected, as incumbents responded to large protests in their district by voting more conservatively in Congress. Our estimates suggest significant multiplier effects: an additional protester increased the number of Republican votes by a factor well above 1. Together our results show that protests can build political movements that ultimately affect policy making and that they do so by influencing political views rather than solely through the revelation of existing political preferences. JEL Code: D72.

I had never read this before and I regret it. It’s very good.

The kind place: VOICES | British Red Cross The second in The British Red Cross' The kind place series, these brand-new podcast episodes are produced by refugees and people seeking asylum.

The British Red Cross has a podcast called "The Kind Place" and it features conversations with refugees and asylum seekers about their lives. Contributors also learned how to record, edit and produce this series.

Probably something we all need to hear right now.

www.redcross.org.uk/about-us/new...

What Can We Learn from the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem? The Diversity Trumps Ability theorem suggests that, under certain conditions, more diverse groups outperform groups of more individually competent members. Despite initial excitement about the theorem...

Interesting new paper that seeks to revive some of the practical epistemic credentials of the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem after many years of critique: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/2...

Fascinating that districts are gerrymandered for both people and firms, which raises some interesting questions about democracy and capitalism.

I'm not sure there has ever been a host of an 11:30pm U.S. network late night talk show with as firm a religious and moral grounding. The sort of person where it is impossible to imagine him flipping support Trump for pragmatic reasons. In a sense, this is why he had to go.

Set theory and the concept of infinity is core not only to my understanding of mathematics and how the world works, but of faith, God and my place in the universe.

Listened to the episode - but was disappointed that the questions asked and focus seemed to suggest increase in Christianity would lead to greater social conservatism. It would have been good to include a socially liberal Christian counterpoint such as the inclusive church movement.

For what it is worth, the Claude summary of the article completely missed the discussion around defining bias, and the different biases of the human vs algorithmic decisioning processes

I moved to the UK in 2012, and after lots of £ and time spent on various visas etc over the years became eligible and applied for citizenship in 2019.

Fascinating look at a pilot in Amsterdam to use algorithms to help identify welfare fraud. It didn’t work, but it raises several questions around how you define and measure bias.

I am practicing Christian, and at the new members class at my previous church the only part of the Nicene Creed we all could sign up to was the first two words “We believe.” My current (small rural village) church would love for more people to come - regardless of where they are in their journey.

The breakthrough proof bringing mathematics closer to a grand unified theory The Langlands programme has inspired and befuddled mathematicians for more than 50 years. A major advance has now opened up new worlds for them to explore.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Reminds me of my recent holiday when I left all my workout kit except the sports bras at home, so I borrowed my husband’s swim trunks. It was not cute, but I showed up and got it done.

Oval-framed daguerreotype portrait of Frederick Douglass, a prominent 19th-century African American abolitionist, writer, and orator. He wears a dark jacket, patterned waistcoat, white shirt, and bow tie. His expression is serious and resolute, with his wavy hair parted to the side. The photograph reflects his dignity and strength as a leader in the fight against slavery.

In July of 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered one of the greatest speeches in US history. Today it’s often presented in abridged form, though, and skips what seems like a long-winded introduction. If you read the intro closely, however, there’s an ingenious structure. THREAD👇🏽

ICE agents scatter as SD Bishop Pham, other clergy visit immigration court "Our presence made a difference," one priest said, quoting an immigration lawyer saying their client was given more time to prepare for another hearing.

Pope Leo XIV has already had a direct effect in the U.S. in opposing Trump's immigration policy through his appointment of Bishop Pham:
ICE agents scatter as San Diego Bishop Pham, other clergy visit immigration court
timesofsandiego.com/life/2025/06...

My never published research from 20 years ago suggested there also needed to be a level of buy-in from some part of the existing power establishment with degree of influence at senior levels to drive change from within the system. It is the top down and bottom up together that lead to social change.

Right to roam in Scotland, and public footpaths across England and Wales. Moving from the US it blew my mind that I could just go on a countryside walk through farms and estates - and have a pub lunch, and a stop for tea and cake at the end.

All the polls on the LA protests and Trump's response so far The president's approval rating on immigration and deportations is falling fast

Publishing a compilation of all the polls on LA, Trump’s response, immigration and deportations tomorrow at 8:00 at this link. Happy to share the data (as long as you don’t scoop me)

www.gelliottmorris.com/p/all-the-po...

3 Lessons From International Protests Amid the L.A. Unrest (Gift Article) Experts who study protest movements say the scenes unfolding in California broadly follow a script that has played out many times in other countries — sometimes with deadly consequences.

“Harsh crackdowns may generate sympathy for protesters, said Omar Wasow, a political scientist at UC Berkeley who studies protest movements. The “spectacle of violence and repression,” he said, can frame states as ‘bullies’ unjustly squashing expression.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/w...

A map of the US showing that very large numbers of events have taken place nationwide in April and May of 2025.

Mobilization has also been nationwide. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some activists are intentionally demonstrating in their local town rather than just traveling to a nearby big city for events.

A line chart with a blue line showing a large growth of protest events from Jan 20 - May 31, 2025, and a green line showing the relatively modest growth of protest events during the same period in 2017.

My team and I at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@djpressman@bsky.social, Soha Hammam, & Chris Shay) have a new piece out: wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/amer.... In it, we show that through May 2025, the size and scale of anti-Trump protests have dwarfed those in 2017. 🧵