#Department of Political Science

[jcmarchi]

Insights into political outsiders

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Insights into political outsiders

As the old saw has it, 90 percent of politics is just showing up. Which is fine for people who are already engaged in the political system and expect to influence it. What about everyone else? The U.S. has millions and millions of people who typically do not vote or participate in politics. Is there a way into political life for those who are normally disconnected from it?

This is a topic MIT political scientist Ariel White has been studying closely over the last decade. White conducts careful empirical research on typically overlooked subjects, such as the relationship between incarceration and political participation; the way people interact with government administrators; and how a variety of factors, from media coverage to income inequality, influence engagement with politics.

While the media heavily cover the views of frequent voters in certain areas, there is very little attention paid to citizens who do not vote regularly but could. To grasp U.S. politics, it might help us to better understand such people.

“I think there is a much broader story to be told here,” says White, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Political Science.

Study by study, her research has been telling that story. Even short, misdemeanor-linked jail terms, White has found, reduce the likelihood that people will vote — and lower the propensity of family members to vote as well. When people are convicted of felonies, they often lose their right to vote, but they also vote at low rates when eligible. Other studies by White also suggest that an 8 percent minimum wage increase leads to an increase in turnout of about one-third of 1 percent, and that those receiving public benefits are far less likely to vote than those who do not.

These issues are often viewed in partisan terms, although the reality, White thinks, is considerably more complex. When evaluating infrequent or disconnected voters, we do not know enough to make assumptions about these matters.

“Getting people with past criminal convictions registered and voting, when they are eligible, is not a surefire partisan advantage for anybody,” White says. “There’s a lot of heterogeneity in this group, which is not what people assume. Legislators tend to treat this as a partisan issue, but at the mass public level you see less polarization, and more people are willing to support a path for others back into daily life.”

Experiences matter

White grew up near Rochester, New York, and majored in economics and government at Cornell University. She says that initially she never considered entering academia, and tried her hand at a few jobs after graduation. One of them, working as an Americorps-funded paralegal in a legal services office, had a lasting influence; she started thinking more about the nature of government-citizen interactions in these settings.

“It really stuck in my mind the way people’s experiences, one-on-one with a person who is representing government, when trying to get benefits, really shapes people’s views about how government is going to operate and see them, and what they can expect from the state,” White says. “People’s experiences with government matter for what they do politically.”

Before long, White was accepted into the doctoral program at Harvard University, where she earned an MA in 2012 and her PhD in 2016. White then joined the MIT faculty, also in 2016, and has remained at the Institute ever since.

White’s first published paper, in 2015, co-authored with Julie Faller and Noah Nathan, found that government officials tended to have different levels of responsiveness when providing voting information to people of apparently different ethnicities. It won an award from the American Political Science Association. (Nathan is now also a faculty member at MIT.)

Since then, White has published a string of papers examining how many factors interact with voting propensities. In one study focused in Pennsylvania, she found that public benefits recipients made up 20 percent of eligible voters in 2020 but just 12 percent of those who voted. When examining the criminal justice system, White has found that even short-term jail time leads to a turnout drop of several percentage points among the incarcerated. Family members of those serving even short jail sentences are less likely to vote in the near term too, although their participation rebounds over time.

“People don’t often think of incarceration as a thing they connect with politics,” White says. “Descriptively, with many people who have had the experience of incarceration or criminal convictions, or who are living in families or neighborhoods with a lot of it, we don’t see a lot of political action, and we see low levels of voting. Given how widespread incarceration is in the U.S., it seems like one of the most common and impactful things the government can do. But for a long time it was left to sociology to study.”

How to reach people?

Having determined that citizens are less likely to vote in many circumstances, White’s research is now evolving toward a related question: What are the most viable ways of changing that? To be sure, nothing is likely to create a tsunami of new voters. Even where people convicted of felonies can vote from prison, she found in still another study, they do so at single-digit rates. People who are used to not voting are not going to start voting at high rates, on aggregate.

