If you’re going to San Francisco…

… Visit us at APSA Booth #904!

Look for MPSA in booth #904 in the APSA expo hall where we’ll be busy answering questions about the MPSA conference, the new Twitter chat series, and your MPSA membership. Plus, MPSA will hold THREE drawings during the APSA conference. (You can enter even if you aren’t going to #APSA2017!)

Each day we will draw one winner to receive a $100 Amazon gift card. Drawings will be held thirty minutes before the APSA exhibit hall closes each day (Thursday, August 31 at 5pm Pacific, Friday, September 1 at 5pm Pacific, and Saturday, September 2 at 3:30pm Pacific) and will be announced via Twitter. To enter the daily drawing or $100 from Amazon during the APSA conference:

Follow MPSA on Twitter
RETWEET the pinned tweet

(Rules: Drawing open only to current political science students, faculty and researchers. Need not be present to win. Amazon gift cards will be sent via email on Saturday, September 2 after 3:30pm Pacific.)

MPSA 2018 Call for Proposals

MPSA18-CFP-APSA The 2018 MPSA Annual Conference Program Co-Chairs and section heads invite you to submit proposals that reflect the best thinking in the discipline, informed by theory, research and practical application. The committee invites proposals in over 80 sections in a variety of formats from all political science subfields. Many of these are interdisciplinary and draw scholars from 50+ countries and a multitude of fields, providing a variety of perspectives.

The MPSA conference has the research collaboration opportunities you seek and the networking opportunities and professional development sessions to account for scholars at every career stage (including yours). Program participants are not required to be MPSA members, though all participating presenters are required to register for the conference and MPSA members receive significant registration discounts.

Proposals must be submitted electronically with complete information on co-authors and presentation details by October 6, 2017. Complete Submission Guidelines can be found at www.MPSAnet.org/conference.

PS – Please accept my apology for the earworm. Feel welcome to retaliate by sharing your favorite earworm when you visit our booth at APSA! – MJH

Next Steps in the Fight to #SavetheNEH

Two days before President Trump’s inauguration, we awoke to reports that the transition team was contemplating a proposal to eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). On March 16, after almost two months of near silence on the subject, the administration released a budget blueprint even more threatening to humanities programs than had been initially reported. The administration’s proposal not only recommends the elimination of the NEH and the NEA, but also the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Additionally, it calls for the “reduction or elimination” of the Department of Education’s Title VI and Fulbright-Hays programs.

Over the past four months, the National Humanities Alliance has been working in close partnership with MPSA and our other members to demonstrate support for the NEH. This campaign has resulted in nearly 150,000 messages and phone calls to Members of Congress and President Trump. A record-breaking number of humanities advocates joined us in Washington D.C. for Humanities Advocacy Day in March, visiting their congressional offices and making the case for robust funding for the NEH and other humanities programs. Advocates have published op-eds highlighting the local and national import of the NEH. Subsequent to the release of the budget blueprint, we have also launched grass-roots campaigns in support of the other agencies.

Since the Trump Administration released its plan in March, our attention has turned primarily to Congress, which will ultimately decide whether and at what level to fund the NEH and the other cultural agencies for FY 2018. As Congress begins its work, the budget committees will release their Congressional Budget Resolutions, which set an overall spending limit, but whose recommendations for specific discretionary programs are just advisory. The appropriations committees in each house will then draft twelve appropriations bills proposing funding levels for all discretionary spending, including for the NEH and other humanities programs. If those bills clear their committees, the full House and Senate will have to pass them. Finally, bills from each house will need to be reconciled in a conference committee. This is a long process that will likely stretch into the fall. Proposals to eliminate funding for the NEH and other humanities programs could gain traction at any point.

Reasons for Optimism

Trump’s budget proposal is just a proposal. Members of the appropriations committees have their own agendas and priorities, and have been largely supportive of the NEH and other humanities funding, particularly in the last two years. After passing a $2 million increase for NEH in FY 2016, Congress passed another $2 million increase for FY 2017 in early May. Further, Republican members of the House and Senate subcommittees that allocate funds to the NEH and the NEA have gone on record supporting the programs even in the face of the President’s proposal for FY 2018. Finally, letters to the President and to the appropriations committees requesting a $5 million increase for the NEH in FY 2018 have received bipartisan support.

Causes for Concern

While we anticipate that the appropriations committees will be supportive of the NEH, the upcoming FY 2018 appropriations process is likely to be prolonged and contentious as Congress struggles to abide by budget caps that were put in place as part of the 2011 budget deal. While the current cap may be renegotiated, if the resulting cap is still low, the Trump Administration’s efforts to increase defense and military construction spending would necessitate severe cuts to non-defense discretionary spending. This would leave the NEH, along with a wide range of other domestic programs, vulnerable to deep cuts or even elimination as appropriators are forced to make difficult choices. If the new budget cap is higher, appropriators will have more room for domestic spending.

