Matt Martin
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mattjmartin.com
Matt Martin
@mattjmartin.com
200 followers 280 following 73 posts
Incoming Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of South Carolina. Postdoc, Comparative Constitutions Project. Outside of work: mutual aid, lofi hip-hop, and three cats.

Website: https://mattjmartin.com
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Matt Martin @mattjmartin.com · Jan 10
🚨 New research alert 🚨 The first article from my dissertation is here: "Elite Fractures, Public Capture: The Strategic Use of Public Consultation in Global Constitution-Making" has been published in the Journal of Law and Courts! Open access link: doi.org/10.1017/jlc....
Elite Fractures, Public Capture: The Strategic Use of Public Consultation in Global Constitution-Making | Journal of Law and Courts | Cambridge Core
Elite Fractures, Public Capture: The Strategic Use of Public Consultation in Global Constitution-Making
doi.org
mattjmartin.com
Tapping the sign
mattjmartin.com Matt Martin @mattjmartin.com · Aug 20
Some of the most gratifying and constructive exchanges I've had in academia have come from simply cold-emailing people to tell them how much I enjoyed their work.
December 22, 2025 at 8:14 PM
mattjmartin.com
Trials when
davidjbier.bsky.social David Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 4d
ICE agents illegally break into a woman's bathroom in a NY nutrition bar manufacturing plant. "Pull up your pants," says a male agent. The agents only had a warrant to review employer documents. They didn't have a warrant to search for, detain, or arrest anyone there.
December 22, 2025 at 8:03 PM
mattjmartin.com
Seven-month wait for an manuscript rejection based on two lackluster reviews (one of which is a request for revisions) that critique the paper for not making an argument it never intended to make. I love peer review
December 18, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Reposted by Matt Martin
nytimes.com
When China’s rulers ordered tens of thousands of soldiers to crush pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing in 1989, Gen. Xu Qinxian was the commander who famously said no. Now, leaked video from his court-martial was posted online. nyti.ms/48Ho706
December 18, 2025 at 4:40 AM
Reposted by Matt Martin
pewresearch.org
Teens turn to a variety of online platforms, but YouTube continues to stand out. Roughly nine-in-ten teens report ever using it. TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat are the next most widely used platforms.
A line chart showing that A majority of teens continue to use YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat
December 16, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by Matt Martin
jakemgrumbach.bsky.social
Trials when
popcrave.com Pop Crave @popcrave.com · 10d
An ICE agent in Minneapolis pinned a pregnant woman’s face into the snow and knelt on her body.

She was also dragged across the pavement by her wrist.
December 17, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Reposted by Matt Martin
reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
NEW: President Trump is expanding the previous 19-country travel ban to a whopping 39 countries (plus the Palestinian Authority), and appears to expand a block on legal immigration to now include spouses, children, and parents of U.S. citizens, who were previously exempted.
STRENGTHENING NATIONAL SECURITY THROUGH COMMON SENSE RESTRICTIONS BASED ON DATA: .... The Proclamation continues the full restrictions and entry limitations of nationals from the original 12 high-risk countries established under Proclamation 10949: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. It adds full restrictions and entry limitations on 5 additional countries based on recent analysis: Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria. It also adds full restrictions and entry limitations on individuals holding Palestinian-Authority-issued travel documents. It imposes full restrictions and entry limitations on 2 countries that were previously subject to partial restrictions: Laos and Sierra Leone. The Proclamation continues partial restrictions of nationals from 4 of the 7 original high-risk countries: Burundi, Cuba, Togo, and Venezuela. Because Turkmenistan has engaged productively with the United States and demonstrated significant progress since the previous Proclamation, this new Proclamation lifts the ban on its nonimmigrant visas, while maintaining the suspension of entry for Turkmen nationals as immigrants. It adds partial restrictions and entry limitations on 15 additional countries: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The Proclamation includes exceptions for lawful permanent residents, existing visa holders, certain visa categories like athletes and diplomats, and individuals whose entry serves U.S. national interests. The Proclamation narrows broad family-based immigrant visa carve-outs that carry demonstrated fraud risks, while preserving case-by-case waivers.
December 16, 2025 at 8:32 PM
mattjmartin.com
Page proof Tuesday
December 16, 2025 at 5:17 PM
mattjmartin.com
Obsessed with Columbia, SC's city flag
December 15, 2025 at 10:43 PM
Reposted by Matt Martin
adamserwer.bsky.social
Using AI to monitor schools for thoughtcrime bsky.app/profile/chad...
chadstanton.blacksky.app Doghouse Reilly @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 11d
“At Texas A&M, internal emails show staff are using AI software to search syllabi and course descriptions for words that could raise concerns under new system policies restricting how faculty teach about race and gender.”

www.texastribune.org/2025/12/15/t...
Texas universities deploy AI for course audits
Records obtained by The Texas Tribune show how universities are using the technology to reshape curriculum under political pressure, raising concerns about academic freedom.
www.texastribune.org
December 15, 2025 at 1:57 PM
mattjmartin.com
I'll be mentoring the Model Constitutional Convention again! If you're a student into constitutional law/reform, come serve as a state delegate and reimagine the U.S. Constitution.

