Paul Staniland
@pstaniland
UChicago political scientist, amateur bee photographer, Carnegie South Asia nonresident scholar, despairing Bulls fan, public school parent, etc.
I got a preview of the new Obama Presidential Center (more later of the views from the top)
New book! @aidanmilliff.com and I spent years tracking down survey data from the late 1950s-2025 on how the Indian public has viewed China, the US, and Russia/USSR. We use the data to explore trends and patterns. Cambridge has made it Open Access until 5/18, so go read for free here: t.co/YtNCz74758
for a distraction from [waves wildly at everything happening in the world]:
Reminiscent of Stalin telling a group of visiting Indian communists to advocate the unification of India, Pakistan, and Ceylon (digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/rec...):
Chairman Mao dispensed some wildly unhelpful advice over the years; this nugget was to Nasser after the 1967 war (from Lorenz Luthi's "Cold Wars"):
Chicago's SkyDeck is pretty awesome (first time I've been here despite living in Chicago 19 of the past 25 years):
Based on his track record at UChicago, there is truly no one I would less want to be in a foxhole with than Daniel Diermeier, so very unsurprising news here: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...
vintage Canon FD 50/1.4: surprisingly sharp in the middle, weird, fun bokeh in the background
A cool find for the 6 people on earth (including me) with overlapping interests in photography and Chicago politics:
dystopian Chicago sinks further into unchecked violence and collapse, desperately crying out for the liberatory hand of the Trump administration:
Perhaps relevant to today’s politics (from Gary Kristy’s “City of Scoundrels” about 1919 Chicago):