From Curtis White’s article on philanthropy in the current issue of Jacobin: In the United States, everyone may enjoy freedom of speech so long as it doesn’t matter. For those who would like what they say to matter, freedom of speech is very expensive. It goes on: It is for this reason that organizations with […]
Henry Farrell
Henry Farrell is an associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.
Posted inPolitics
The Toolitzers
A few weeks ago, I got an email from a publicist at Penguin Books: In 2008, columnist Jonah Goldberg triggered a firestorm of controversy with his first book, LIBERAL FASCISM, a #1 New York Times bestseller. Now, he’s about to unleash another bold, funny, and thoughtful argument in his new book, THE TYRANNY OF CLICHÉS: […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
The Chronicle Has Some ‘Splaining to Do
I haven’t had time to do more than goggle at the horror of the blogging trainwreck that is Naomi Schaefer Riley. A pro-tip: when you want to write a post entitled “The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations,” it is a good idea, at the very minimum to, you know, […]
Posted inPolitics
It’s Tough to Make Predictions …
Daniel Gayo-Avello has strong feelings about the unpromising record of efforts to predict election results using Twitter data. “No, you cannot predict elections with Twitter” And shows that, despite various claims by academics in computer science, no-one seems to have actually tried. I don’t know whether the spelling mistake in this sentence – “In all […]
Posted inPolitics
The Economist Fails the Turing Test again
Five years ago I linked to a Bill Emmott column on the impending election of Nicholas Sarkozy as president of France thusly: This unashamed mash note from Bill Emmott, former editor of the Economist presents a class of a triple-distilled tincture of the prevailing globollocks on Sarkozy’s victory in France. You don’t need to read […]
Posted inPolitics
Happy Krauthammer Day
It’s that time of the year again – it’s been five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus […]
Posted inPolitics
Crowdsource Duncan Black
Duncan Black – aka ‘Atrios’ – is trying to identify the wankers of the decade, and finding that reliving the trauma is hard. I’ve been a bit jokey about the difficulties of writing the wanker posts, but in truth it has been difficult, though not because it’s hard work or similar. The ESCHATON DECADE has […]
Posted inPolitics
Stephen J. Dubner: My Part in his Upfall
So it appears that Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics is upset at various critics. He is deeply unhappy with Andrew Gelman and Kaiser Fung, for having written what appeared to me to be a skeptical but intellectually generous take on the Freakonomics project. He is angry at Ezra Klein, whom he describes as someone […]
Posted inPolitics
Cheney and Manning: A Modest Proposal
It’s not at all surprising that most US media have yawned at today’s news that a UN rapporteur has found that the US has treated Bradley Manning in a cruel and inhuman fashion. But it does highlight a rather interesting inequity. On the one side of the balance sheet, we have Richard B. Cheney. This […]
Posted inPolitics
The Political Science of Child Soldiering in Africa
As reactions for, and against the Invisible Children campaign against Joseph Kony convulse blogs and Twitter, it may be no harm to turn to what political scientists have to say. Bernd Beber and Chris Blattman have a paper under submission on the logic of child soldiering that draws on a major data gathering project which […]