We are also concerned that the call from the Trump Administration to eliminate funding for the NEH, the NEA, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will embolden those within Congress who have long sought to defund these agencies in particular. While this is unlikely to happen within the appropriations committees, opponents of the NEH could introduce an amendment to eliminate funding when either chamber considers the appropriations bill or during negotiations over the differences between House and Senate appropriations bills.

Advocacy Strategy

Given these concerns, we are working to raise awareness of the work that the NEH supports around the country and the diverse communities it serves. We are encouraging leaders of higher education institutions and other humanities organizations—as well as individual NEH grantees—to write letters to the editor about the transformative impact of the NEH. We are also working to expand our list of grassroots advocates so that Members of Congress receive as many calls and messages as possible at critical points in the appropriations process.

MPSA has been an indispensable ally in these efforts. Individual members can also play a key role as well. By starting with our Take Action page (http://www.nhalliance.org/take_action), you can sign up for our action alerts, write your Member of Congress, and share these links to our resources with family, friends, and colleagues. Sharing this advocacy campaign and other social media assets will help expand our network and demonstrate to Congress the deep support for NEH across the country.

While it is important to build support among all Members of Congress, the support of particular Members will be key at certain stages of the appropriations process. By signing up for our action alerts, encouraging others to do the same, and sharing our alerts on social media, you will also increase the likelihood that we can reach advocates in key districts.

This challenge to the NEH and other humanities programs has inspired an outpouring of support for federal humanities funding. Over the coming months, it is critical that we continue to mobilize even more advocates to increase public awareness of the impact of these programs and to ensure that Members of Congress continue to hear from their constituents.

This Is the Best Time Ever to Study Political Science

This post originally appeared on Tom Pepinsky’s blog and is reposted here with permission.

Here are ten questions that might be interesting to Americans these days.

Is the Trump administration’s immigration executive order constitutional?
Is the United States a democracy? How do we know?
How does presidential leadership style affect U.S. foreign policy?
Do bureaucrats have a moral obligation to refuse to implement laws that they oppose?
How do authoritarian regimes work? Where do they come from?
Is protest effective? When, why, how?
Does racial resentment or economic despair better explain the GOP surge in 2016? Are these competing explanations?
When do partisan legislatures sanction presidents from the same party? Does that differ between presidential and parliamentary systems?
How do you organize a team to win an election? How do you change that team when it is time to govern?
Has there ever been anything like 2017 in U.S. political history?

In a time in which the key buzzword in higher education is “interdisciplinarity,” we may lose sight of the value and purpose of disciplinary education. In fraught political times, citizens need a way to organize the information they obtain from the news, to process data from surveys and elections, to put contemporary events in historical and global perspective, and to ask critical questions about their moral and ethical obligations as citizens. Citizens need a way to discipline their thinking about politics. That discipline is political science.

Imagine that you are a new college student who wants to learn about politics in these times. What should you do? Well, I would hope that you would first put together a broad course of study that involved arts, humanities, sciences, statistics, and so forth. But I would not look to that broad course of study for insights into today’s politics.

Instead, I would visit your local Political Science department (perhaps called a Government or Politics department). You will find a community of teachers who have organized their department into a couple of teams: teachers who work on American politics and policy from today and from history, on questions of ethics and philosophy, and on politics around the world. Some will work with texts and influential thinkers, some with case studies from other countries and in other languages, some with quantitative data. Each teacher will have a specialty: race and ethnicity, power and justice, strategy, economies and politics, voter psychology, bureaucracies and institutions, and so on. They certainly won’t all agree with one another about politics, or about how best to teach it. And yet of them will have been trained to ask a series of interrelated questions about how politics works.

Returning to the ten questions above, not only does the discipline of political science provide tools for answering each question, but political science uniquely does this. Sure, a lawyer could help with question (1), and a moral philosopher could help with question (4), a movement sociologist could help with question (6), and a management consultant could help with question (9). But political science allows one to think about these questions together, to see how each is related to the others.

I am not proposing that interdisciplinary research and teaching is somehow inappropriate. Quite the opposite: I hold the opinion that somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of what a political scientist reads ought to be outside of the discipline of political science (a view I attribute originally to James Scott). So too for undergraduates studying political science, although I’d put it closer to 50% outside the discipline and 50% inside. I am also not proposing that interdisciplinary research and teaching cannot contribute to better teaching and research. Events like this are fantastic opportunities. Disciplinary thinking does not imply disciplinary silos.

Nor am I arguing that political science is either perfect or monolithic. Political scientists disagree, and they disagree most forcefully with themselves about their own discipline.

Instead, I am arguing that it is both natural and appropriate to look to a community of scholars who have thought long, hard, and critically about politics in order to…think about politics. I will go further: it is intellectual and pedagogically distracting to invent interdisciplinary “solutions” to pressing world “problems” without first appreciating disciplinary approaches to those questions that presuppose those problems.

Put otherwise, the proper relationship between disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives is a dialectical one. Disciplines emerge and coalesce around problems. As they mature, they eventually reach limits of their explanatory or conceptual productivity, and enterprising researchers look beyond their disciplinary boundaries for different perspectives. Perhaps an interdiscipline emerges, which after 100 years is a discipline on its own.

