Maxwell School News and Commentary

The funding will enable the Maxwell School assistant professor to build on his study of the crop-climate feedback cycle. 

Entitled “Like-minded Sources on Facebook Are Prevalent but Not Polarizing” and co-authored by Assistant Professor of Political Science Emily Thorson, this groundbreaking research published in Nature uses an on-platform experiment to examine what happens when Facebook users see dramatically less content from people who share their political leanings.

“Going forward I think there’s almost no doubt he’s going to be indicted in Washington. And because he’s going to be indicted in Washington and the potential for a jury that would sit and judge him in Washington, his prospects for remaining free got a lot darker,” says William Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs.

"Given how partisan and ideologically extreme most politicians still are, are nonpartisan primaries really enough to save American democracy? While we’re already seeing improvements in the states that have them, the tide won’t fully change until a critical mass of politicians are freed from partisan primaries at the state and national level," writes Richard Barton, assistant teaching professor of policy studies and public administration and international affairs.

"Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing," co-authored by Assistant Professor of Political Science Emily Thorson, was published in Nature. The study is focused on the prevalence and effects of "echo chambers" on social media.

"There have been women involved for a long, long time. For example, there was a very active women’s branch of the Klu Klux Klan in the 1920s. And many of those women, but not all, had been members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy," says Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science.

"Local Control, Discretion, and Administrative Burden: SNAP Interview Waivers and Caseloads During the COVID-19 Pandemic," co-authored by Maxwell faculty members Colleen Heflin and Leonard Lopoo, and doctoral student William Clay Fannin, was published in The American Review of Public Administration.

"After 9/11, the U.S. Treasury recognised that global dollar dominance gave Washington control over the critical plumbing of global finance. A new breed of financial sanctions emerged which could precisely cut individual targets—terrorists, foreign government officials, state institutions, firms—off from the dollar system. ‘Smart’ financial sanctions revolutionised economic warfare," writes Daniel McDowell, associate professor of political science.

“What people are seeing now is what people have seen every summer for as long as I’ve been alive,” says William Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs. “Folks are taking their summer National Guard duty right now and riding convoys to wherever they’re going to be. For many of us, it’s a regular scene in the summer on the highways.”