Still, this fall, White led a new field experiment about getting unregistered voters to both register and vote. In this case, she and some colleagues created a study designed to see if friends of unregistered voters might be especially able to get their networks to join the voter rolls. The results are still under review. But for White, it is a new area where many kinds of experiments and studies seem possible.

“Political science in general and the world of actual practicing political campaigns knows an awful lot about how to get registered voters to turn out to vote,” White says. “There’s so much work on get-out-the-vote activities, mailers and calls and texts. We know way, way less about the 1-in-4 or so eligible voters who are simply not registered at all, and are in a very real sense invisible in the political landscape. Overwhelmingly, the people I’m curious about fall into that category.”

It is also a subject that she hopes will sustain the interest of her students. White’s classes tend to be filled by students with many different registered majors but an abiding interest in civic life. White wants them to come away with a more informed sense of their civic landscape, as well as new tools for conducting clean empirical studies. And, who knows? Like White herself, some of her students may end up making a career out of political engagement, even if they don’t know it yet.

“I really like working with MIT students,” White says. “I do hope my students gain some key understandings about what we know about political life, and how we can know about it, which I think are likely to be helpful to them in a variety of realms. My hope is they take a fundamental understanding of social science research, and some big questions, and some big concepts, out into the world.”

[the-shadows-request-candy-corn]

Trump may be about to sign the death sentence of the National Institute of Health, and, by extension, the Office of Lab Animal Welfare.

He gutted research animal protections.

Any vertebrate that isn't a mammal will have no rights.

Neither will mice or rats.

If NIH grants are stopped, researchers can't pay anyone. They can't perform research. They can't pay for veterinary services.

They won't be required to provide veterinary services.

The only medical research that will happen will be self funded by big pharma, and they can torture the animals and skew all the lab results that they want.

Just like Musk did to the primates in his neuralink research.

I don't know what's going to happen to me or anyone else at the university where I work. My job is to make sure the animals are treated humanely and to provide veterinary care. I'm especially scared about what's going to happen to those research animals if veterinary staff gets laid off. The USDA only covers mammals, and it doesn't even cover all of them. Every rat I've ever made a tiny paper gift box full of marshmallows for, every mouse I've ever watched grow up, every rodent I've ever separated from an aggressive dominant brother and then treated their tiny wounds, they have no protections if NIH goes down. Decades of research into humane handling, euthanasia, and animal behavior will be tossed aside and wasted.

Please, do everything you can. Protest. Contact your representatives. Anything you can do. Do it for science, for medicine, for people's lives, for people's jobs, and for the animals.

[ranger-kellyn]

"I'm just saying, it's easy to make stuff sound absurd, but then if you look a little bit you're like, Oh, well, it's probably OK that the government is spending money trying to understand the neurochemistry of the relationship between PTSD and alcoholism, and scientists probably know how to do that better than I do.

Much easier to destroy trust with tweets than it is to do science, though..."

[imabillyami]

Finally getting some writing and editing done 🫡

Gotta get that last chapter of I know it ain't easy on the road, so I can post the first part of that fic y'all voted for on the 14th!

[arolesbianism]

Doodle I did of my girl Juliet earlier

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[jcmarchi]

MLK Celebration Gala pays tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. and his writings on “the goal of true education”

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MLK Celebration Gala pays tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. and his writings on “the goal of true education”

After a week of festivities around campus, members of the MIT community gathered Saturday evening in the Boston Marriott Kendall Square ballroom to celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Marking 50 years of this annual celebration at MIT, the gala event’s program was loosely organized around a line in King’s essay, “The Purpose of Education,” which he penned as an undergraduate at Morehouse College:

“We must remember that intelligence is not enough,” King wrote. “Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.”

Senior Myles Noel was the master of ceremonies for the evening and welcomed one and all. Minister DiOnetta Jones Crayton, former director of the Office of Minority Education and associate dean of minority education, delivered the invocation, exhorting the audience to embrace “the fiery urgency of now.” Next, MIT President Sally Kornbluth shared her remarks.

