Carlo Crivelli, Lamentation

In every painting entitled “Lamentation” that I recall or can find with a Google image-search, Jesus lies prone, usually with a shroud behind him, and Mary looks downward at his limp body. She usually has companions: most often Mary Magdalen, because the relevant Gospel passages (e.g., Matt. 27:61) place the two women together from the Crucifixion to the empty tomb. (The specific moment of lamentation is not explicit in the Gospels.)

An exception is Carlo Crivelli’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ (1485) in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Crivelli shows Jesus’ body propped up so that he appears to look down at Mary with a gentle expression. Jesus’ hand has fallen so that it is on the same level as the hands of Mary and St. John and is intertwined with John’s in a rotationally symmetrical pattern. However, Jesus and John display opposite emotions: Jesus calm, John in anguish. Mary Magdalen’s hands help to support Jesus’ thigh so that his right foot appears to take a step.

To my eye, the color of Jesus’ body stands out more from the rest of the painting in the original than in the photo above (supplied by the MFA). Crivelli makes Jesus look animated and yet strikingly pallid.

The garland of fruit is a common motif in Crivelli’s work and seems to represent a local tradition in the region where he worked, the Marches, of hanging fruit above religious paintings during festivals. Crivelli–who favored trompe-l’oeil to the extent that Susan Sontag cited him as an example of “camp”–has incorporated this popular tradition into the painting. The garland includes a cucumber, which is so common in Crivelli’s work that it functions as a signature. The whole structure looks like a throne in the Netherlandish painting that Crivelli often imitated.

By making Jesus sit and appear to look down on Mary, and by intertwining his hands with the others’, Crivelli asks us to ponder the relationship between the living and the dead. In the Gospel account, Jesus will soon rise again. Nevertheless, he has died. It would be as much of a theological error to ignore the reality of his death as to deny his pending resurrection. I think that Mary Magdalen may be tempted by the former error as she tries to make his body move.

Katharine Bradley (1846-1914) and Edith Cooper (1862-1913) were partners in life and work who published joint poems under the pseudonym “Michael Field.” One of their poems describes a pietà by Carlo Crivelli–this one, if I am not mistaken. It is similar enough to the MFA’s Lamentation that some of their words apply to both paintings.

For instance, Michael Field writes: “His body, once blond, is soiled now and opaque / with the solemn ochres of the tomb.”

The poem implies that Mary Magdalen had found the living Jesus attractive. But now, “no beauty to desire / Is here–stiffened limb and angry vein.”

Yet there is such subtle intercourse between
   The hues and the passion is so frank
      One is soothed, one feels it good
      To be of this little group
      Of mourners close to the rank,
Deep wounds ...

apply for the 2025 Institute for Civically Engaged Research (ICER)

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The American Political Science Association (APSA) Institute for Civically Engaged Research (ICER) is a four-day, residential institute that provides political scientists with training to conduct ethical and rigorous civically engaged research. Up to 20 scholars will be selected as ICER Fellows and invited to attend the 2025 Summer Institute. ICER Fellows will network with other like-minded political scientists, and together, learn best practices for conducting academically robust, mutually beneficial scholarship in collaboration with communities, organizations, and agencies outside of academia.

ICER is organized in partnership with UCLA Social Sciences and the Center for Community Engagement (CCE) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The 2025 Institute will be held in person at UCLA in Los Angeles, CA on July 7-10.

To apply, please complete this form. Application deadline: April 20, 2025.

What is Civically Engaged Research?

Scholars in many disciplines are grappling with how to produce rigorous scholarship that addresses significant social challenges in collaboration with communities, organizations, and agencies. They strive to learn from those working outside of academia, to benefit from the insights of all kinds of groups and institutions, and to give back to communities rather than extract value from them. Civically Engaged Research (CER) is an approach to inquiry that involves political scientists collaborating in a mutually beneficial way with people and groups beyond the academy to co-produce, share, and apply knowledge related to power or politics that contributes to self- governance. Conducting robust community and civically engaged research entails a different set of practices than other kinds of political science research,

APSA’s Institute for Civically Engaged Research

ICER trains political scientists at all career stages in best practices for conducting academically rigorous, mutually beneficial CER. The Institute Directors are Peter Levine (Tufts University), Samantha Majic (John Jay College & The CUNY Graduate Center), and Adriano Udani (University of Minnesota). Together with practitioner experts and scholarly guest speakers, ICER Directors and fellows will explore key topics related to civically engaged research by discussing relevant readings, by analyzing specific examples of civically engaged research from political science and cognate disciplines, and by considering the research plans and ideas of institute participants. From 2019-2024, ICER was hosted by the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University.