And this, to a first approximation, is the story of political science itself—an interdiscipline that emerged from the interstices of law, political economy, and the emerging field of sociology. Contemporary politics requires us to remember this interdiscipline-turned-discipline emerged from the realization that the study of politics cannot be reduced to class, economy, identity, ethics, law, organization, or anything else. Politics is political. That is why today is the best time ever to study political science.

About the Author: Tom Pepinsky is Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University. His blog can be found at tompepinsky.com.

I’m Not a Disgrace, I’m Just Wrong

Shortly after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, I gave a talk to a local senior citizens group. The talk was largely informational, flavored by my analysis of what had happened. After the speech, a man walked up to me and told me he found me too partisan, that liberal bias in academia disturbed him greatly, and that people who taught like me were “a disgrace.”

This reference to liberal bias among academics, is, of course, a well-known trope. While the numbers clearly indicate more academics are liberal than conservative, either by overwhelming numbers or by smaller numbers, we are seeing increasing, disturbing, responses to this. Worrisome for us is the fear that any efforts at encouraging civic engagement will be derided as attempts at indoctrination, and therefore discouraged. This was a pervasive theme at this year’s American Political Science Association Teaching and Learning Conference, where discussion addressed how to avoid this problem.

We stand at a challenging time, having just passed an election featuring two extraordinarily unpopular candidates, and with a new president with unprecedentedly low approval ratings. More than that, we stand at a time when science is under siege; indeed, facts themselves rather than interpretations are increasingly being challenged. When demonstrably false statements are offered, and repeated, until they are believed, we enter a chilling epoch in this American experiment with democracy.

What are we, as political science professors, to do about it? I offer three suggestions here:

Ask for the Data

One concern that many of us share is how to address controversial issues within the classroom, without appearing to take sides. How can we do this? With data. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but we are not entitled to our own facts. Are Republicans or Democrats more obstructionist when confronting a president of the opposite party? Do voter ID laws reduce turnout among minority groups? We’re political scientists – we can offer data to illuminate the question. We can invite our students to share data they find. What sources are reliable, and what are not? How do we know? This opens the door to a discussion of information literacy and the role that being able to evaluate sources plays in citizenship.

So, when outlandish statements are made – by political figures or by students in our classes – ask for the data. If we do it in a non-threatening way – to students with whom we disagree as well as to students with whom we do not – we create a culture devoted to the scientific study of politics and policy, much as our discipline suggests we ought to be. Ideally (and the ideal is, admittedly, so hard to achieve these days), we want our classrooms to be collaborative sites of inquiry, rather than combative sites of argument.

Learn from One Another

Like all human beings, you have your biases around political issues. I would venture to say that it is impossible for our biases to remain hidden, even if we made a studied attempt to be completely neutral. Furthermore, as many of us now occupy more public personas than we did ten years across – through Facebook, Twitter, op-eds, and the like – the days in which we could realistically claim students do not know our beliefs are fading.

Allowing our students to know where we stand politically can democratize our classes. For me, it says to my students that I respect them enough for them to take me seriously even if they disagree with me (rather than just dismissing me as a “liberal snowflake” and ignoring anything I say). I owe them the same respect. My students may say that my ideology clouds how I read the news, or interpret events – and I cannot say they are wrong. But when I admit this failing on my part, I encourage them to see these failings on theirs. We are all imperfect, navigating a challenging information environment, and our own biases, as well as we can. We can all learn something from doing it together.

Don’t Be a Bystander

Today, we are seeing some staggering political events, seemingly on a daily basis. Wherever you stand, this is not the time to be neutral. As political scientists, we must stand up for core values like equality, fairness, and justice. When our most cherished values are threatened, from any side, we must march, donate, agitate, and resist. We must stand up in support of education, and scientific inquiry, and in favor of policies that will provide opportunities for our students. Does this become partisan? Perhaps it does. There are clear limits to what we should do in the classroom, where we have a different role. But as academics, we also must fight for the core values we hold dear, and for the core values that must be upheld if universities remain the places where we all come together to search for truth, and a better way forward. In so doing, we can also set examples for our students of the utility and virtue of political engagement.

And my detractor at my speech: Well, when he gave me a chance to respond, I explained to him the difference between my approach in a community speech, and my approach in the classroom. I elaborated my approach to data and shared inquiry in the classroom. And, I told him that what I found most objectionable in his statement was how he seemed to be insulting my students by suggesting that they would automatically believe, and follow, what I said in class. Such a statement, I said, runs counter to my philosophy as an instructor: Respect your students. Give them the space and structure within which to inquire about politics, and a model for how to engage the system once they figure out where they stand. I’d much rather give them these gifts than to have them blindly follow what I believe. I know my colleagues feel the same way.

And, when I presented it like this, my detractor told me that, “Well, you’re not a disgrace, you’re just wrong [on the issues].” I lightheartedly said I felt the same way about him. But we could talk to each other. Somehow, in that moment, together, we made our democracy a little bit richer.