She acknowledged that at many institutions, diversity and inclusion efforts are eroding. Kornbluth reiterated her commitment to these efforts, saying, “I want to be clear about how important I believe it is to keep such efforts strong — and to make them the best they can be. The truth is, by any measure, MIT has never been more diverse, and it has never been more excellent. And we intend to keep it that way.”

Kornbluth also recognized the late Paul Parravano, co-director of MIT’s Office of Government and Community Relations, who was a staff member at MIT for 33 years as well as the longest-serving member on the MLK Celebration Committee. Parravano’s “long and distinguished devotion to the values and goals of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. inspires us all,” Kornbluth said, presenting his family with the 50th Anniversary Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Next, students and staff shared personal reflections. Zina Queen, office manager in the Department of Political Science, noted that her family has been a part of the MIT community for generations. Her grandmother, Rita, her mother, Wanda, and her daughter have all worked or are currently working at the Institute. Queen pointed out that her family epitomizes another of King’s oft-repeated quotes, “Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth.”

Senior Tamea Cobb noted that MIT graduates have a particular power in the world that they must use strategically and with intention. “Education and service go hand and hand,” she said, adding that she intends “every one of my technical abilities will be used to pursue a career that is fulfilling, expansive, impactful, and good.”

Graduate student Austin K. Cole ’24 addressed the Israel-Hamas conflict and the MIT administration. As he spoke, some attendees left their seats to stand with Cole at the podium. Cole closed his remarks with a plea to resist state and structural violence, and instead focus on relationship and mutuality.

After dinner, incoming vice president for equity and inclusion Karl Reid ’84, SM ’85 honored Adjunct Professor Emeritus Clarence Williams for his distinguished service to the Institute. Williams was an assistant to three MIT presidents, served as director of the Office of Minority Education, taught in the Department of Urban Planning, initiated the MIT Black History Project, and mentored hundreds of students. Reid was one of those students, and he shared a few of his mentor’s oft repeated phrases:

“Do the work and let the talking take care of itself.”

“Bad ideas kill themselves; great ideas flourish.”

In closing, Reid exhorted the audience to create more leaders who, like Williams, embody excellence and mutual respect for others.

The keynote address was given by civil rights activist Janet Moses, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s; a physician who worked for a time as a pediatrician at MIT Health; a longtime resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts; and a co-founder, with her husband, Robert Moses, of the Algebra Project, a pioneering program grounded in the belief “that in the 21st century every child has a civil right to secure math literacy — the ability to read, write, and reason with the symbol systems of mathematics.”

A striking image of a huge new building planned for New York City appeared on the screen behind Moses during her address. It was a rendering of a new jail being built at an estimated cost of $3 billion. Against this background, she described the trajectory of the “carceral state,” which began in 1771 with the Mansfield Judgement in England. At the time, “not even South Africa had a set of race laws as detailed as those in the U.S.,” Moses observed.

Today, the carceral state uses all levels of government to maintain a racial caste system that is deeply entrenched, Moses argued, drawing a connection between the purported need for a new prison complex and a statistic that Black people in New York state are three times more likely than whites to be convicted for a crime.

She referenced a McKinsey study that it will take Black people over three centuries to achieve a quality of life on parity with whites. Despite the enormity of this challenge, Moses encouraged the audience to “rock the boat and churn the waters of the status quo.” She also pointed out that “there is joy in the struggle.”

Symbols of joy were also on display at the Gala in the forms of original visual art and poetry, and a quilt whose squares were contributed by MIT staff, students, and alumni, hailing from across the Institute.

Quilts are a physical manifestation of the legacy of the enslaved in America and their descendants — the ability to take scraps and leftovers to create something both practical and beautiful. The 50th anniversary quilt also incorporated a line from King’s highly influential “I Have a Dream Speech”:

“One day, all God’s children will have the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

[kiki-eng]

Friday March 7th, 2025: 🔹nationwide campus and workplace walkout at 12:00 PM local time 🔹official events in: Birmingham, AL; Little Rock, AR; Sacramento, CA; San Francisco, CA; Denver, CO; Hartford, CT; Washington, DC; Tallahassee, FL; Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Indianapolis, IN; Topeka, KS; Frankfort, KY; Boston, MA; Lansing, MI; Saint Paul, MN; Jefferson City, MO; Raleigh, NC; Trenton, NJ; Santa Fe, NM; New York, NY; Columbus, OH; Newport, OR; Salem, OR; Philadelphia, PA; Pittsburgh, PA; Providence, RI; Columbia, SC; Nashville, TN; Austin, TX; Seattle, WA; Madison, WI.

