Justin de Benedictis-Kessner
@jdbk
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Associate Professor @Harvard @Kennedy_School. Urban and local politics + policy; cyclist; 🏳️🌈; he/him. RTs ≠ endorsements
Boston, MA
Joined February 2009
As he says: “learning isn’t just getting answers to questions.” Worth a listen for anyone who teaches, is learning (anything), or cares about the quality of education in the age of AI!
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My friend and colleague @Kennedy_School @tedsvo shared his expert perspective on the use of AI in education on @NPR’s All Things Considered today:
wbur.org
Harvard Kennedy School Professor Teddy Svoronos is mostly optimistic on the benefits of AI in higher education.
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This partisan finger-pointing is based on falsehoods. To fix crime, we should focus on evidence-based strategies to address crime, rather than engaging in a distracting blame-game.
theconversation.com
Mayors from the Democratic Party aren’t making cities any more – or less – dangerous than mayors from the Republican Party.
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Our open-access research in @ScienceAdvances shows that the partisanship of mayors has no causal effect on crime rates. Nor does it affect police spending, staffing, or arrest rates.
Are Democratic leaders making cities more dangerous than Republicans? Trump + others have repeatedly made claims like this. New paper @ScienceAdvances w/ @cwarshaw @daniel_b_jones @Matthew00117310 shows that, in short, the answer is no.
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Yet again, Trump is falsely claiming that Democrat-controlled cities like DC are letting crime get out of control. Our research – from cities across the US – shows that this just isn't true (@cwarshaw @Matthew00117310)
President Trump once again catapulted crime in D.C. into the national conversation. “It has become one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the World,” he said in a Truth Social post. Local and federal data, though, paint a contrasting picture: https://t.co/e6s2WGG96s
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🔥🧯 Excited to announce the program of our 2025 MIT workshop on polarization, norms & trust (co-organized w/ @DG_Rand, @ylelkes @AdamBerinsky @kati_kish)! Speakers incl. @BrendanNyhan @jdbk @dhopkins1776 et al. Info: https://t.co/9DPMsDkqDL To attend: https://t.co/Dd7K3tWKoF
📣 Call for Papers 📣 Interested in the newest research on polarization, norms & trust? Present your work our workshop on Dec 5-6 @ MIT, co-organized with @DG_Rand, @ylelkes @AdamBerinsky & @kati_kish 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: https://t.co/9DPMsDkqDL 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲: July 14
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📢 It’s time to nominate for the 2025 Urban & Local Politics Section Awards! We’re recognizing outstanding work in urban politics across multiple categories, including best dissertation, book, and career contributions. 🏆 Deadline: March 15, 2025
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Well said, from @ProfDavidDeming: "If government funding goes away, so will much of the research. The long-run cost will be staggering. We’ll have fewer medical breakthroughs, the progress of lifesaving medical treatments will stall, and America may fall behind"
The Trump administration’s cuts to university research grants will make America sicker and poorer in the long run, @ProfDavidDeming writes. DOGE should stop "confusing efficiency with ill-conceived budget cuts."
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Ideological claims from both sides of the aisle about crime and policing aren't facing the facts: what's happening in cities across the country has little to do with partisanship. Reducing crime should focus on evidence-backed strategies rather than partisan finger-pointing.
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Nor do we find consistent evidence that Democrats are making police leadership or police forces substantially more diverse than Republicans.
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Nor are Democrats "defunding the police" relative to Republicans. Neither party is reducing the size of the police force, or its funding.
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Implicit in this argument is that Democratic leaders are making crime worse, and Republicans would make it better. That's a causal question, and exactly what we wanted to answer. Our results show that Dems are no worse OR better at reducing crime than Reps
science.org
Across hundreds of cities and three decades, there is no impact of a mayor’s partisan affiliation on crime and arrest rates.
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Leaders on both sides of the aisle have said that Democrats need to change their approach on crime–often pointing to elections where progressive politicians have been unseated after widespread frustration with their handling of crime
nytimes.com
Voters in the Democratic-run state overwhelmingly approved a measure to impose harsher sentences for crimes and were on their way to ousting two progressive district attorneys.
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Are Democratic leaders making cities more dangerous than Republicans? Trump + others have repeatedly made claims like this. New paper @ScienceAdvances w/ @cwarshaw @daniel_b_jones @Matthew00117310 shows that, in short, the answer is no.
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Great to hear @JerusalemDemsas (a fellow @williamandmary @wmgovtdept alum!) talk about her book on cities and the housing crisis today @BUonCities. Hot take we agree on: local institutions make doing good things in cities too hard!
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great example of overlapping jurisdictions leading to muddled accountability: city of LA is asking state costal agency to block homeless housing that council approved on city-owned land. can say they tried to address homeless but avoid backlash from it being built
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Check out this cool @AJPS_Editor paper from @jengaude. She uses both observational data and a survey experiment to show the electoral effects of endorsements from police unions — a powerful interest group in local politics.
Police union mayoral endorsements used to be associated with incumbent success everywhere, but starting in second half of 2010s, incumbent mayors in liberal cities do worse when they’re endorsed by their local police union. These effects aren’t seen in less liberal cities.
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Local politics is and will be more important than ever in the next few years. Crucial to figure out how we can improve governance and accountability to make cities better. Thanks to @SZonszein for the invite + everyone at @UCBerkeley for the great feedback!
When do voters hold incumbents accountable? Tuesday re-ignited the conversation on retrospective voting, and @jdbk bravely presented (the day after a presidential election) a comprehensive project on how a "fog of accountability" complicates retrospection in local elections.
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New housing policy research fresh off the presses 🏡🏙️💸
Can developers compensate nearby residents to win support for their housing projects? In a new @JPublicPolicy article, @jdbk and I unpack how compensation works, when it fails, and what that teaches us about symbolic attitudes and housing policy. 1/11
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