📍 May 21–24, 2026 @ WashU Law
✅ Travel, lodging, food provided
📅 Apply by Jan 15, 2026

law.washu.edu/events/model...
Model Constitution Convention | WashU Law
Event Series Model Constitutional Convention Event Date: May 21 – 24, 2026 Application Now Open: Apply Here Questions may be directed to MCC2026@wustl.edu. Please also consult our FAQ for answers to a...
law.washu.edu
December 15, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Reposted by Matt Martin
kenklippenstein.bsky.social
FBI OPS DIRECTOR: Antifa - that's our primary concern right now. CONGRESS: Where is Antifa headquartered?

FBI: [Pauses]...We are building out the infrastructure right now.

CONGRESS: What does that mean?

FBI: Well, that's very fluid.
December 12, 2025 at 12:35 AM
Reposted by Matt Martin
andrew.heiss.phd
Some closing thoughts for my students this semester on LLMs and learning #rstats datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-12...
Will you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course in the future? No. Why won’t you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course? These tools are useful for coding (see this for my personal take on this). However, they’re only useful if you know what you’re doing first. If you skip the learning-the-process-of-writing-code step and just copy/paste output from ChatGPT, you will not learn. You cannot learn. You cannot improve. You will not understand the code. In that post, it warns that you cannot use it as a beginner: …to use Databot effectively and safely, you still need the skills of a data scientist: background and domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability. There is no LLM-based shortcut to those skills. You cannot LLM your way into domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, or coding ability. The only way to gain domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability is to struggle. To get errors. To google those errors. To look over the documentation. To copy/paste your own code and adapt it for different purposes. To explore messy datasets. To struggle to clean those datasets. To spend an hour looking for a missing comma. This isn’t a form of programming hazing, like “I had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow and now you must too.” It’s the actual process of learning and growing and developing and improving. You’ve gotta struggle. This Tumblr post puts it well (it’s about art specifically, but it applies to coding and data analysis too): Contrary to popular belief the biggest beginner’s roadblock to art isn’t even technical skill it’s frustration tolerance, especially in the age of social media. It hurts and the frustration is endless but you must build the frustration tolerance equivalent to a roach’s capacity to survive a nuclear explosion. That’s how you build on the technical skill. Throw that “won’t even start because I’m afraid it won’t be perfect” shit out the window. Just do it. Just start. Good luck. (The original post has disappeared, but here’s a reblog.) It’s hard, but struggling is the only way to learn anything. You might not enjoy code as much as Williams does (or I do), but there’s still value in maintaining codings skills as you improve and learn more. You don’t want your skills to atrophy. As I discuss here, when I do use LLMs for coding-related tasks, I purposely throw as much friction into the process as possible: To avoid falling into over-reliance on LLM-assisted code help, I add as much friction into my workflow as possible. I only use GitHub Copilot and Claude in the browser, not through the chat sidebar in Positron or Visual Studio Code. I treat the code it generates like random answers from StackOverflow or blog posts and generally rewrite it completely. I disable the inline LLM-based auto complete in text editors. For routine tasks like generating {roxygen2} documentation scaffolding for functions, I use the {chores} package, which requires a bunch of pointing and clicking to use. Even though I use Positron, I purposely do not use either Positron Assistant or Databot. I have them disabled. So in the end, for pedagogical reasons, I don’t foresee me incorporating LLMs into this class. I’m pedagogically opposed to it. I’m facing all sorts of external pressure to do it, but I’m resisting. You’ve got to learn first.
December 9, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Matt Martin
rmkubinec.bsky.social
The only way out of this dystopia is to start doing open reviews (non-anonymous). We have to get over our obsession with doing everything anonymously like some kind of secret society.

Yes, open reviews have drawbacks. But the alternatives are bad and getting worse.
December 9, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Reposted by Matt Martin
attackerman.bsky.social
They're using the confinement box, one of the most horrific methods of CIA torture in the post-9/11 black sites, against migrants now. This is the direct result of the lack of consequences for the architects of the torture program. Either there will be criminal penalties for this or it will expand.
Torture Techniques from CIA Black Sites Were Used at Alligator Alcatraz
Amnesty International, interviewing migrant detainees, identifies use of the confinement box. There can be no denying it is a torture prison
www.forever-wars.com
December 8, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Matt Martin
jerzakconnor.bsky.social
Calling those looking to get feedback on their quant work📢: Join us at @TexasAM for TexMeth2026 this Feb. Great opportunity to connect with the regional community and showcase your research. The sun will still be strong for those coming from the north!🤝📊☀️