Info on how to organise your own event here.

Policy Goals:

"Restoration of Federal Research Funding: Reinstate federal funding for scientific research across all disciplines to FY-2024 levels and commit a 20% increase in federal scientific funding over the next three years followed by annual increases indexed to inflation to ensure sustained scientific advancement. 

Reinstatement of Wrongfully Dismissed Federal Employees: Rehire all unlawfully terminated scientists and administrators at federal agencies (including NSF, NIH, CDC, EPA, NOAA, NPS, NWS, FWS, and FDA) with full back pay and benefits.

Removal of  the 15% cap on indirect funding for NIH-funded grants and reinstatement of indirect funding policies as they existed prior to January 1, 2025."

"An End to Government Censorship: Prohibit all forms of political censorship in scientific research, including restrictions on the topics of scientific research that are eligible for federal funding.

Restoration of Public Access to Scientific Information: Restore all scientific data, reports, and resources on federal websites to pre-January 31st, 2025 status, ensuring full public access to primary scientific sources. 

Protection of Research Independence: Mandate legal safeguards against political interference to preserve the integrity of federal research and communication.

A Commitment to Freedom of Scientific Expression: Protect scientists’ rights to communicate their findings freely, without fear of retaliation or suppression."

"Preservation of Equitable Access to STEM: Maintain and expand federal programs that broaden participation in STEM training and careers.

Protection for Minoritized Scientists: Enforce anti-discrimination protections for minoritized scientists to ensure equitable participation and impact.

Reinstatement of DEIA Initiatives: Restore all DEIA programs within federal agencies to pre-January 1, 2025 status, ensuring continued progress toward equity."

[elleven-news]

Mass Federal Firings May Imperil Pets, Cattle and Crops

Shortly after taking office for the second time, President Trump began making deep cuts to agencies and programs that play critical roles in human health, slashing funding for medical research, halting global health aid and firing scores of workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the campaign to downsize government, which has been led by Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, has also…

[lazyscience]

First article in a series about federal employees affected by DOGE.

[alyfoxxxen]

Musk’s ‘Doge’ guts nearly $1bn in US education department’s research office | Trump administration | The Guardian

[dinosaur-ears]

We all love to bring up 1788 France but it's feeling more and more like 1933 Germany in here.

[sofiaflorina2021]

List of Sofia Florina's Proposed Government Ministries

Here is my list of government ministries that I propose:

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Ministry of Internal Affairs

Ministry of Defence

Ministry of Finance

Ministry of Education

Ministry of Health

Ministry of Culture

Ministry of Labour

Ministry of Social Affairs

Ministry of Justice

Ministry of Transportation

Ministry of Agriculture and Food

Ministry of Trade

Ministry of Industry

Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources

Ministry of Science, Innovation and Technology

Ministry of Environment and Climate

Ministry of Mining and Minerals

Ministry of Housing and Urban Development

Ministry of Infrastructure

Ministry of Information and Communication

Ministry of Women's Empowerment and Child Protection

Ministry of Youth and Sports

Ministry of Tourism

Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship

Ministry of Land Affairs

Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises

Ministry of Emergency Situation Management

Ministry of Libraries, Museums and Archives

Ministry of Peace

It's pretty intriguing, isn't it? Some of these ministries are explicitly mentioned in my draft constitution.

[jcmarchi]

Richard Locke PhD ’89 named dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/richard-locke-phd-89-named-dean-of-the-mit-sloan-school-of-management/

Richard Locke PhD ’89 named dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management

Richard Locke PhD ’89, a prominent scholar and academic administrator with a wide range of leadership experience, has been named the new dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management. The appointment is effective July 1.

