dmasterson.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Syria sanctions should be lifted but I can’t imagine that there will be enough mov to drive immediate econ improvements. The sit on the ground is deteriorating & feeding tensions - Syria needs stepped up, direct econ assistance to prevent the sit from spiralling www.reuters.com/world/middle...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

10 Things to Know About Survey Implementation https://buff.ly/40FwQM5 #EGAPMethodsGuide

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

New WP with @vincentab.bsky.social @ryancbriggs.net. We use LLMs and RAs to track publication trends in polisci. Here’s how subfields have changed in AJPS and JOP osf.io/v7fe8

submitted 13 days ago • 5 comments

NSF has created an Executive Order Implementation webpage to ensure the widest dissemination of information and updates. We will continue to communicate with you as we receive additional guidance. new.nsf.gov/executive-or...

submitted 26 days ago • 7 comments

Guidance from Stanford leadership on the OMB memo.

submitted 26 days ago • 12 comments

On Monday, Trump halted refugee arrivals, citing crime concerns. But this fear-based narrative doesn't hold up to facts. A 2021 study by IPL researchers @dmasterson.bsky.social & Vasil Yasenov found Trump’s 2017 ban had no effect on crime rates. Read the study: immigrationlab.org/publication/...

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

ICYMI: Will Syrian refugees go 'home'? Looking at the experimental evidence of Syrian refugee return intentions, with work from @loribeaman.bsky.social @aalrababah.bsky.social @dmasterson.bsky.social @mirandasimon.bsky.social @thebraith.bsky.social and others www.compas.ox.ac.uk/article/will...

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

What a month it has been for the region! New piece out in @foreignpolicy.com with Reva Dhingra on the implications of the fall of the Assad regime for Syrian refugees around the world.

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

It's official: I'm writing a book. Should be out early fall 2026. Thrilled to be working with MIT Press.

submitted 39 days ago • 28 comments

🚨Will's book is out!🚨 Argument: UN peacekeepers are most effective when perceived as impartial, fostering civilian trust and community cooperation. Peace is built from the bottom up. You can read it for free since it's OPEN ACCESS: www.cambridge.org/core/books/l...

submitted 40 days ago • 1 comment

📚 Just released! "Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa" explores critical governance reforms across MENA. Editors Kristen Kao & ellenlust.bsky.social, featuring 14 regional specialists. Open Access and more info here: mailchi.mp/gld.gu.se/ne...

submitted 41 days ago • 1 comment

Are you a PhD candidate studying political violence? Consider applying for the HFG Emerging Scholar award. $25k toward finishing up your diss. Deadline: 1 Feb. Details/Apply: www.hfg.org/emerging-sch...

submitted 46 days ago • 1 comment

Syria’s moment of possibility is fragile. The US and international community must act quickly to create the conditions for recovery, by lifting sanctions and permitting reconstruction and foreign investment. My latest at Century International. tcf.org/content/comm...

submitted 65 days ago • 0 comments

Lift sanctions on Syria. They were to restrict/punish the Assad govt, not the nascent post-Assad govt, and not average Syrians. Let states, NGOs, and companies put money in. As aid, as investment, whatever—it’ll help the economy, the people, and chances of a pluralistic state. Very good argument👇

submitted 65 days ago • 1 comment

A wonderful opportunity for a Syria researcher at the Arab Reform Initiative. www.arab-reform.net/job/the-bass...

submitted 71 days ago • 0 comments

"Many Syrians bristle at the idea they might end up like other countries in the region that overthrew repressive regimes. They see few parallels with Iraq and Afghanistan... Syria is almost the opposite: a home-grown uprising against a regime that was propped up by foreigners."

submitted 72 days ago • 0 comments

My paper with @kbclarke.bsky.social and Jack Paine, “Violent Origins and Authoritarian Order: Divergent Trajectories after Successful Rebellions,” was featured in a NYT article analyzing recent events in Syria! www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/w...

