Dan Pemstein

@danpemstein.com

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Political economist working mostly on democratic institutions, tech politics, political careers and party org, and measurement. http://www.danpemstein.com

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Destroying your nursing program does not play well www.thedickinsonpress.com/news/local/d...

"Every full-time faculty member of Dickinson State University nursing program has resigned, citing workload and accreditation concerns. Questions arise for program weeks before the fall semester." www.thedickinsonpress.com/news/dsu-nur...

DSU Nursing in Crisis: Resignation of entire faculty leaves uncertainty for future of programwww.thedickinsonpress.com Every full-time faculty member of Dickinson State University nursing program has resigned, citing workload and accreditation concerns. Questions arise for program weeks before the fall semester.

Dickinson State University president resigns following nursing program exoduswww.thedickinsonpress.com Stephen Easton resigns days after departure of the university's entire full-time nursing program staff, citing restrictions from the North Dakota Board of Nursing and financial concerns.

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By gutting accreditors, a second Trump admin would remove a credible threat to state-imposed attacks on higher education, eg in Florida

We need the higher ed media to better describe what's at stake here. These are not "reforms," they're an authoritarian takeover. They're not "bold" or "sweeping," they're undemocratic and fascist. These aren't normal policy recommendations, they're a dismantling of higher education!

How Project 2025 could radically reshape higher edwww.insidehighered.com The sweeping conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration would dismantle the Education Department, privatize student loans and end all ongoing Title IX investigations. Critics say it’s a ...

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Trying to stay out of the Biden internet debate, but wrote this piece about how the formal rules of the nomination process aren't really the problem. It's all about the informal ruleshttps://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/biden-replacement-president-race-democrat-history-rcna160923

If you're in the DL area any time soon, troll hunting is a nice way to spend an afternoon+.

Great story! Great art! Great awareness!! www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/20...

He makes giant trolls out of trash, hides them in woods for people to findwww.washingtonpost.com ‘My ultimate goal is to have trolls surprising people in every state,’ said Thomas Dambo, whose latest project is in Detroit Lakes, Minn.

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A new program from NSF is targeting graduate fellowship money to people who received Honorable Mention on a GRFP within the past three years, who are currently enrolled in grad school in EPSCoR states. here is the solicitation: new.nsf.gov/funding/oppo... and a map of EPSCoR eligible states:

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This is an appalling and horrifying story about the attacks researchers like @katestarbird.bsky.social undergo by those determined to silence any who call out their disinformation and other underhanded tactics. Very similar to what climate scientists experience but with even MORE vitriol.

Nature spoke to political scientists from around the world whose work has flung them into both the public and political limelight, sometimes with drastic consequences for their personal and professional lives. 🧪

‘It can feel like there’s no way out’ — political scientists face pushback on their workgo.nature.com In a year in which numerous countries are going to the polls, many election-watching scientists are under pressure. In a year in which numerous countries are going to the polls, many election-watching...

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🎉Exciting news! We're thrilled to announce that @thejop.bsky.social will continue accepting Registered Reports as a standard article format. While we have a change in editors coming up at the start of the year, this valuable submission option is here to stay. 1/6 🧵

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New paper on what public discourse gets wrong about misinformation. We push back on causal claims about harms from mass exposure to social media misinfo. Instead, we argue for focusing on exposure/effects on the fringe -- and, importantly, in non-US contexts. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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From this article pushing back against attacks on researchers working on mis- and disinformation: “We specifically urge academics to not be silenced by voices that push back against evidence-informed argumentation under the guise of free speech.”

Read and share this important new piece in Nature, from authors including @profsanderlinden.bsky.social and @naomioreskes.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Misinformation poses a bigger threat to democracy than you might thinkwww.nature.com In today’s polarized political climate, researchers who combat mistruths have come under attack and been labelled as unelected arbiters of truth. But the fight against misinformation is valid, warrant...

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We have a new paper out in the Journal of Information Technology and Politics. It "introduces" (we're now on v5) the DSP dataset. This is expert survey data collected as part of the annual V-Dem survey. The paper provides an overview and does some validation. doi.org/10.1080/1933...

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Transition at the APSR: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Transition at the APSRwww.cambridge.org Transition at the APSR

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From one of my colleagues two weeks ago: “Legal cases against former heads of state are commonplace in healthy democracies.” freedomhouse.org/article/us-i...

US: International Context for Prosecuting Former Presidentsfreedomhouse.org Legal cases against former heads of state are commonplace in healthy democracies. The United States, with its strong rule-of-law tradition and independent judicial institutions, is entirely capable of...

