Women and Politics is a great class to teach. My students’ minds are regularly blown about how the content doesn’t comply with their priors.

I am happy to have those with degrees in hand sit in and adjust their priors, too.

It’s a big literature. Lots of stuff to learn. Day 1 we talk about the fundamental concept of power--pulling from radical feminist scholars Bachrach & Braratz (yes, that was sarcasm)--and how a system of power entrenches itself through mobilization of bias. We use this to understand patriarchy and the meaning of feminism.

Saw lots of great stuff at #APSA2018, but am afraid I also saw a couple people bomb the Q&A portion of their panel. With job market season upon us, want to share some thoughts (*not* suggestions) on what Q&A time is and how to think about doing it well. First, yes—Q&A can be high stakes in interviews and make or break you. But seems like some people don’t realize that’s because LOTS of things can be happening in Q&A, some of which are about your work and some of which are not.

What does “white feminism” look like in its purest form? I give you some primary source material from the records of the ERA Club of New Orleans—a white women’s suffrage organization. Their 1918 Suffrage referendum campaign literature: "On the part of the women of Orleans Parish who believe in democracy, we earnestly ask for your vote."

Democracy! Yes! Everyone should get to vote in a democracy! Right?

Nope.

This is not a statement with any firm basis in political science research.

Political science would tell you:

-mobilization of your own party base matters immensely
-average voters won’t see or remember this
-GOP elites will find a way to build resentment with or without this

https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1013183752523132928

Indeed, the idea that Trump’s re-election rests on whether the left responds to him with “civility” and some magic agenda that somehow overcomes the Trump/GOP identity politics that gave us Trump in the first place is one I have yet to see any real evidence for. Anyone?

You'd need a social movement for that. And one that invests people whose voting rights aren't under attack to latch on to the effort.

As GOP has learned: far easier for a party to whittle away at the other's base with disenfranchisement measures than to enfranchise their own.

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This remains a big disappointment to me in the political sophistication of the left: how many now decry the fall of norms when the foundation of democracy itself--the right to vote--has been under increasing duress for decades. And still they see no fundamental connection.

Ugh. Ok. Let me try this from an actual human who knows social science point of view.

I grew up with working class parents in a conservative town in Ohio. I’m a political scientist. I am married to a black man from the rural South. Currently reside just outside DC. Context! 1/

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Um, so, regular people from the middle of the country are probably right when they pick any political figure and call them a terrible person. Any of them. Either party. Strategic elites violate good person norms. 2/

I just read this transcript of the @NPR Sandberg on Facebook re: data, privacy, and ads. And it makes me feel worse, not better, about the company. I found it to read remarkably like the non-apologizing apologies for environments that generate countless #MeToo stories. 1/ Here’s the link: npr.org/2018/04/05/599… 2/

This is as awful as I expected.
From the message to the messenger - whose bio is no happenstance in the intended effect on the Fox News audience - this is shameful.
#MLK was a leader of a movement not for blind unity, but for true unity based on justice fulfilled. Justice.

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My husband - who, yes, is black - has taken me on a privileged journey over our 18 years through my own ignorance. He comes from rural Louisiana and from a family that sharecropped and worked domestic jobs to invest in that one family member who might rise.

This sort of message is a feature of racial resentment politics: highlighting "proper behavior" from the target group. 1/n

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We're more used to seeing this sort of messaging around deservingness. Hence, measures of racial resentment tap that dynamic explicitly. 2/n

Not just black athletes: black male athletes. Protesting ones at that. There is a unique resentment there that Trump is tapping. 1/n

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From an experiment I did: when shown a peaceful protest, white conservatives especially disapproved if black men were the protesters. 2/n