submitted 73 days ago • 3 comments

"By almost every metric, the harm to civilians from the first month of the Israeli campaign in Gaza is incomparable with any 21st century air campaign. It is by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians that Airwars has ever documented." gaza-patterns-harm.airwars.org

submitted 73 days ago • 0 comments

No less than six (!) PhD scholarships announced at our fantastic department. 2 are open calls for anyone (+1 open call for Danish MA’s) and 1 is reserved for Turkish Studies in our Mid East Section. Please spread the word! employment.ku.dk/phd/?show=16...

submitted 74 days ago • 2 comments

“A travel ban is likely to go into effect soon after inauguration....Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Myanmar, Sudan, Tanzania, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Somalia. New countries could be added to this list, particularly China and India.” www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/u...

submitted 74 days ago • 9 comments

Syrian journalist Dima Azeddin breaks in tears as she reports live from Damascus after 14 years in exile Cc @leilana.bsky.social

submitted 74 days ago • 15 comments

🚨 New @apsrjournal.bsky.social Paper! 🚨 In “When Migrants Mobilize against Labor Exploitation: Evidence from the Italian Farmlands,” I study how empowering undocumented migrants can reduce labor exploitation and even weaken organized crime. Thread : 🧵

submitted 74 days ago • 2 comments

Please consider applying to a pre-doc position at UCSD. Projects at the intersection of development and culture in Africa with Eduardo Montero Nathan Nunn James Robinson & others. Possible fieldwork in DRC. French skills preferred. Thank you! employment.ucsd.edu/research-ass...

submitted 75 days ago • 1 comment

If you read one article on #Syria today, read this one by Wendy Pearlman, who argues that “the role of those watching from afar is not to doubt, critique or speculate, but to honor this triumph of human hope.” theconversation.com/syrians-in-a...

submitted 75 days ago • 0 comments

I have a new article out in Democratization on Saudi Arabia & MBS, personalism/personalization, and domestic policymaking -- an exploratory case study of the early years of Vision 2030, and what it can tell poli sci about policy processes in non-democracies. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

submitted 76 days ago • 3 comments

This video showcases the documentation files kept on every family in the city of Sweida in southern Syria. Each family has its own report and file maintained by the Political Security Branch in Sweida.

submitted 78 days ago • 8 comments

Uniforms of Syrian soldiers from the dictator Bashar al-Assad’s army, abandoned as they fled Damascus. A historic image marking the end of the dictator and his army.

submitted 78 days ago • 94 comments

A lesson from Syria on refugee protection: “The recent escalation of violence in Aleppo and elsewhere proves that a long, unresolved, simmering conflict can erupt into full hostilities, a caution against premature refugee returns.” My thoughts on repatriating refugees: www.hrw.org/news/2024/12...

submitted 78 days ago • 0 comments

This image circulated from Syria years ago. I kept it and today I remember it. ““One day the war will end and I will return to my poem.” For Syria. For Gaza.

submitted 79 days ago • 7 comments

Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health releases latest casualty figures of the war: Almost 4,000 people killed, more than 16,500 wounded. On Tuesday, the day before the fragile ceasefire came into effect, 78 people were killed. #lebanon

submitted 87 days ago • 0 comments

With @ginvernizzi.bsky.social, @carloprato.bsky.social and Shigeo Hirano, we're thrilled to announce the inaugural Bocconi-Columbia Conference on Political, Social, and Economic Inequality. 📅 Mark your calendars: June 19-20, 2025 at Bocconi University!

submitted 88 days ago • 1 comment

After a review process so long and intensive that the title changed twice, I'm excited/relieved that "How to Distinguish Motivated Reasoning from Bayesian Updating" is accepted at @polbehavior.bsky.social. osf.io/preprints/os... Here is how it's relevant for your Thanksgiving dinner 🦃👇

submitted 88 days ago • 8 comments

Civilians in #Beirut are rushing to the American University Hospital to shelter amidst intense #Israeli bombardment across the city today. But some fear they may not be safe there; the IDF has hit dozens of medical facilities in #Lebanon in recent weeks, inc Beirut’s main govt hospital.