About the Author: Jeffrey L. Bernstein is professor of political science at Eastern Michigan University. He is co-author and contributing editor (with Michael Smith and Rebecca Nowacek) of Citizenship Across the Curriculum, and of numerous other articles on citizenship education and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Help Preserve Federal Funding for the Humanities

nha-annual-meeting-and-advocacy-day-kwana-strong-photography — NHA Annual meeting and Advocacy Day (Photo: Kwana Strong Photography)

With a new President and Congress taking office this month, it is time to redouble our advocacy efforts on behalf of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and other federal humanities funding streams. As a member of the National Humanities Alliance, the Midwest Political Science Association is a key partner in our work to ensure a vibrant future for these sources of funding. At this critical time, each individual member of MPSA has a crucial role to play in making clear to elected officials that their constituents value the humanities. Below, we provide an overview of the legislative landscape and information about the ways you can help safeguard the NEH and other federal programs.

An Uncertain Landscape

November’s elections created a newly uncertain landscape, and we believe that there is now an increased risk of three adverse scenarios: (1) an effort to decrease non-defense discretionary appropriations in general, leading to a proportional reduction in the NEH’s funding; (2) a more targeted effort to decrease funding for the NEH; and (3) an attempt to eliminate the NEH altogether.

These scenarios concern us given that for the past four years, the House Budget Committee has issued a non-binding recommendation to substantially cut non-defense discretionary spending and eliminate the NEH. In recent months, we have also seen certain Senators raise concerns about specific grants and the NEH’s grant-making process more generally. Finally, we are concerned that the general discourse of anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism prevalent during the election cycle will manifest itself in attacks on the NEH or other humanities programs.

At the same time, we have been heartened by the support Republicans in Congress—particularly appropriators—have demonstrated for the NEH in recent years. Despite the recommendation in the budget resolution, Republican-led appropriations committees passed a modest increase for the NEH in FY 2016 and proposed another for FY 2017. We count a growing number of Republican allies in Congress and do not believe that humanities funding is, or should be, a partisan issue. Further, the incoming Trump Administration has given no indication that they support efforts to defund or eliminate federal humanities programs, including the NEH.

While we have a solid foundation of support, we are realistic about the possibility of threats to NEH funding and are preparing to vigorously oppose any proposals that would harm the humanities.

Appropriations Timeline

Congress failed to pass appropriations bills for FY 2017 before FY 2016 ended on October 1, 2016. Instead, Congress passed a Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the federal government at FY 2016 levels through December 9, 2016. In December, Congress passed yet another CR, with spending authority now set to expire on April 28, 2017. Congressional leadership has indicated that the 115^th Congress will consider appropriations for the balance of FY 2017 and for FY 2018 in the spring.

The additional time to resolve spending for FY 2017 will allow the incoming Trump Administration to shape appropriations for the final five months of the fiscal year. Both the Senate and House appropriations committees provided increases for the NEH in draft FY 2017 appropriations bills, and we will push for those increases to be included in any final legislation. However, this is the first juncture where we may see efforts from Congress and the new administration to decrease overall discretionary spending or to increase military funding at the expense of domestic spending. Either scenario would leave less funding in FY 2017 for domestic priorities, including the humanities.

At the same time, Congress must begin developing a budget and appropriations legislation for FY 2018. Typically, an administration would submit a budget request to Congress in mid-February. Congress would hold hearings throughout the spring, introducing Congressional Budget Resolutions in mid-March, followed by draft appropriations legislation in each House, as normal. We expect this schedule to be somewhat delayed by consideration of FY 2017 appropriations and the slow pace of the presidential transition. Through this process, we will be prepared to combat any proposals to decrease funding or eliminate the NEH.

How we are preparing and how you can help

Since the election, we have been connecting with key Members of Congress and the new administration to make the case for the value of the NEH and other federal humanities programs. This has involved coordinating outreach and messaging strategies with allies, providing information to newly elected officials on how the programs support their key policy goals, and maintaining contact with appropriators and other critical Members of Congress.

We have also launched the Campaign for Humanities Funding to expand our network of advocates so that we are well-prepared to fight any attack on federal funding for the humanities. Please consider signing up and urging your colleagues and friends to sign up. We will let you know when proposals in Congress threaten the humanities and give you a simple way to contact your elected officials. You can also join us on social media (Facebook and Twitter) where you can amplify our voice at critical moments.

Finally, we are also working to ensure that our Annual Meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day on March 13 and 14 brings a record-breaking number of humanities advocates to Washington, D.C. and that all Congressional districts are represented. Humanities Advocacy Day falls at an especially critical moment this year as Congress will not only be negotiating a budget package for FY 2017 but also beginning the process for FY 2018. It is therefore crucial that Members of Congress hear from their constituents that they support humanities funding. Please consider joining us.

Over the coming weeks and months we will keep the humanities community updated on developments in Washington. At critical times like these, Members of Congress need to hear from their constituents frequently, and you are critical to our efforts to ensure that they do.

