What the Broligarchs Want From Trump
2024, The Atlantic With the broligarchs--billionaire men from the high-tech and finance industries--granted sweeping powers over the federal government, what happens now? This article reviews what...
The American Con Man Who Pioneered Offshore Finance
2024, The Atlantic How a now-obscure financier turned the Bahamas into a tax haven—and created a cornerstone of global plutocracy. Keywords: Bahamas, offshore finance, colonialism, Wallace...
The Broligarchs Are Trying to Have Their Way
2024, The Atlantic The antidemocratic politics of having it all, from the perspective of the ultra-rich seeking to influence the 2024 US Presidential election. Keywords: 2024 election, Kamala...
Mob Justice
2023, The Atlantic What do plutocrats and Supreme Court members get from being friends? Keywords: elites, Supreme Court, corruption, mafia
Break the Chain Between Russian Oligarchs and Managers, and You Break Everything
2023, New York Times How can we make sanctions on Russian oligarchs stick for a change? Sanction their wealth managers, severing the oligarchs’ connection to their offshore fortunes. Keywords:...
Sanctioning Russia’s Oligarchs—with Shame
2022, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists This article examines stigmatization of rogue elites as a powerful tool of international sanctions regimes—one often overlooked or minimized by policy-makers,...
The Power of Stigma: Shaming Russian Elites Has Helped Weaken Putin
2022, Foreign Affairs, with Alexander Cooley While many Western commentators have been skeptical about the individual sanctions imposed on Russian oligarchs following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine,...
The Secret World of Offshore Banking Is Proving It Can Stand Up to Kleptocrats
2022, Washington Post Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine produced an unexpected side effect: leading nations in the offshore financial system became willing to do the impossible by tearing down their...
Sanctions on Russia Are a Reminder that Shame Works on Oligarchs
2022, Washington Post Stigmatization of Russian oligarchs involved in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine provoked more behavioral change in those elites than years of legal sanctions. When the oligarchs,...
The Russian Elite Can’t Stand the Sanctions
2022, The Atlantic Sanctions skeptics miss the powerful impact of stigma on elites: respect and inclusion have been the lifeblood of Russian oligarchs’ successful political influence operations in...
When Reputation Matters, Leaks Like the Pandora Papers Can Be Very Effective
2021, New York Times The Pandora Papers leak of offshore financial data doesn’t just expose the “lifestyles of the rich and famous:” it’s a damning indictment of corruption at the highest levels of...
Offshore Accounts Aren’t for Evading Taxes. They’re for Evading Laws Altogether.
2021, Washington Post For the wealthiest people in the world, offshore finance provides a way to escape the rule of law—not just taxes, but any laws they find inconvenient. This is why the Pandora...
The Anti-Vaccine Con Job Is Becoming Untenable
2021, The Atlantic This article uses the Sociology of fraud--from Goffman's "On Cooling the Mark Out"--and of reference groups--from Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure--to explain why...
Here’s Why Your Efforts to Convince Anti-Vaxxers Aren’t Working
2021, The Guardian This article uses the Sociology of reference groups (Merton) and fraud (Goffman) to explain vaccine and mask refusal during the COVID-19 pandemic. Keywords: pandemic, COVID-19,...
How Sociologists Can Battle Covid Denialism
2021, The Chronicle of Higher Education This article uses reference group theory (Merton), along with Goffman's theory on the group dynamics of fraud, to explain a variety of puzzling behaviors by...
How to Plan a Research Project
2021, Psyche.co Planning research projects is a time-honored intellectual exercise: one that requires both creativity and sharp analytical skills. The purpose of this Guide is to make the process...
The Professionals Who Are Really Not Helping
2021, The Atlantic An analysis of the misconduct occurring across multiple American professional groups, in historical context, and what professional associations should be doing to stop it....
Trump’s Very Ordinary Indifference to the Common Good
2020, The Atlantic What happened offshore was never going to stay offshore: my grand unified field theory of elite impunity, linking Trump's tax avoidance to his refusal to follow public health...
Trump’s Tax Avoidance Is a Tax on the Rest of Us
2020, New York Times An analysis of the New York Times’ exposé on former President Donald Trump’s history of tax avoidance. Keywords: tax avoidance, Trump, dine and dash
I Almost Lost My Career Because I Had the Wrong Passport
2019, New York Times How I got caught in Denmark's ethno-nationalist immigration policy, and what anti-immigrant fervor costs countries--including the US. Keywords: Denmark, immigration,...
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