Ryan LaRochelle

Treating real war like a Call of Duty Twitch stream isn't helping anyone.

ngl this is probably the most useful thing I've made thus far, a comprehensive feed equivalent of paper-picnic.com

This is terrific! Thank you!

Talking about "warfighters" and "violence" over and over just shows that you don't know anything beyond your pre-selected talking points.

One of the things that bothers me so much about contemporary politics is how degraded political discourse has become and how unserious so many leaders are. These decisions are incredibly consequential, yet so many of the folks running the show are just not serious people. Politics is not a game.

I absolutely hate this new development. I just want to read the news. I don't want to see someone reading it to me.

Working on a biography about former SecDef Bill Cohen, and then logging on and seeing this guy really shows how far this nation has fallen in the last three decades.

Can't wait to finally meet in person!

Very excited to hear that @vermontgmg.bsky.social will be the luncheon speaker at this year’s New England Political Science Association conference in Burlington!

I really wish GOP senators would stop waiting until they announce their retirement to start showing some backbone.

I must be right at the tail end of the age group who remembers those commercials. But they are burned into my brain.

Pretty sure every social scientist learns not to ask a question like this is an undergrad research design and methods class.

The liberal arts & humanities cultivate these better than STEM, in my opinion. And unfortunately, these are also the traits I see many students farming out to AI and chatbots the most these days.

In the latest @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social episode with Jack Clark of Anthropic, Clark made the point that some of the characteristics that will make future workers irreplaceable are taste (still not sure what he meant by that), curiosity, and intuition.

Thank goodness for music and books, that’s all I can say.

I say this with absolutely no snark or sarcasm. Kudos to faculty at one of the institutions most responsible for creating the economic foundations of our present times--which are fueling our social and political discontents--for coming around and speaking up.

A group of students sitting at desks looking through archival materials.

A group of students listening to an archivist describe the contents of the collection.

My honors class on “Moral Courage in Uncertain Times,” is studying Bill Cohen’s leadership during Watergate. He was the first Republican on the Judiciary Committee to break with the GOP on impeachment. We have all of his papers here at UMaine, and students spent the class reviewing the materials.

The fact that the battle for marriage equality (and many other progressive social reforms) was long, protracted, and incremental seems to be lost on many. It's hard for some to look back from our vantage point and realize just how controversial a lot of these initiatives were in the 2000s.

That's funny. I draft on screen then print out a draft and edit by hand!

I have finally moved beyond drafting entire documents by hand, but I usually sketch out a pretty detailed outline by hand!

And then you have us weird academics who scan 1,000s of photos of archival documents, save them as PDF, and print out the really prized documents because they're easier to look through and write on. Or is that just me?

Don't these folks have enough money? I feel like at some point you have to be content enough with your life and reputation to not be a shill for mediocre consumer products.

I always feel scared and anxious just teaching about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I was surprised how much my students enjoyed going "back to basics" (you know, the way us "old" professors did our work in the medieval age when we were in school). I also found that students were more engaged/prepared because they knew they really had to know the material to prep for eventual exams

The GOP has been clear about its goals of trying to abolish federal agencies and departments (OEO/CSA, Education, Energy, EPA, CFPB) for the past sixty years. Just chalk up "Abolish ICE" as another way of shrinking government!

And for those who are eager to learn more--I've been working on a political biography of Cohen, focusing on his actions to defend democracy during Watergate, Iran-Contra, and as Clinton's SecDef. Oh, and he's also a poet and a novelist! So stay tuned for more Cohen content!

Cohen was in the House at the time, so I haven't come across any materials where he discusses interactions with Weicker. There is a fascinating transcript of a series of interviews with members of the "Fragile Coalition" that a historian did for a book project that never materialized.

A group of students sitting at desks looking through archival materials.

A group of students listening to an archivist describe the contents of the collection.

My honors class on “Moral Courage in Uncertain Times,” is studying Bill Cohen’s leadership during Watergate. He was the first Republican on the Judiciary Committee to break with the GOP on impeachment. We have all of his papers here at UMaine, and students spent the class reviewing the materials.

One of my undergrad professors used to put big Xs through utilizes and impacts in our papers.

I'm wrapping up a long-term project about Bill Cohen's efforts to protect democracy over the course of his career and hope to explore this issue in a more broad-based manner in some future research.