About the Author: Beatrice Gurwitz is assistant director of the National Humanities Alliance (NHA). Prior to joining NHA, Gurwitz served as a consultant at the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of State. She has also taught at the University of Maryland and in the New York City public school system. She is the author of Argentine Jews in the Age of Revolt (Brill, 2016). Her writing has also appeared in Journal of Jewish Identities, Immigrants and Minorities, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. She holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley. She can be reached at bgurwitz@nhalliance.org.

Two Opportunities for MSPA Members to Support Federal Funding for the Discipline (Grant deadlines quickly approach!) The next few months represent a critical window for those of us in the humanities and social sciences (especially political science) as incoming legislators may not yet fully appreciate the importance of funding our research. Of the $37.9 billion the federal government spends on research and development annually, less than 5% ($1.9 billion) is invested in Social and Behavioral Science Research. You have two upcoming opportunities to meet your elected officials to help underscore the importance of Federal funding to our discipline. To support participation, MPSA is funding two grant programs this year for MPSA members to participate in the following events in Washington, DC:

March 13-14, 2017 – National Humanities Alliance (NHA) Annual Meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day. As part of this event, participants receive detailed issues briefs and background material on the current status of federal humanities funding in preparation for Congressional Hill visits coordinated by the NHA staff. Each year, advocates travel to Capitol Hill as part of state delegations to urge Congress to increase funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and other key humanities programs. Apply for MPSA’s NHA. Deadline: January 23, 2017

March 29-30, 2017 – Consortium of Social Science Association (COSSA) 2017 Science Policy Conference & Social Science Advocacy Day This event (formerly the COSSA Annual Meeting) brings together COSSA members and other stakeholders for a day of discussion about federal policy impacting our science followed by the only annual, coordinated advocacy day in support of all of the social and behavioral sciences. Apply for MPSA’s COSSA travel grant. Deadline: January 23, 2017

Additionally, MPSA will provide complimentary COSSA Science Policy Conference and NHA Annual Meeting registrations for eligible members in these key states with Members of Congress who are critical to successful funding: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington DC.

The Roundup: Political Science on Wikipedia

This article by Eryk Salvaggio originally appeared at the Wiki Education Foundation blog and is shared here with permission.

Wiki Education Foundation logo The Wikipedia Year of Science has had a significant impact on Wikipedia’s coverage of STEM fields. But we’ve also seen significant improvements of articles in political science.

One of the best examples comes from Columbia University’s Order and Violence course, led by Dr. Christopher Blattman.

The Arab Spring was a series of revolutionary protests across the Arab world, starting in Tunisia in 2010. The wake of those protests in inescapable among foreign policy discussions today. A student in Dr. Blattman’s course reworked the Wikipedia article on the Arab Spring, contributing nearly 3,500 words to the article. It had been flagged for improvement for at least a year. Thanks to this student editor, the article was expanded to include a summary of expert analysis and the role media played in the protests.

Incredibly, since that student took it on, it’s been seen 238,798 times. It’s the first search result for “Arab spring” on Google. That’s a pretty staggering impact for an undergraduate homework assignment. It’s clear evidence of the power that Wikipedia has for classroom assignments. It transforms passive learning into an act of contributing knowledge.

It’s just one example of the kind of Wikipedia article likely to be referenced by the public, particularly during an election year. Students in the course tackled a broad scope of topics. The article on Warlords was just a list. It’s now a deep, thoughtful summary of thinking about the forms of warlords around the world. Another tackled the article on the broad, and difficult to write, topic of Rebellion itself. Two student editors expanded the timely article on Ethnic conflict. Those interested in the refugee crisis can find an excellent article on Western European colonialism and colonization.

Articles from Dr. Blattman’s class have been seen, collectively, a staggering 3.5 million times. That shows what’s possible when higher education classrooms connect to Wikipedia: Literally millions of people gain access to thorough, thoughtful, and deeper information about the political issues that move the world.

We’d love to help more courses like this one get on board. If you’d like to find out more about what’s possible for your own course, get in touch with us: contact@wikiedu.org.

If Political Science Ruled the World (and We Were on Our Best Behavior)

Once, as a graduate student at the University of Missouri, I wisecracked, “the entire world should be turned over to political scientists for experimental purposes.” I was joking and everyone knew it… but I never lived down that moment.

The world should not be turned over to political scientists – or anyone – for experimental purposes, of course. Yet, I cannot help but wonder what would happen if political scientists had more sway over the state of political speech in this country.

With Democratic candidates each suggesting that the other is unqualified to be President, and Republican candidates busy comparing their respective manhoods and insulting one another’s hometowns, perhaps a calmer, more data-driven approach would help.

I thought about this while reflecting on an exchange I had at the MPSA conference this year with a colleague named Jesse T. Richman, who teaches at Old Dominion University.

Together with ODU colleagues Gulshan A. Chattha and David C. Earnest, Richman produced a paper in which they argue that they have evidence of non-citizens voting in U.S. Elections (.pdf). In fact, Richman et al claim that the non-citizen vote is enough to swing a close election such as Minnesota’s 2008 race for U.S. Senate, which flipped party control. I don’t buy it.