In becoming the school’s 10th dean, Locke is rejoining the Institute, where he previously served in multiple roles from 1988 to 2013, as a faculty member, a department head, and a deputy dean of MIT Sloan. After leaving MIT, Locke was a senior leader at Brown University, including seven and a half years as Brown’s provost. Since early 2023, he has been dean of Apple University, an educational unit within Apple Inc. focused on educating the company’s employees on leadership, management, and the company’s culture and organization.

“I am thrilled to be returning to MIT Sloan,” says Locke, whose formal title will be the John C Head III Dean at MIT Sloan. “It is a special place, with its world-class faculty, innovative research and educational programs, and close-knit community, all within the MIT ecosystem.”

He adds: “All of these assets give MIT Sloan an opportunity to chart the future — to shape how new technologies will reconfigure industries and careers, how new enterprises will be created and run, how individuals will work and live, and how national economies will develop and adapt. It will be exciting and fun to work with great colleagues and to help lead the school to its next phase of global prominence and impact.”

As dean at MIT Sloan, Locke follows David C. Schmittlein, who stepped down in February 2024 after a nearly 17-year tenure. Georgia Perakis, the William F. Pounds Professor of Operations Research and Statistics and Operations Management at MIT Sloan, has been serving as the interim John C Head III Dean since then and will continue in the role until Locke begins.

Institute leaders welcomed Locke back, citing his desire to help MIT Sloan address significant global challenges, including climate change, the role of artificial intelligence in society, and new health care solutions, while refining best practices for businesses and workplaces.

“MIT Sloan has been very fortunate in its leaders. Both Dave Schmittlein and Georgia Perakis set a high bar, and we continue that tradition with the selection of Rick Locke,” says MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth. “Beyond his wide-ranging experience and accomplishments and superb academic credentials, I have come to know Rick as an outstanding leader, both from the years when we were both provosts and through his thoughtful service on the MIT Corporation. Rick has always impressed me with his intellectual breadth, personal grace, and fresh ideas. We’re delighted that he will be rejoining our campus community.”

In a letter to the MIT community, MIT Provost Cynthia Barnhart praised Locke’s “transformative career” and noted how she and the search committee agree “that Rick’s depth of experience makes him a once-in-a-generation leader who will ‘hit the ground sprinting’” as MIT Sloan’s next dean.

Barnhart added: “The committee and I were impressed by his vision for removing frictions that slow research efforts, his exceptional track record of raising substantial funds to support academic communities, and his strong grasp of and attentiveness to the interests and needs of MIT Sloan’s constituencies.”

A political scientist by training, Locke has conducted high-profile research on labor practices in global supply chains, among other topics. His career has also included efforts to bring together stakeholders, from multinational firms to supply-chain workers, in an effort to upgrade best practices in business.

Locke is widely known for a vigorous work ethic, a humane manner around co-workers, and a leadership outlook that blends idealism about civic engagement with realism about global challenges.

His wide-ranging work and interests make Locke well-suited to MIT Sloan. The school has about 115 tenure-track faculty and 1,600 students spread over eight degree programs, with wide-ranging initiatives and academic groups connecting core management topics with more specialized topics relating to the innovation economy and entrepreneurship, the social impact of business and technology, policy development, and much more.

MIT conducted an extensive search process for the position, evaluating internal and external candidates over the last several months. The search committee’s co-chairs were Kate Kellogg, the David J. McGrath Jr Professor of Management and Innovation at MIT Sloan; and Andrew W. Lo, the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at MIT Sloan.

The committee solicited and received extensive feedback about the position and the school from  stakeholders including faculty, students, staff, and alumni, while engaging with MIT leadership about the role.

“MIT Sloan occupies a rare position in the world as a management school connected to one of the great engineering and scientific universities,” Kellogg says.

She adds: “Rick has a strong track record of bringing faculty from different domains together, and we think he is going to be great at connecting Sloan even further to the rest of MIT, around grand challenges such as climate, AI, and health care.”