Apply: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Texas Methods Conference 2026
Please answer the following questions to indicate your interest in attending and/or participating at our conference, which is scheduled to take place on Friday and Saturday, February 20-21, at Texas A...
docs.google.com
December 8, 2025 at 5:45 PM
mattjmartin.com
Some light Friday reading
December 5, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Reposted by Matt Martin
elizabethbitmeehan.com
/ sorry chat - cc @landgravephd.bsky.social, @gregsasso.bsky.social, @jnovkov.bsky.social, @gallen89.bsky.social, @friederdengler.bsky.social, @dilanokcuoglu.bsky.social, @raulpachecovega.bsky.social

from the 2024-2025 @apsa.bsky.social eJobs report released today

apsanet.org/wp-content/u...
From August 2024 to July 2025, a total of 960 jobs (excluding duplicate advertisements) were posted on APSA eJobs, nearly a 15% decrease from 2023-2024 and well below the fourteen-year average of 1151 jobs per year. This figure is similar to the number of jobs posted during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (2019-2020 through 2021-2022), in which an average of 955 jobs were posted per year. Despite this, the overall pattern of job postings in 2024-2025 mirrored that of previous post-pandemic years, including a greater number of tenure-track than non-tenure-track postings, a decrease in spring postings followed by an increase in summer and fall, and a large proportion of “Open” and “Other” postings. International postings made up a similar proportion of advertisements as 2023-24, at about 16% of postings.
December 2, 2025 at 3:04 PM
mattjmartin.com
The Comparative Constitutions Project turns 20! 🎉

We're launching "CCP in the Wild" to showcase research using CCP data. Used our data? We want to feature your work.

Submit yours → forms.gle/1xSjkSr69CdL...

Browse the collection → comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/ccp-in-the-w...
CCP in the Wild - Comparative Constitutions Project
CCP in the Wild Celebrating 20 years of the Comparative Constitutions Project. Explore how researchers around the world have used CCP data to advance our understanding of constitutional design. + Add ...
comparativeconstitutionsproject.org
December 2, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Reposted by Matt Martin
kissphoria.bsky.social
idk not to mention how very nuanced and normal the actual response here was
Trans Professors comment Mel Curth (She/They) November 16, 2025 at 2:04 PM Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting point for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive. While you are entitled to your own personal beliefs, there is an appropriate time or place to implement them in your reflections. I encourage all students to question or challenge the course material with other empirical findings or testable hypotheses, but using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc. is not best practice. You argue that abiding by normative gender roles is beneficial (it is perfectly fine to believe this. but to then say that evervone should act TPUSA OU Trans Professors comment the same, while also saying that people aren't pressured into gendered expectations is contradictory, especially since your arguments reflect a religious pressure to act in gender-stereotypical ways. You can say that strict gender norms don't create gender stereotypes, but that isn't true by definition of what a stereotype is. Please note that acknowledging gender stereotypes does not immediately denote a negative connotation, a nuance this article discusses. Additionally, to call an entire group of people "demonic" is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population. You are entitled to your own beliefs, but this isn't a vague narrative of "society pushes lies," but instead the result of countless years developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved. You may personally disagree with this, but that TPUSA OU 2 Trans Professors comment doesn't change the fact that every major psychological, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric association in the United States acknowledges that, biologically and psychologically, sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed. I implore you apply some more perspective and empathy in your work. If you personally disagree with the findings, then by all means share your criticisms, but make sure to do so in a way that is appropriate and using the methodology of empirical psychology, as aligned with the learning goals in this class. If you have any additional questions or concerns about this or would like some additional educational resources, I would be happy to discuss this further and provide you with them. 3 TPUSA OU Additional professor Megan Waldron (She/Her/Hers) November 16, 2025 at 3:09 PM Samantha, I am the other instructor for this course, and I have also taken the time to read your paper. I concur with Mel on the grade you received. This paper should not be considered as a completion of the assignment. Everyone has different ways in which they see the world, but in an academic course such as this you are being asked to support your ideas with empirical evidence and higher-level reasoning. I find it concerning that you state at the beginning of your paper that you do not think bullying ("teasing") is a bad thing. In addition, your paper directly and harshly criticizes your peers and their opinions, which are just as valuable as yours. Disagreeing with others is fine, but there is a respectful way to go about it. That goes for discussion posts as well as reaction papers. Please employ more thoughtfulness in your future assignments TPUSA OU
November 29, 2025 at 3:45 PM
mattjmartin.com
My article "Consultation Without Consensus: Lessons from Chile's Constitutional Convention (2021-2022)" has been accepted for publication in Política. Revista de Ciencia Política! It will appear in a special issue on participatory and deliberative processes in times of democratic crisis in December.
November 25, 2025 at 7:23 PM
mattjmartin.com
Some big news: I'll be joining the University of South Carolina's Department of Political Science as an Assistant Professor in August 2026! Next summer we are Columbia bound.
November 24, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Matt Martin
sadvil.bsky.social
TRUMP [after spending 5 minutes with Zohran]: surplus value, it’s a very wonderful thing, very wonderful, and they’re stealing it. Can you believe that?

We’re going to be looking very strongly at the bourgeoisie, what they’re up to
November 21, 2025 at 9:25 PM