With regard to voter fraud in general, voluminous research such as that by Justin Levitt (.pdf) of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU and Lorraine Minnite (.pdf) of Rutgers find very minimal evidence of it occurring, but plenty of evidence of it being marshaled in support of restrictive laws such as proof-of-citizenship, that is, laws that require first-time voter registrants to show a birth certificate or other evidence that they are US citizens. Kansas, Alabama, and Georgia now have such laws on the books, as does Arizona. Court challenges to the laws are ongoing. My own research, with colleagues Chapman Rackaway of Ft. Hays State and Kevin Anderson of Eastern Illinois, has found that these laws lower voter turnout. They also result in tens of thousands of individuals being kept off the voting rolls in Kansas alone. With regards to the claims about non-citizen voting, Stephen Ansolabehere, Samantha Luks and Brian F. Schaffner rebut Richman et al by arguing that they are cherry-picking rare events in a huge dataset-events that are almost certainly due to measurement error. Ansolabehere, Luks, and Schaffner also test Richman et al‘s hypothesis with panel data, that is, survey results in which the same respondents are contacted repeatedly over time, and their analysis finds exactly zero cases of non-citizen voting.

All of this came to a head when I presented my paper at this year’s MPSA conference, citing Ansolabehere, Luks, and Schaffner and my own data to argue that proof-of-citizenship laws are unneeded and that they lower vote registrations. Richman was in the audience. After my presentation, he pushed back by noting that his research claims that non-citizens vote on U.S. elections, it does not purport to show that undocumented immigrants vote, as I had claimed it did. I acknowledged and will correct the error. We talked further after the panel, and Richman told me he has some new data responding to Ansolabehere, Luks, and Schaffner, and that he would be happy to share it with me. He also requested a copy of my paper, which I uploaded to the MPSA conference website and have e-mailed directly to Richman. Richman also sent me a tentative new data analysis, which he argues will show some non-citizens who cast verified votes that had been overlooked by Ansolabehere, Luks, and Schaffner. I plan to look more deeply into it.

I still have serious concerns about the way Richman et al‘s research is discussed in the popular media. While the authors stress that they are finding evidence of non-citizen voting, not undocumented immigrant voting, they have to be aware of the way in which their research has been described in the conservative news media, including the National Review, breitbart.com, and NewsMax. All of these outlets do use the term “non-citizen” rather than “undocumented (or illegal) immigrant,” in describing Richman et al’s research. However, they do not make clear the distinction and they frame their headlines around “illegal votes,” which, while technically true, could easily mislead readers into thinking that the discussion is about undocumented immigrants voting.

Essentially, Richman et al are arguing that on rare occasion, a legal resident or other non-citizen living legally in the US may register to vote and on ever rarer occasion, that person may cast a ballot. Even if true, this is an entirely different argument than the way their research is used, which is to stoke fears of undocumented immigrants subverting American elections. The laws passed to combat this alleged problem have excluded tens of thousands from the rolls. Furthermore, I don’t trust the politicians and interest groups who have made it a cornerstone of their careers to promote such laws.

That said, Richman is convinced he is onto something that has at least academic significance. His additional data and analysis deserve open-minded scrutiny in the name of academic discovery. My own work speaks to the citizens denied their right to vote by proof-of-citizenship laws, not on the possibility of non-citizen voting, so I cannot say with certainty that Richman et al are wrong, no matter how apprehensive I am about how their research is being framed in the popular media. At a personal level, I found Richman to be soft-spoken and approachable, and we both kept our conversation focused on the data. He e-mailed me a follow-up the day after the conference. At no point did Richman or I make our disagreement into a personal one, or impugn one another’s integrity. While our dispute may have political and policy ramifications, we are both committed to keeping this discussion where it belongs – on the data, and the methods used to analyze it.

Academics of all disciplines are certainly capable of vindictive, petty behavior. Time and again we invoke the old adage, “in academia, the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so low.” Yet sometimes, the stakes are not so low. In those cases, if we make the effort, political scientists can disagree without personalizing the disagreement, resorting instead to the data and the analytics used to interpret them, instead of ad hominem attacks. Those are still the professional norms of our discipline, even if we fall short of them at times.

Presidential candidates, please take note.

About the author: Michael A. Smith is a Professor of Political Science at Emporia State University where he teaches classes on state and local politics, campaigns and elections, political philosophy, legislative politics, and nonprofit management. Smith has contributed to multiple media outlets and is also a blogger for the 2016 MPSA conference in Chicago. Follow Smith on Twitter.

Note: The views and opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Midwest Political Science Association, MPSA staff, and/or other site contributors.

Political Science: The Final Frontier

Can science fiction teach us about political institutions?

A group of political scientists says yes.

