In 2020, Jacob Rubel, who was then my advisee as a Tufts undergrad, launched with the lead author Mathis Ebbinghaus a project to assess the policy impact of Black Lives Matter protests. He got support from another advisee of mine, Jane Romp, and two other Tufts undergrads to hand-collect data on police budgets and political processes in 264 US cities (all of the 300 largest cities for which data were available), and he collaborated with Mathis Ebbinghaus and Nathan Bailey on the analysis. The results are now published as:

Mathis Ebbinghaus, Nathan Bailey, Jacob Rubel, “The Effect of the 2020 Black Lives Matter Protests on Police Budgets: How ‘Defund the Police’ Sparked Political Backlash, “Social Problems, 2024;, spae004, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spae004

Overall, funding for police did not change to a statistically significant degree from 2019-2021. Larger protests accompanied increases in police budgets, but not to a statistically significant level (hence that relationship could be noise). However, in cities where Republican voters were more numerous, larger protests were associated with increases in police budgets. The authors consider the timing of elections and show that this backlash was not a result of electoral pressures. Rather, cities with more Republican voters seem already to have had more conservative (or pro-police) political cultures, and those city leaders reacted to BLM protests by increasing funds for police.

See also: police discrimination, race, and community poverty; on the phrase: Abolish the police!; who protested in 2020? how change is made

I’m concerned about the state of reading, because I believe (and have seen evidence) that reading takes us out of our own minds into other people’s and enables us to make deep and creative connections. I feel myself growing less able to concentrate–although I did finally read Romola last week!–and I observe that my talented undergraduates are reading less than their predecessors did. I blame the distracting media environment rather than any generational fault.

Here are some data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

The line for ages 15 and older shows that adults are spending less time reading “for personal interest” than they were in 2003, down by about 28 percent. The BLS does not provide data on children. However, people between the ages of 20 and 24 (the classic college years) have seen a small increase in time spent reading for personal interest, albeit from a low baseline. The biggest decline is among those between 45 and 54, who read for half as long as they did in 2003, or about 10 minutes/day.

More education correlates with more reading, but all educational groups read less. Still, the decline for the most educated (those with graduate educations) is 28%, whereas the decline for people without high school diplomas is 87%. That group now reads for an average of 2.4 minutes a day, down from a substantial 18 minutes a day in 2003.

See also are we forgetting how to read?; a way forward for high culture; “The world wants the humanities”