Topics to be covered

Expertise: what do political scientists uniquely contribute? What are the limitations of scholarly expertise? What types of expertise do those outside of academia have?
The ethics of collaboration: sharing of credit, funds and overhead, navigating IRB, dealing with disagreements.
Communicating results: to partners, relevant communities, the press, and directly to the broader public.
How to navigate common social science values and norms while doing civically engaged work.
Career considerations: publication and credit, tenure and promotion, funding your research.
Mapping the different and varied ways that political scientists engage through research and beyond

2025 Summer Institute

The Institute will take place on campus at UCLA from July 7-10. Approximately twenty fellows will meet each day for intensive discussions and workshops. Thanks to generous support from the Haynes Foundation, participants will have access to complimentary housing on the UCLA campus alongside scholarships available to defray costs of meals and travel. Applicants are expected to seek financial support from their home institution, but admission to the Institute will not be affected by financial need.

How to Apply

ICER is intended for advanced graduate students in political science and political scientists at any stage of their careers who wish to learn more and shift to integrate Civically Engaged Research (CER). It is not meant for scholars who are already experienced CER practitioners. Scholars may apply with a current or planned project that involves CER, or without an ongoing research project. All scholars with an interest in topics or approaches to civically engaged scholarship are welcome to apply. To apply, please complete the form located here. Applications are due by April 20, 2025. Applicants to ICER will be notified of decisions by early May.

For more information about ICER, please visit our website: https://connect.apsanet.org/icer/. If you have further questions about the institute, please contact APSA’s Centennial Center at centennial@apsanet.org.

a generational call to rebuild

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In January 2024, I wrote a post entitled “calling youth to government service.” I noted that many talented young people would vote to expand government, but few were interested in working in government. I posited both demand- and supply-side explanations. Young people do not know enough about public-sector employment, nor do they sufficiently value it. At the same time, the federal government has been very bad at recruitment and retention.

Now, as someone who advises many talented and idealistic undergraduates, I cannot encourage them to apply for federal jobs.

We don’t know how long “now” will last. Bad-case scenarios envision an extended period of crisis and the kind of kleptocratic authoritarianism that will keep federal (and some state) agencies from functioning appropriately for years.

Nevertheless, it is important to begin envisioning a rebuilding phase, even while we also strive to defend current institutions. The opportunity to rebuild could begin as soon as two years from now. At least, that is when presidential campaigns will launch, and one of their core messages could be rebuilding the government. Meanwhile, today’s college students and recent graduates can be obtaining further education or experience in local government or the private sector with an eye to joining the federal civil service in 2028.

Besides, having a positive vision can change the political situation in the present. Optimism is important for morale. We should be struggling to make change, not just to block threats.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are already educating Americans about the value of the federal government. In the latest CNN poll, substantial majorities of Americans oppose “laying off large numbers of federal government workers,” “shutting down the agency that provides humanitarian aid in low-income countries,” and (by the widest margin) “blocking health agencies from communicating without approval from a Trump appointee.” Since foreign aid generally lacks public support, and the Trump/Musk layoffs have yet to affect many voters directly, I suspect that subsequent cuts will be even more unpopular.

Many of my recent predictions have been wrong. I thought that some of the Biden-era spending would be popular, and I thought that Musk’s layoffs at Twitter would break that platform. Nevertheless, I predict that mass federal layoffs will raise awareness of the value of the federal workforce. Meanwhile, the civil service already needs hundreds of thousands of new workers to replace retiring Baby Boomers, and Trump’s layoffs will create many additional vacancies.

Under these circumstances, how should the federal civil service be rebuilt? I would posit these principles:

1. We need an eloquent generational call. Today’s young people can reconstruct their government to address social and environmental challenges. This is their historical calling. Government service is an essential means to the ends that many of them care about, including saving the earth from climate change.

2. The paradigm of service should be a full-time, professional career in the government. I am not against social entrepreneurship or temporary community service, but the civil service is much larger and more important. We do not need alternatives to government careers nearly as much as we need more and better positions within the civil service (federal, state, and local).

3. The goal is not to return to 2024. The federal workforce had well-documented problems before Trump was inaugurated. Although we must tolerate some degree of sclerosis and waste in any large system–and although current federal workers deserve credit for much valuable work under difficult circumstances–there was already a need for change. Young people should be recruited to rejuvenate and reform federal systems, not just work in them.

4. But any changes should be scrupulously legal. Rule of law is a fundamental value, and nowhere is it more important than in the executive branch, which monopolizes the legitimate use of violence in our society. The federal government can kill, imprison, monitor, or financially ruin people. Its every action must be governed by statutory law. This means that rejuvenating the federal civil service must proceed within the clear statutory authority of the president, unless new legislation passes. (And I am not expert enough on this topic to recommend legislation.)

5. Federal agencies already do some work that I would label “civic”: collaborating with groups in civil society, convening citizens for important conversations, and educating (not propagandizing) the public. But they also (inevitably) play many roles that are bureaucratic, technocratic, and managerial. A rebuilding effort should emphasize the civic aspects of government, because these are valuable, they can appeal to younger people who are skeptical of bureaucracy, and they can reinforce the public legitimacy of the executive branch. If you want people to trust experts, give them opportunities to work with experts on common problems.

The overall message should acknowledge the value of the institutions that we have built so far–and the service of our current and past public sector workers–while envisioning new and better ways of governing.

nostalgia in the face of political crisis

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Amid the barrage of bad news about US politics, I frequently find myself nostalgic.