submitted 89 days ago • 0 comments

In case you missed it… finally made it somewhere safe but: #Lebanon: 4 Israeli evacuation warnings for central Beirut including near the busy Hamra street. Traffic and chaos everywhere as people flee. Warnings call for people to stay 50 meters away instead of the usual 500.

submitted 89 days ago • 6 comments

New paper in @apsrjournal.bsky.social with @andreasbeerli.bsky.social, Dominik Hangartner, and Dalston Ward about #immigration and voting for the #FarRight in #Switzerland

submitted 89 days ago • 9 comments

"We picked up a leg here, a hand here. We took out the bodies of three children yesterday. We found a dead older couple, both of them in wheelchairs," said Jaafar, an 18-year-old rescuer. "It was the worst scene yet." www.reuters.com/world/middle...

submitted 90 days ago • 3 comments

24 November UNHCR overview of arrivals to Syria from Lebanon includes updated breakdown of arrivals by crossings, demographics for both Syrian and Lebanese arrivals: data.unhcr.org/en/documents...

submitted 90 days ago • 0 comments

Thrilled to announce the release of Uprooted: How Post-WWII Population Transfers Remade Europe with Cambridge UP 🎉🎉 The book argues that accommodating the displaced population can strengthen states and benefit local economies in the long run. 📚 [Amazon: tinyurl.com/24m2mbkf] See thread below:

submitted 94 days ago • 37 comments

A thread about being wrong: 5 years ago, we wrote a paper about how how newly enfranchised 16-year-olds vote in Austria. But we were wrong. This year, @elisabethgraf.bsky.social, @schnizzl.bsky.social, Sylvia Kritzinger and I are setting the record straight: authors.elsevier.com/c/1juT5xRaZk...

submitted 94 days ago • 26 comments

As the Biden administration continues to call the war in Lebanon a “limited incursion," entire villages in the South are being blown up, and just today the city of Baalbek and surrounding areas are being threatened with shelling and forced to evacuate - forcing tens of thousands to flee again.

submitted 117 days ago • 0 comments

"The strikes hit a densely packed residential neighbourhood of apartment buildings and small shops in the heart of the Lebanese capital. ... [T]he Lebanese health ministry reported 22 people killed and 117 wounded. Among the dead were a family of eight, including three children."

submitted 135 days ago • 3 comments

"The large-scale destruction of villages, such as the border town of Yaroun, as well as of critical infrastructure such as hospitals, raises fears that those displaced may not have viable paths to return home when the fighting stops" Written with the incomparable Lama Mourad. Gift link. menasky

submitted 135 days ago • 0 comments

These last weeks, adding to this horrible year, have been beyond imaginable for Lebanon and its people. I feel like I've been screaming into the void but at least, with this, I hope that @separkinson.bsky.social and I's screams get out a bit louder.

submitted 135 days ago • 1 comment

“Over the past week, the Israeli military has flattened large parts of two border villages: Maroun al-Ras and Yaroun.” What “destroy Hezbollah’s military infrastructure” really means: demolish and depopulate civilian areas, as in Gaza, now in Lebanon. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

submitted 137 days ago • 1 comment

This is the single deadliest day in Lebanon since the end of the civil war. Just the reported numbers so far (as always in a situation of this scale, we know these are underreported) places today's death toll at nearly 1/3 of total deaths in the entire 2006 war (which was 33 days).

submitted 153 days ago • 1 comment

"That stoppage means 1,049 shipping containers of rice, flour, chickpeas, sugar and cooking oil — enough to feed 1.1 million people for one month — are stuck, even as an estimated 25% of families in Gaza face catastrophic hunger."

submitted 380 days ago • 1 comment