James Endersby of the University of Missouri-Columbia is spearheading a project with several of his former students, now colleagues, to show how science fiction illustrates the importance of well-constructed political institutions. One of their core themes is that the federal system of Star Trek represents a well-functioning political institution while that of Star Wars represents the opposite. Endersby said,

“Star Wars is a contrary example, where the federal (interplanetary) government fails completely. Millions watch these movies and TV shows, so it’s a way to introduce political science ideas to an audience that is interested and willing to think about them.”

Co-author Don Gooch of Stephen F. Austin State University added, “The Star Wars republic is a poorly constructed institution. If you use [Nelson] Polsby’s criteria, [successful government institutions must be] well-bounded, [include] specialization and differentiation between hierarchies, and [have] universalistic, not particularistic decision making. [In Star Wars], there’s no defined criteria for membership, there’s no limitation on who can appear and who can make a motion, and the federation is not well-bounded.”

Another contributor, Chapman Rackaway of Ft. Hays State University, continued the thought: “It just becomes too large and unwieldy, they need to change it… With each member having one vote, it becomes too large.”

He added, “They weren’t even consistent in their criteria for membership.”

Gooch sees a parallel between Star Wars and the career of 19th Century American statesman Henry Clay, “Clay became a state legislator, and in seven months he was Speaker. Queen Amidala was a queen, and next thing you know she’s a successor. Jar-jar is suddenly the leader from Naboo. There’s no institutional memory. They don’t have well-defined roles. There isn’t an executive role. England doesn’t have a codified constitution but there are roles. They don’t have any of that in the republic.”

Rackaway added that executive power was easy to abuse in the Star Wars federation when an assassination attempt became “a ruse for seizing power and ending democracy.”

Gooch concluded with a reference to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent, controversial Citizens United ruling, “In the Star Wars universe, corporations are people.”

This contrasts sharply with the Star Trek federation, according to Endersby. It “is a more positive model for governance with clear, although unusual representation, sort of like the US Senate. Star Trek also discusses civil rights, civil liberties, the rule of law [and] also non-interference in other cultures: the prime directive. [These are] the very concepts that are central to what we study as political scientists.”

In addition, the federation of Star Trek is much more stable than that of Star Wars. Gooch noted that in Star Trek, “they have numerous coups: they all fail. In Star Wars, [there is] one coup [and] the whole republic falls apart.”

Endersby believes that the science fiction approach is a good way to introduce a concept that is fundamental to the US and many other governments, but often overlooked: federalism. He told me, “most political scientists don’t really value federalism as a major component of government, but public opinion surveys indicate that most citizens think that a federal system is a very good form… Fifty years of Star Trek may be teaching them that a federation is a good way to resolve conflict.”

Endersby and his co-authors recently did a panel at another political science conference, discussing possible ideas for this book project. While the Star Wars/Star Trek contrast is a central theme, other works of science fiction may also be included. Another contributor, Steven Galatas of Stephen F. Austin University, summed up the possibilities:

“I think it offers us an area of political theory, understandings of utopia and dystopia. If we look for example at the writings of Kim Stanley Robinson, we see debates over environmental politics: how to handle resource scarcity and yet build a more perfect society through his Red Mars series. Likewise, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon Riders of Pern offers a vision of a left-libertarian society struggling with an invasive enemy.”

In the struggle to show how political institutions matter, perhaps science fiction will indeed prove to be the final frontier.

Q&A with the Founder of Women Also Know Stuff

MPSA_SamaraKlar — Samara Klar is an Assistant Professor at the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona and is the founder of Women Also Know Stuff.

A database of female experts in politics, policy, government, and methods in the social sciences, called Women Also Know Stuff, was launched on Friday and has rapidly gained momentum with the addition of numerous experts and research categories. We had the opportunity to interview the site’s founder Samara Klar, an Assistant Professor at the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, about her motivation for creating the site and what might be next.

How did the launch of Women Also Know Stuff come about?
I think a lot of political scientists – both men and women – are disappointed when they see conference programs, speaker series, or articles that include few women, if any at all. The individuals in our field are, by and large, extremely inclusive and progressive – yet women nonetheless tend to be underrepresented in these types of public forums.

It just seemed to me that the problem is not that anyone is intentionally excluding women but rather that it can simply be tricky to think of women when organizing these types of things. I myself have been in that position – putting together a panel and struggling to think of women who might be able to participate. So an accessible database of female political scientists, searchable by area of expertise, just seemed to be an easy way to help deal with that.

How many women were in the database when you launched the project and how many are now?
The “project” in itself was a really quick and easy endeavor. I took maybe 20 minutes to start a site on wordpress.com and I added just a few areas of expertise, each with maybe 1 or 2 names. I immediately realized that there are far too many women that needed to be added to the site for just me or even for just a handful of people to maintain the database. It would have to be crowd-sourced. So I simply emailed all the login information to a dozen or so women I know in political science as well as to the listserv for Visions in Methodology. I told people the basic concept and asked them to forward it around.

It has now been 48 hours since the site was first created and there are now over 70 areas of expertise, each with at least a handful (if not several dozen) experts listed. I have not done an exhaustive count of the number of scholars in the database but it’s in the several hundreds. And, again, it has been only 48 hours since the site was created! All I did was put together a very simple website. There are dozens of political scientists – men and women – who contribute the content and maintain the site. My effort in this project has really been no greater than many others’.

