Aditya Dasgupta
Political scientist at UC-Merced working on topics in political economy/development/econ history. Run the Political Economy of Agriculture and Rural Societies (PEARS) lab.
https://aditya-dasgupta.com
- Yikes. The LaCour bat signal just went up.
- Sharing on behalf of my @cunygcsociology.bsky.social friend/colleague Ruth Milkman who isn't on social media. Here's her statement re a problematic censoring of an obituary for Michael Burawoy to appear in ASA Footnotes #soctwitter #socsky #sociology docs.google.com/document/d/1...
- Today I testified to county gov on phasing out new + existing oil production, showcasing research w/fantastic UCSB colleagues. Our leaders heard the call & voted 3-1 to consider a full phaseout (!), paving the way for oil counties nationwide on how to leave behind fossil fuels once and for all.
- I am very pleased to share this announcement of our new center at MIT. @davidautor.bsky.social, @simonhrjohnson.bsky.social and I are grateful to the Stone Foundation for their generous support enabling us to study two defining challenges of our age: inequality and the future of work.
- 📣 We will soon become the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work! Starting in July, we will usher in a significant new era of research, policy, and education, made possible by a gift from the Stone Foundation. news.mit.edu/2025/mit-eco...
- This it what everything he does sounds like to me. The Onion-- so good as usual.
- Academia will put you through 17 meetings, two hour-long presentations, five meals, and four flights just for a chance to make $38,000 teaching English in a town of 8,000 people in rural western Nebraska
- For everyone who was like “Google search is getting worse,” we were absolutely right.
- Finally. My fellow Fulbright Scholar Rumeysa Ozturk has been freed. My country jailed her for over a month as—let’s be perfectly frank—a political prisoner. Why? Because she wrote a mild oped that criticised Israel in her student newspaper. I've thought of her every day.
- Major airspace closures for civil aviation announced by both Pakistan (all airspace) and India (along the border with Pakistan) in the last few hours. We're possibly about to witness the start of the most intense and broad-spectrum direct conflict between two nuclear-armed states ever.
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View full threadThe big story with this crisis, as I told the FT, is that both countries appear determined to rewrite the rules of their simmering rivalry under the nuclear shadow: they've chosen a game of chicken with each other to do that. www.ft.com/content/bd16...
- I'll just note that these are the home pages of the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, and Bloomberg right now. Just stunning parochialism.
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- Escalatory dynamics kicking in hard - air bases being tit-for-tat hit with missiles. Reports of IAF ops in Pakistani airspace, Pak attacks on Indian missile storage. Like when the war games start spinning into very bad outcomes. Hopefully US, PRC, Saudis burning up the phones. Deeply alarming.
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- It used to just be annoying. Now it’s also exciting.
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- Appeasement, as Churchill warned, is like feeding a crocodile and hoping to be the last one eaten. Levitsky, Way, and me today in New York Times www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/o...
- "America has, with stunning speed, descended into a world in which opponents of the government fear criminal investigations, lawsuits, tax audits and other punitive measures.” Levitsky, Way, & Ziblatt: US has crossed the threshold into competitive authoritarianism. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/o...
- Opinion from the FT's Editorial Board: 'The US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally that shares their values have issued barely a word of condemnation. They should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.' www.ft.com/content/f5fd...
- We are at the stage where foreign movies are a national security threat.
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- Given that this White House leaks about everything, and there was no chatter about movie tariffs, it seems likely that policy reshaping the lives of millions of Americans was made by an old man sitting alone in a room with a remote in his left hand, aided by no economic, legal or strategic advice.
- The statute he uses for emergency tariffs specifically excludes information, films, & art - www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/...
- India unveils the world’s first genome-edited rice varieties, 25–30% higher yielding without foreign DNA! These non-GMO crops, exempt from burdensome & strangulating GMO approval process, aim to boost production, cut emissions, transform it’s ag www.financialexpress.com/policy/econo...
- Trump is teaching you how to fight him.
- BREAKING: The USDA has dropped their lawsuit against Maine over its transgender student athletic policies. “I told him I’d see him in court. Well we did see him in court, and we won,” Gov. Janet Mills said. www.pressherald.com/2025/05/02/m...
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- A few years ago, @danweitzel.net, John Gerring, @skaaning.bsky.social and I were curious how well one could predict subjective democracy measures using easy(ish) to code observables. Turns out, *quite* well, even out of sample. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
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- Congrats to Dr. Cody Moser (@culturologies.co)! Cody successfully defended his dissertation today, and is off to Morocco to start a faculty position at UM6P’s School of Collective Intelligence!
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- Insane North Korea cult of personality stuff. Government officials swear an oath to the Constitution, not the president.
- We've learned the Trump Administration has ILLEGALLY withheld over $430B in funds approved by Congress — gutting vital services including child care, disaster relief and more. The courts must continue to hold this lawless president accountable, even if spineless congressional Republicans won't.
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- 🚨 Very excited that our paper on *Rulers on the Road* has been cond. accepted at the AJPS @ajpseditor.bsky.social. We analyze emperors' strategies of itinerant rule in the Holy Roman Empire 919-1519. Fun working with @claranw.bsky.social, @andrejkokkonen.bsky.social & Jørgen Møller shorturl.at/Spm7z
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- Stating the obvious, but kudos to Trudeau who stepped down when he realized he is a liability to his party.
- "Paths Denied, Paths Created": I wrote this essay as my late father's memorial day approaches: jaeyk.github.io/essays/memor... Some memories fade as we grow older; others come into sharper focus.
- The mods of r/ChangeMyView shared the sub was the subject of a study to test the persuasiveness of LLMs & that they didn't consent. There’s a lot that went wrong, so here’s a 🧵 unpacking it, along with some ideas for how to do research with online communities ethically. tinyurl.com/59tpt988
- University leaders need to understand: they are holding INCREDIBLY good cards. It is so rare in today's polarized era to have the support of 70+ percent of the public against the Trump admiministration on anything. Universities have that—AND winning legal arguments.
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- Good news: I got tenure!! 🥳 Thank you all who helped since my early grad school days!! 🫶 Advisors, coauthors, colleagues, friends, family... Bad news: That means I'm no longer a junior scholar www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ3X...
- I don't understand how the rest of the world doesn't get that this will damn all of us. You cannot starve an entire people and assume it won't have consequences for you...wherever you are.
- FROM THE ARCHIVES: Judge Gives Trump Administration 3 Days To Return Her From El Salvador Prison
- The Ohio State University Faculty Council voted 35-11 on April 24, 2025 to join the Big Ten "mutual defense compact" that would support the defense of academic freedom. They join universities of IL, IN, IA, MD, MN, NE, OR, WA, WI, Michigan State, Northwestern, Penn State, Purdue, Rutgers, UCLA, USC.
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