Biff Parker-Magyar

third recent text from friends in ~Jordan asking if Zohran Mamdani is *really* about to win

1. as a political scientist we absolutely love to discuss early voting
2. first time in a while my voice messages back haven't needed to explain some distressing feature of U.S. politics
3. fingers crossed

Call for Proposals: 2026 Travel Research Engagement Grants - Project on Middle East Political Science The Project on Middle East Political Science announces a call for proposals for POMEPS Travel – Research – Engagement (TRE) grants for 2026. Awards of up to $3,000 will be offered to support research ...

TWO MORE DAYS to apply for the POMEPS Travel – Research – Engagement (TRE) grants for 2026. Awards of up to $3,000 will be offered to support research travel to the broader Middle East. Deadline to apply: Oct. 15th. More info: pomeps.org/call-for-pro...

Graph shows the number of monthly protests in Jordan from 2016 to 2024, with a steep rise in protests in 2024 focused on Palestine.

New article from @biffpm.bsky.social on a little-noticed court decision to outlaw Jordan’s teacher’s union. Her analysis? The muted response underscores how Jordan’s political landscape has shifted as attention/activism center on Gaza. https://loom.ly/D97MUsU

Call for Proposals: POMEPS Junior Scholar Book Development Workshops 2025-2026 - Project on Middle East Political Science The Project on Middle East Political Science is pleased to call for proposals for the POMEPS Junior Scholar Book Development Workshops to be held in a virtual format throughout the academic year 2025-...

POMEPS is pleased to call for proposals for the POMEPS Junior Scholar Book Development Workshops to be held in a virtual format throughout the academic year 2025-2026. The deadline to apply is Sept. 15. More info:
pomeps.org/pomeps-junio...

Oh so it does have phd level intelligence

That shift is obvious to all: I reached out to a knowledgeable friend about the piece, and he hadn't even heard of the court case: "I've been on Palestine frequency since 2023"

But it also shows up in the data, for instance ACLED's tabulations of protests in Jordan --

The muted response to the decision also underscores how Jordan’s political landscape has shifted as attention and activism center on Gaza and recent, horrifying images of starvation, rendering secondary many of the animating controversies of the post–Arab Spring years

The court decision declared unconstitutional an Arab Spring-era law conceding organizing rights for teachers, and comes nearly 5 years after a crackdown on the group that came to be seen as primary evidence of Jordan's shrinking political space

The Quiet Demise of Jordan’s Political Space | Journal of Democracy In the shadow of Gaza’s destruction, the Jordanian regime has quietly repressed one of the main sources of the country’s political activism.

I wrote a piece for @jodemocracy.bsky.social on a little-noticed court decision last week to effectively permanently outlaw Jordan’s teacher’s union
www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclu...

Syrian forces massacred 1,500 Alawites. The chain of command led to Damascus. A Reuters investigation found 40 distinct sites of killings, looting and arson during three days of sectarian massacres following an Assad loyalist insurgency. The chain of command led from the attackers directly to men serving alongside Syria’s new leaders in Damascus. The killings now threaten Syria's fragile transition.

www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Iran, Israel launch new attacks after Tehran rules out nuclear talks Iran and Israel exchanged fresh attacks early on Saturday, a day after Tehran said it would not negotiate over its nuclear programme while under threat and Europe tried to keep peace talks alive.

"'This was an amazing success tonight,' Trump told Reuters in a telephone interview. 'They should make peace immediately or they'll get hit again.'"

That does not sound like a leader who wants this to be "one and done." www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Unpacking the Gender 'Paradox’ Behind Arab Women in Tech - MERIP ompared to women in the United States and most European countries, Arab women are highly represented in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and related computing fields. In fact, six of […]

NEW: Why are women overrepresented in STEM fields in the Arab world, despite broader gender inequality? Fida Adely, Jennifer Olmsted and Sana Odeh surveyed members of Arab Women in Computing to find out, and the results defy simplistic economic explanations.

