Aidan Milliff
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aidanmilliff.com
Aidan Milliff
@aidanmilliff.com
Political scientist
https://www.aidanmilliff.com
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
”What turns people into radical jihadist clerics? A new book suggests thwarted career ambitions. A subset of Muslim clerics who advocate for jihad started out as mainstream clerics looking for state-sponsored jobs…only to become unemployed, disenchanted, and radicalized” news.mit.edu/2017/why-som...
February 8, 2026 at 3:43 AM
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
"As a member of the press, I filmed the church protest a few weeks ago and now I'm being arrested for that," Indipendent journalist Georgia Fort said. "It's hard to understand how we have a Constitution, Constitutional rights, when we can just be arrested for being a member of the press."
Journalists Don Lemon, Georgia Fort arrested in connection with church protest against ICE
Lemon's attorney said he was taken into custody by federal officers Thursday night in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy Awards.
www.kare11.com
January 30, 2026 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
I wrote something... Hope it’s helpful ☮️

I’ve studied Nonviolent protection movements in war zones for 2 decades. Here’s what I’m seeing in the U.S.

theconversation.com/anti-ice-pro...
Anti-ICE protesters are following same nonviolent playbook used by people in war zones across the world to fight threats to their communities
Americans are learning and doing the kind of work that civilians in war zones worldwide have done for decades: dealing with threats by organizing to help protect their neighbors and communities.
theconversation.com
January 29, 2026 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
Happy to announce the 1st ever @isanet.bsky.social conference in South Asia in August 2026. Hosted in Colombo, Sri Lanka, we welcome proposals from scholars based in and/or studying South Asian politics & international relations, but also broader global themes ofc www.isanet.org/Conferences/...
ISA-SAWP Colombo 2026: Call for Proposals
eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com
January 21, 2026 at 7:59 AM
Time is a flat circle, episode 134:

Warren Zevon ad-libbed Bibi Netanyahu's name into a live performance of Mohammed’s Radio shortly after he was first elected PM ... 30 years ago.

archive.org/details/wz19...
archive.org
January 16, 2026 at 10:15 PM
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
From November 2025 -

Estimating the Impact of Drone Strikes on Civilians Using Call Detail Records - https://cup.org/4qy0az4

- Paolo Bertolotti, @aidanmilliff.com, Fotini Christia & Ali Jadbabaie

#OpenAccess
January 11, 2026 at 4:10 PM
Exciting new paper on analysis of interviews at scale!

As I've argued elsewhere (APSR, 2024), I think it's important to put humans back in the loop as an additional step *after* the LLM, but this method could easily be extended to do that.

academic.oup.com/ej/advance-a...
Qualitative Analysis with Large-N: A New Method with an Application to Aspirations in Bangladesh*
Abstract. The qualitative analysis of open-ended interviews has vast potential in economics but has found limited use. This is partly because the interpret
academic.oup.com
January 9, 2026 at 3:24 PM
I wonder if it’s related to the McKinley/expanding territory fandom

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
January 6, 2026 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
I feel like I haven’t even been properly lied to about the purposes of this war
January 3, 2026 at 9:13 AM
Submit your papers *by 1/7* for SoWEPS-10 at FSU.

www.soweps.org/call-for-pap...

SoWEPS is a great chance for advanced grad students and junior faculty to get feedback on developed projects.

We'd love to see you in Tallahassee this March!
January 2, 2026 at 5:35 PM
“America’s openness to the world’s most ambitious people — and its unique ability to absorb and make use of human talent — has perhaps been its most potent form of soft power. Why try to defeat the world’s richest country when you might have the chance to join it and reap its ample rewards?”
I went to Texas to write about the sudden end of one of America's most successful experiments: the six decades of welcoming India's most educated and ambitious citizens. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/o...
Opinion | One of America’s Most Successful Experiments Is Coming to a Shuddering Halt
www.nytimes.com
December 31, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
I went to Texas to write about the sudden end of one of America's most successful experiments: the six decades of welcoming India's most educated and ambitious citizens. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/o...
Opinion | One of America’s Most Successful Experiments Is Coming to a Shuddering Halt
www.nytimes.com
December 29, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
Not planning to do an overall year wrap up but do want to share some work on US strikes in Somalia over the year.

By our tracking (not yet updated for holiday strikes), it is the peak of the campaign and may surpass the peak of strikes in Pakistan.

1/7

www.newamerica.org/future-secur...
December 30, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
“NCAR has played a greater role in advancing weather prediction & atmospheric modeling than perhaps any other single entity in the world,” says @weatherwest.bsky.social

Dismantling NCAR would be “like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.” KH
Trump administration plans to break up largest federal climate research center
Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the National Science Foundation "will be breaking up" the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.
www.nbcnews.com
December 17, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
Friends: University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment is hiring...and definitely looking for social scientists. Apply!
December 17, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Just received a rejection on a paper that was under review for 8 months.

The rejection part is totally fair.

Waiting 11% of the tenure clock for a first decision on a paper, on the other hand....
December 3, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Last class of the semester so grad students get to take it easy with questions like:

- What does ethical research (not) look like?
- What is professional responsibility?
- What is the nature of goodness?
December 2, 2025 at 3:02 PM
🚨 New in @bjpols.bsky.social :
“Estimating the Impact of Drone Strikes on Civilians Using Call Detail Records.”
By Bertolotti, Milliff, Christia & Jadbabaie.

We use 12 billion call records from Yemen to measure the civilian consequences of drone warfare.

1/6
November 4, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
NEW -

Estimating the Impact of Drone Strikes on Civilians Using Call Detail Records - https://cup.org/4qy0az4

- Paolo Bertolotti, @aidanmilliff.com, Fotini Christia & Ali Jadbabaie

#OpenAccess
November 4, 2025 at 11:10 AM
The recording industry in Kenya is legit fascinating. There was a period of time in maybe the 70s when labels were popping up at the *county* level, recording folk songs on 45s for hyper-local distribution.
Very pleased to receive my copy of this new, important volume, in which I offer a brief history of musical platformization in Kenya.

Oh and this book is *open access*! Starting next week you can download a free copy from Luminos — luminosoa.org/books/e/10.1...
October 16, 2025 at 1:47 PM
Southside Weekly holding strong as Chicago's best reported local paper (with the Guardian in ironic second place).
This South Side Weekly report on the Chicago building raid is well worth reading. Most striking to me are the indications of collusion between federal authorities and the building owner and management to effect a mass eviction at the blighted property. southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...
October 8, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
Despite the grim topic, this is a very good paper: monuments that signal white supremacy can substitute performative violence and thus reduce it.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Political Symbols and Social Order: Confederate Monuments and Performative Violence in the Post-Reconstruction U.S. South | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core
Political Symbols and Social Order: Confederate Monuments and Performative Violence in the Post-Reconstruction U.S. South
www.cambridge.org
October 7, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Very short summary of this paper:
September 19, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by Aidan Milliff
Very excited that my paper with @katakeith.bsky.social is now out in @polanalysis.bsky.social. We investigate whether LLMs actually follow the instructions/definitions provided in codebooks, propose some diagnostics, and release a new evaluation dataset.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Codebook LLMs: Evaluating LLMs as Measurement Tools for Political Science Concepts | Political Analysis | Cambridge Core
Codebook LLMs: Evaluating LLMs as Measurement Tools for Political Science Concepts
www.cambridge.org
September 19, 2025 at 1:45 PM