University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Paul Musgrave, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst, is quoted in an article about academics urging colleges and universities to refrain from hiring top-level Trump administration officials as they exit their government positions. “This is an abnormal administration that has been hostile to science, to universities, to immigrants,” he said. “This is not an administration whose officers can be treated normally.” 

An article by Jamie Rowen, Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science at UMass Amherst, that was originally published in The Conversation in May 2020 was reprinted on Veterans Day. The article describes eight ways that COVID-19 has hit veterans hard (From Press, 11/11/20).

A UMass Amherst/WCVB poll asking voters who they would pick to replace Senator Elizabeth Warren found Representative Ayanna Pressley to be the top choice, followed by former Representative Joe Kennedy III. These results were cited in an article in the Boston Globe about the possibility of elected officials from Massachusetts becoming part of the Biden administration. (The Boston Globe, WHDH 11/11/20).

A MassLive report of town-by-town results of Ballot Question 2 from last week’s election cited a UMass/ WCVB poll from late October.  The poll had found that 48% of likely voters supported the ballot question, which sought to implement ranked-choice voting, while 43% opposed it and 9% were undecided. Ballot Question 2 ultimately failed to pass. (MassLive, 11/11/20)

 

Paul Collins, Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science at UMass Amherst, comments in an article about whether President Trump’s legal challenges will succeed in changing the outcome of the election. Collins says the lawsuits were filed for “purely political reasons ...  as a way of delegitimizing the Biden administration and the electoral process itself.” (The Boston Globe, 11/10/20; Collins’s comments also included in Salon, 11/10/20)

UMass Amherst has begun offering a Master of Science degree in Data Analytics and Computational Social Science. Details are available on the program website. (Inside Higher Ed, 11/10/20; News Office release)

Faculty members Laura Colmenarejo, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and Elizabeth Sharrow, Associate Professor of Public Policy & History, both of UMass Amherst, were among women in downtown Northampton reacting to the election of California Senator Kamala Harris.  Harris is the nation’s first female, first Black person, and first Asian American to be elected as Vice President. Colmenarejo said Harris represents hope for the future. Sharrow said, “I think there is good reason to believe that the election of Senator Kamala Harris to the vice presidency is likely to have long-term impacts on how girls — and girls of color, in particular — orient themselves to politics.” (Daily Hampshire Gazette, 11/9/20)

Tatishe Nteta, Associate Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst, appeared on the program “Basic Black,” following the 2020 presidential election, to discuss the role of opinion polling. Reflecting upon the ways in which he believes that many people use polls incorrectly, Nteta says, “Polls are not soothsayers. This is not Ides of March. This is not Julius Caesar. They tell a picture when the polling occurs. The media has used this in a predictive fashion but pollsters never, myself included, intend for these to be predictive.” (WGBH-TV Boston, 11/6/20) Watch video here.

Jesse Rhodes, Professor of Political Science, and Paul Collins, Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science, both at UMass Amherst, are quoted in an article about the delay in learning the results of the presidential election.  In the article, which was published before news outlets called the election in favor of now President-elect Joe Biden, both Rhodes and Collins noted the likelihood of Biden’s victory.

Three years ago, when tensions were high with Iran, political scientists from Dartmouth and Stanford released a study claiming that Americans would have little respect for the norm of civilian immunity in a war with Iran. New research by Charli Carpenter, Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst  and Alexander Montgomery, Associate Professor of Political Science at Reed College, shows this finding was highly misleading with over 80% of Americans saying civilians should never be the object of attack in war.

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