READ NOW

Trump says everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran President Donald Trump on Monday urged everyone to immediately evacuate Tehran, and reiterated that Iran should have signed a nuclear deal with the United States.

10 million people

"President Donald Trump on Monday urged everyone to immediately evacuate Tehran, and reiterated that Iran should have signed a nuclear deal with the United States."

(as a quick reminder, it did.)

www.reuters.com/world/middle...

list experiment in the wild

No evidence linking Tufts student to antisemitism or terrorism, State Dept. office found An internal memo, prepared before Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by ICE, raises doubts about the Trump administration’s claims that she supports Hamas.

Days before masked ICE agents detained Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk to deport her, Dept determined that the admin had not produced any evidence showing she engaged in antisemitic activities or made public statements supporting a terrorist organization www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Congrats, Chagai! Amazing news.

The image repeats the information in the post

Join us next week! Polisky Dictatorsky
On Tuesday April 8 at 11:00-12:00pm EST/5:00-6:00pm CET Ahmed Ezzeldin Mohamed (Toulouse) will present "Monopolizing Clientelism During Regime Transition" followed by comments by @shalaby12.bsky.social (Wisconsin-Madison) and @biffpm.bsky.social (@harvard.edu)

"Creating a ruckus" is his euphemism for wrote an op-ed in a newspaper. The Constitution protects all people under U.S. jurisdiction (not just citizens) from government actions penalizing them for speech, use of the free press, or peaceful assembly.

Columbia Student Hunted by ICE Sues to Prevent Deportation Yunseo Chung, a legal permanent resident who has lived in the U.S. since she was 7, participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Immigration agents visited residences looking for her.

It's a rare bit of good news to (belatedly) see this order re: the Columbia student been in hiding. Hopefully it's followed

Honest q is when will we see lawsuits on the legal rationale for Rubio unilaterally revoking visas? Would that go to the Supreme Court?

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/n...

Her attorney says she might have come onto ICE's radar after being doxxed for writing this op-ed www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024...

A Change of Heart? Why Individual-Level Public Opinion Shifted Against Trump’s “Muslim Ban” - Political Behavior Public opinion research suggests that rapid and significant individual-level fluctuations in opinions toward various policies is fairly unexpected absent methodological artifacts. While this may gener...

Many “savvy” folks argue protests can’t work. Evidence suggests otherwise.

“Muslim ban set off a fury of protests across US, garnering tremendous media attention and discussion… Portraying ‘Ban’ at odds with inclusive elements of American identity prompted some citizens to shift their attitudes…”

Oscar-Winning Palestinian Film Director Attacked by Israeli Settlers, Detained Hamdan Ballal, co-director of “No Other Land,” was blindfolded and taken into custody by Israeli forces, according to his lawyer, footage from the scene and witnesses.

www.wsj.com/world/middle...

My fantastic co-authors on this cross-platform study have not crossed platforms onto BlueSky. On X, we'll have to post the same thing (but in Arabic, to hopefully reach a different audience...)

Link here: doi.org/10.1086/732997

I hope the coming days and years require fewer perilous, personal sacrifices on the part of Syria’s journalists, more freedom of expression for every social media user, and less violence on all three platforms 🙏

He nevertheless uses Twitter “more frequently given a humanitarian duty to convey the suffering of Syrians and the demographic, political, and local changes in a transparent way to the whole word in the hope it will one day have an impact on changing what is occurring in Syria.”

With the unexpected fall of Bashar, I find some of the users’ responses especially poignant. One photographer noted that Telegram “allows him to convey Syria’s bloody reality, and facts, as is,”

"...As a result, the relationship between the message, the platform, and the audience is triangular. They interact with one another, and cannot be disentangled”

A true research design problem, aptly summarized

I loved this quotation from a Syrian website editor summarizing the argument: “A social media user must determine their message, and then the audience they want to deliver it to. From there, they determine the platform they’ll put it on. This platform then shapes the message..."