The End of Hypocrisy with Martha Finnemore

The U.S. government seems outraged that people are leaking classified materials about its less attractive behavior. It certainly acts that way: three years ago, after Chelsea Manning, an army private then known as Bradley Manning, turned over hundreds of thousands of classified cables to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, U.S. authorities imprisoned the soldier under conditions that the UN special rapporteur on torture deemed cruel and inhumane. The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, appearing on Meet the Press shortly thereafter, called WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, “a high-tech terrorist.”

More recently, following the disclosures about U.S. spying programs

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Other Writing:

Essay

Can the European Union Be Saved? with John Quiggin

Europe is on the brink of disaster—again. The possibility of a Greek default sent the markets roiling on Tuesday. And despite more than $2 trillion doled out to troubled nations such as Greece and Portugal, Europe’s leaders are once again meeting behind closed doors, trying to find a way to stanch the bleeding. It won’t ...
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Academic Article

Bias, Skew and Search Engines Suffice to Explain Online Toxicity – with Cosma Shalizi

Henry Farrell and Cosma Shalizi (2024), “Bias, Skew and Search Engines Suffice to Explain Online Toxicity,” Communications of the ACM, preprint, 67,4:25-28. U.S. political discourse seems to have fissioned into discrete bubbles, each reflecting its owndistorted image of the world. Many blame machine-learning algorithms that purportedly maximize“engagement” — serving up content that keeps YouTube or ...
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