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It’s depressing to see a university president helping to lead the efforts to reduce the fraction of tenured faculty. And making individual faculty responsible for class enrollments, as is suggested here, is a terrible idea. Faculty often have little to no control over the specific classes they teach

I’m guessing this playbook is coming to Texas in 2025. The lege doesn’t understand that they have more control over tenured fac who can’t easily move. Open up a bunch of NTT positions and ppl will be fine to burn it down and move on. Cf staff turnover. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

Tenure under fire—again—in North Dakotawww.insidehighered.com Republican lawmakers and a university president pushed a bill last year that would diminish faculty job protections at two institutions. It failed by a hair, but the State Board of Higher Education ha...

Gotta end tenure because of AI-powered nanobots, or something: "[NDUS Chancellor Hagerott] connected this to another hot higher education topic, artificial intelligence, by saying he’s heard human lifespans will increase."

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God damn it

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The abuse of public records to attack researchers, a thread: On Tuesday morning of this week (May 21), Matt Taibbi began to send me a series of messages requesting my response to a series of leading questions about public records that he planned to publish as part of an upcoming series of articles.

When I moved to MS a decade ago, I stopped my uhaul at a McDs in some small town, and the two senior class photos on the wall hammered home that I was entering the deep South. It was striking.

Segregation Academies Still Operate Across the South. One Town Grapples With Its Divided Schools. www.propublica.org/article/camd...

Segregation Academies Still Operate Across the South. One Town Grapples With Its Divided Schools.www.propublica.org Seventy years after Brown v. Board, Black and white residents, in Camden, Alabama, say they would like to see their children schooled together. But after so long apart, they aren’t sure how to make it...

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This academic year has been particularly challenging for those working at universities in the U.S. Over the past few months I've been thinking about how we ended up here, and some paths forward. I wrote down some of those thoughts for the Brookings Institution: www.brookings.edu/articles/uni...

Universities are palaces for the people. Their leaders should remember that. | Brookingswww.brookings.edu When academic institutions ignore and otherwise fail to engage with broader publics, that breeds a sense of resentment toward them.

So I decided to compare us to other regional schools, since that seemed like a more fair comparison. Would like to think we're doing something special (along with SDSU and UM Morris), but I suspect this is based on low survey response rates with huge margins of error...

This analysis (freopp.wpengine.com/roi-undergra...) says a polisci degree at NDSU has the 17th highest ROI of any UG degree on campus. The highest in Arts and Sciences. So anyway, apropos of nothing, certainly not an unobserved confounder, I'm sharing this song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs-U...

ROI Undergraduate - FREOPPfreopp.wpengine.com

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Nice to have NDSU's RCA office write a piece about my recently-funded project. If you have a recent undergrad who might be interested, I'll be hiring a lab coordinator to work on this, so send them my way! www.ndsu.edu/research/res...

Conwell_NIH_grant | Research and Creative Activity | NDSUwww.ndsu.edu

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Big victory for transparency here in Musk's lawsuit over data scraping. The judge says allowing social platforms total control over their data risks creating "information monopolies that would disserve the public interest."

Elon Musk's X loses lawsuit against Bright Data over data scrapingwww.cnbc.com A federal judge in California dismissed a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk's X against Israel's Bright Data, and said X "wants it both ways."

ROI Undergraduate - FREOPPfreopp.wpengine.com

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this is from a friend and erstwhile colleague: jeffreycisaacdesign.wordpress.com/2024/05/01/a...

An Open Letter to IU’s Pro-Palestinian Student Activists: Why I Can Support You Only So Farjeffreycisaacdesign.wordpress.com May 1, 2024 Dear students, I am writing you in this way to open a real dialogue. Because I respect you, and also because such a serious dialogue is important, here on the Bloomington campus of Indiana...

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Please folks, check your sources. Mint Press News is a far left website that repeatedly spreads conspiracy theories and disinformation (Wikipedia). I just gave a talk featuring research from 2017 that shows how they fit into a echo-system of disinformation targeting the White Helmets in Syria.

If anyone is RT'ing that post about U of Minnesota students being banned from campus for a year, it was posted by the founder of Mint Press, so, uh, maybe get confirmation from another outlet before you go off.

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About 8 years ago, comparativists looked at US politics and said "if Trump is elected president, the comparative experience tells us it will be extremely bad. Corruption, authoritarianism, threats to civil rights, political violence...it's all on the table." And all those predictions were true.

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In respone (retaliation?) for my appearing on 60 minutes last week, Jordan's judiciary committee started to selectively leak out transcipts of my voluntary interview w/ partisan media. Today, they released the full transcript: judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

judiciary.house.gov

The implications of voluntary separation incentives (1 year post-separation salary + benefits) for tenure stream faculty with age + years employed > 55 (esp after earlier rounds at near-retirement age cutoffs) are bleak, but also confusing. Every taker was leaving anyway. I guess more looking to go?