Thread by @Musingsinlaw

1/ I note with deep sorrow the passing of .@MarkARKleiman, an early mentor and longtime friend of mine. Mark set the bar high for intellectual honesty and creative thinking about hard problems, especially in the #criminal #justice and #drug #policy areas...

@MarkARKleiman 2/ @.MarkARKleiman hired me for my first substantive job as his research assistant at .@Harvard's Kennedy School of #Government and as part of his then-nascent consulting firm, BOTEC Analysis, in 1984. He was unrelenting about putting data first...

@MarkARKleiman @Harvard 3/ ...fearlessly following facts wherever they may lead. He hosted a blog called The Reality-Based Community, samefacts.com, the tagline of which is "Everyone is entitled to his opinion, but not his own facts."

@MarkARKleiman @Harvard 4/ We worked together on a pilot study in Lynn, MA, where the police were deeply concerned about #heroin use and the resulting spike in street crime, and figured out how to drive down both by tackling the problem using a supply-and-demand approach rather than the then-in-vogue...

@MarkARKleiman @Harvard 5/ #justsayno to drugs or headline-grabbing prosecution of #kingpins. He credits me (erroneously) with having written his doctoral dissertation about marijuana policy, later published as Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control, proving my theory that...

@MarkARKleiman @Harvard 6/ ...if you say back to a smart person what they've just said to you, they'll think you're smart, too. States and localities to help them figure out how legalization of marijuana would work, deemed by some journalists as the Pot Czar but he delighted in the much cleverer title,

@MarkARKleiman @Harvard 7/ Your Highness. I was fortunate to have encountered him at such a pivotal time in my intellectual and professional development and immensely enjoyed our ongoing friendship in later years, recently and memorably shoulder to shoulder at the #WomensMarch in 2018.

@MarkARKleiman @Harvard 8/ He was relentless, too, in fighting the severe illnesses that finally claimed his life yesterday, mastering every medical detail, challenging the docs and other medical professionals to answer his very probing and pertinent questions. Rest in peace, dear friend & leading light

@MarkARKleiman @Harvard 9/ PS: If you really want to know who .@MarkARKleiman was and what he valued, consider his final instructions: no funeral, donate the body to NYU Medical School, and suggest contributions to the .@nyuniversity #transplant center, the .@ACLU, or "any #Democratic candidate."

@MarkARKleiman @Harvard @nyuniversity @ACLU 10/ Thank you .@jacobsullum for this thoughtful obit in .@reason magazine.