Lo credits Schmittlein for “an incredible 17-year legacy of extraordinary leadership,” observing that Schmittlein helped MIT Sloan expand in size, consolidate its strengths, and build new programs. About Perakis, Kellogg notes, “Georgia’s outstanding work as dean has built on these strengths and sparked important new innovations and partnerships in areas like AI and entrepreneurship. She’s also expanded the school’s footprint in Southeast Asia and helped advance key Institute-wide priorities like the Climate Project at MIT and the Generative AI consortium.”

Kellogg and Lo expressed confidence that Locke would help MIT Sloan continue to adapt and grow.

“MIT and MIT Sloan are at inflection points in our ability to invent the future, given the role technology is playing in virtually every aspect of our lives,” Lo says. “Rick has the same vision and ambitions that we do, and the experience and skills to help us realize that vision. We couldn’t be more excited by this choice.”

Lo adds: “Rick is a first-rate scholar and first-rate educator who really gets our mission and core values and ethos. Dave was an extraordinary dean, and we expect the same from Rick. He sees the full potential of MIT Sloan and how to achieve it.”

Locke received his BA from Wesleyan University and an MA in education from the University of Chicago. He earned his doctorate in political science at MIT, writing a dissertation about local politics and industrial change in Italy, under the supervision of now-Institute Professor Suzanne Berger.

Locke joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor of international management, was promoted in 1993 to an associate professor of management and political science, and earned tenure in 1996. In 2000, he was named the Alvin J. Siteman Professor of Entrepreneurship, becoming a full professor in 2001.

In 2010, Locke took on a new role at MIT, heading the Department of Political Science, a position he held through 2013; he was also given a new endowed professorship, the Class of 1922 Professor of Political Science and Management. During the same time frame, Locke also served as deputy dean at MIT Sloan, from 2009 through 2010, and then again from 2012 through 2013.

Locke moved to Brown in order to take the position of director of the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. In 2015, he was named Brown’s provost, the university’s chief academic officer and budget officer.

During his initial chapter at MIT Sloan, Locke co-founded MIT’s Global Entrepreneurship Lab (G-Lab) as well as other action learning programs, helped the effort to double the size of the Sloan Fellows Program, and worked to update MIT Sloan Executive Education programs, among other projects.

Locke has authored or co-authored five books and dozens of journal articles and book chapters, helping open up the study of global labor practices while also examining the political implications of industrial changes and labor relations. For his research on working conditions in global supply chains, Locke was given the Faculty Pioneer for Academic Leadership award by the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program, the Progress Medal from the Society of Progress, the Dorothy Day Award for Outstanding Labor Research from the American Political Society Association, and the Responsible Research in Management Award.

His books include “Remaking the Italian Economy” (1995); “Employment Relations in a Changing World Economy” (co-edited with Thomas Kochan, and Michael Piore, 1995); “Working in America” (co-authored with Paul Osterman, Thomas Kochan, Michael Piore, 2001); “The Promise and Limits of Private Power Promoting Labor Standards in a Global Economy” (2013); and “Production in the Innovation Economy (co-edited with Rachel Wellhausen, 2014).

A committed educator, Locke has won numerous awards for teaching in his career including the Graduate Management Society Teaching Award, in 1990; the Excellence in Teaching Award from MIT Sloan, in 2003; the Class of 1960 Innovation in Teaching Award, from MIT in 2007; and the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching, from MIT, in 2008.

Over the course of his career, Locke has been a visiting professor or scholar at several universities, including Bocconi University in Milan; the Harvard Kennedy School; the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford; the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the Universita’ Ca Foscari of Venice, Italy; the Universita Degli Studi di Milano, Italy; Georg-August Universität, in Göttingen, Germany; and the Universita’ Federico II in Naples, Italy.

Locke has remained connected to MIT even over the most recent decade of his career, including his service as a member of the MIT Corporation.

“I loved my time at MIT Sloan because of its wonderful mix of ambition, energy, and drive for excellence, but also humility,” Locke says. “We knew that we didn’t always have all the answers, but were curious to learn more, and eager to do the work to find solutions to some of the world’s great challenges. Now as dean, I look forward to once again being part of this wonderful community.”