The discipline seems to have quickly embraced the concept. Will you be gathering data on how much the site is actually used to procure female speakers or co-authors? To be honest, I put the site together very much on a whim and I figured that if one or two women gained a bit of visibility, it would be a success. But it has absolutely taken on a life of its own. I would love it if we were able to keep track of any impact it might have in a more systematic way. Hopefully someone will come up with a clever way to do so or will even volunteer to take that on!

How can someone make suggestions if they know of women they would like to see listed under certain categories?
As I mentioned, there is no “gate-keeper” for this site. The login information is available to anyone who is interested in contributing. Simply email me or, really, anyone listed on the site, and you’ll be able to get all the information you need to make edits.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?
It’s always really nerve-wracking to put yourself out there when it comes to sensitive issues like this one but I am thrilled at how excited and supportive everyone has been. Both male and female political scientists have been sharing it on social media, contributing names, and emailing me with words of encouragement. It’s not a perfect solution — or even a perfect website! – but it’s exciting to see that everyone is so open to taking small steps to fixing the problems in our field.

To participate in the Women Also Know Stuff project, you can contact Samara Klar by email at klar@email.arizona.edu or on Twitter at @SamaraKlar.

On the Hill: Linda Trautman’s Experience at COSSA’s Advocacy Day

MPSA_LindaTrautman_COSSA Linda Trautman, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Ohio University Lancaster who specializes in American Government and Politics with a focus on legislative politics, mass political behavior and urban public policy.

Before presenting her research on “Racial Advocacy and Bill Sponsorship in State Legislative Politics” and participating in a roundtable discussion about Voting Rights at the upcoming MPSA conference, Trautman will spend two days in March participating with fellow MPSA members in the Consortium of Social Science Association’s Annual Meeting & Social and Behavioral Science Advocacy Day in Washington DC. As this will be her second time participating in the event, we asked her a few questions about her participation in last year’s event and the importance of her return in 2016.

Were you involved in advocacy efforts prior to last year’s Consortium of Social Science Association (COSSA) meeting?
I was not involved in advocacy efforts prior to the 2015 COSSA meeting. I became interested in participating as a result of my affiliation with the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) which is a professional national and international organization dedicated to the dissemination of high quality scholarship by political scientists. The decline in Federal funding of social science research, in particular, political science research was a major impetus for me to actively advocate and to get involved to help promote awareness about the loss of federal funding for social science research.
Will you please give us an overview of how you spent the day on Capitol Hill?
Advocacy Day as a part of the 2015 COSSA meeting was very exciting. I arrived on Capitol Hill early in order to get a sense of the layout of the buildings which gave me an opportunity to start the day by engaging with workers on Capitol Hill about daily affairs and politics. While on the Hill, I worked with an excellent team which consisted of a research professor and demographer to encourage Federal lawmakers to support specified funding levels for National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) research. I met with several congressional staff members to inform them about the importance and necessity of social science research, in particular political science scholarship. As one of the research professors in the group, I specifically detailed the significance of my current research and how it is vitally important to educate, mentor, and train the next generation of students. I also emphasized the positive impact it has on the state’s economy. One of the highlights of my Capitol Hill visit is that I got an opportunity to personally speak to a Congressperson from my state delegation to impress upon the Member of Congress (MC) how social science research and innovation is a driving force for continuing to enhance higher education and learning. COSSA’s advocacy day was an intellectually rewarding experience.
You’ve signed up again for the 2016 event; why do you think it’s important to participate?
I believe it is important to participate in the 2016 COSSA meeting and advocacy day in order to engage in a sustained dialogue about the necessity of supporting and increasing funding levels for social science research. I think it is vital to build upon the professional relationship with MCs, staffers, and other central personnel to continue to emphasize why social science research is necessary and why there should be Federal investment, in particular, in political science research.
What do you think is the most important message for members of the political science community to share with their elected representatives?
Encourage elected officials to elevate awareness and the conscious of their fellow MCs (colleagues) by participating in vigorous and serious discourse about the importance of political science research to the livelihood of the academy, student learning and economic innovation. In addition, I believe it is critical to convey that American political science research is intricately linked to the health of our governmental system, democracy and civic literacy.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
COSSA is a great way to get involved in important work which drastically impacts researchers and the academy. It is an excellent means to connect with MCs, staffers as well as researchers and professors from other universities.

Travel grants are still available for MPSA members interested in attending the upcoming COSSA Annual Meeting and Social and Behavioral Science Advocacy Day (March 15-16, 2016) or the NHA Annual Meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day (March 14-15, 2016) events in Washington DC. MPSA anticipates that those funded will serve as a core group involved in advocacy activities in support of social sciences as the association continues work with COSSA, NHA and other agencies. The deadline for applications is January 25, 2016. Notifications will be made within a week. Click here for more information and to apply.

… Visit us at APSA Booth #904!

MPSA 2018 Call for Proposals

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