Sometimes, it’s for the recent past–for last summer, when we were on a family vacation and Kamala Harris seemed to be surging; or the eve of last fall’s election, when I spoke dispassionately about polarization at American and Colgate universities; or even last month, when we thought that Trump might prove more feckless than reckless.

Other times, my nostalgia reaches further back, to the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11, when this white, male, college-educated, fairly moderate American felt that the republic was secure and the public’s values were evolving for the better with each new generation. That underlying optimism was one reason I spent most of the next 20 years focused on promoting youth civic engagement.

If I wish to return to when I felt better about politics, that means that I want to go back to being naive; and we shouldn’t want that for ourselves. Nor is nostalgia reliable. In the past, not everything was dappled sunlight on a late-afternoon lawn–certainly not for people less fortunate than me.

Near the beginning of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera’s narrator says that everything is bathed in nostalgia in the face of dissolution, even the guillotine. He’s discussing Nietzsche’s trope of the Eternal Return. If we believed that the French Revolutionary Terror would recur cyclically, we would fear it. Because we know that it has passed, we bathe it in nostalgia. Our deepest fear is the passage of time, because events do not recur endlessly for us. They move permanently into the past as our time runs out.

Nostalgia can be a way of grasping at the self, trying to trap that ghost in a display case. As such, it is better avoided, regardless of its cause. As for political nostalgia, it is a common ground of reactionary politics.

A related word is “envy.” In his Theses on the Philosophy of History (#2), Walter Benjamin notes that we never envy the future. He says that happiness that makes us envious is connected to our past. We seek redemption by wishing to recover (sometimes from other people) what we already experienced. A worthy redemption, however, requires a change for the better. Political progress brings a better future into the present and thereby imparts a new meaning to what happened in the past. “For every second of time [is] the strait gate through which Messiah might enter.”

This is a pretentious and roundabout way of saying that what matters is not what used to be but what we do now to improve the world that we are in.

the theory of the Biden environmental policy may be proven right

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The Washington Post mentions “Skylar Holden, a cattle farmer in eastern Missouri,” who is not receiving $240,000 in federal funding that he was awarded under the Environmental Quality Incentives Program because Trump froze it. The headline is: “Farmers [are] on the hook for millions after Trump freezes USDA funds,” In The New York Times, Michael W. Webber describes the broader pattern: “Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. rank and file might not let him choke off the money flowing to Republican districts; a majority of federal clean energy investments for wind, solar, batteries and clean tech factories are going to those regions.”

This was the design; the policy was built to survive political opposition. I believe the authors of the the $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act and related bills (provisions in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the $280+ billion CHIPS Act) held the mental model shown on the right side of the image that accompanies this post.

You could read the image by focusing first on the teal loop. By burning carbon, people cause both good and bad outcomes. The net result is bad; probably around $185 of damage per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions (Rennert et al 2022), which I think comes to about $6.8 trillion per year for the world.

Governmental policies could reduce that social cost. A big carbon tax is an example. However, virtually no governments do enough. The reason is that carbon produces a set of interest groups–some environmental ones, but many stronger groups that are committed to cheap carbon. Not all of these groups are elite. They include working people in carbon-intensive jobs and their elected representatives. The carbon economy also generates public opinion, including concerns about climate change as well as deep support for carbon-intensive jobs and products. The interest groups and public opinion influence governments to adopt the policies that they enact. For the most part, it is a vicious circle.

To create an alternative loop (shown in light green on the left side of the diagram), Biden and the Democratic Congress basically poured a lot of money into green industry. Their goal was to create new interest groups that would demand continued funding for green technologies as well as other supportive policies. Just as conventional car owners demand cheap gas, electric car owners will demand charging stations. Public opinion would also evolve so that more people would support environmental policies and recognize their economic benefits. Ultimately, once the green loop was bigger than the teal one, there would be political support for pushing carbon emissions down.

The Biden policy probably lowered carbon emissions substantially. But it had no positive effects on public opinion. As I have discussed before, vast expenditures received startlingly little attention. Proponents were either unwilling or unable to defend the policy. The president of the environmentalist Sierra Club, Ben Jealous, emphasized abortion when he advocated for Harris. Even the names of the Biden bills hid their purpose. For instance, the Inflation Reduction Act had nothing to do with reducing inflation and may even have raised it somewhat. In short, the pathway to policy through public opinion failed, either because the messengers barely tried or because no one could have persuaded voters about such matters.

However, the other path shown in green may still work. The Biden bills created hundred of thousands of post-carbon jobs and subsidized many farmers and business owners. Disproportionately–and by design–these people live in Republican states and districts. They are now a powerful interest group.

Clearly, the president and his team will try to wreck what they call the “Green New Deal.” But if the green loop holds, they will fail.

Source: Rennert, K., Errickson, F., Prest, B.C. et al. Comprehensive evidence implies a higher social cost of CO₂. Nature 610, 687–692 (2022). See also a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon, you’re talking real money; tracking the Biden climate investments; a different way in which the 2024 election is a failure for democracy etc.