At 11:37 last night I received an email I’ve been working towards for what feels like forever. For a bit of context, allow me to rewind. In spring 2006 in a first-year grad school seminar, I gave a short talk on “Why Did ‘Law & Order’ Politics Become Salient in the 1960s?” 1/
For the talk, I briefly considered how negative reactions to more than 750 black-led demonstrations that escalated to protester-initiated violence in the 1960s might have contributed to Nixon's use of "Law and Order" rhetoric and helped him win the presidency in 1968. 2/
Though I went to grad school specifically to better understand the rise of mass incarceration, I had no idea that this preliminary research would turn into more than a decade's worth of work. 3/
About a year later, I had a small "eureka!"-moment when I over-layed data on violent protest activity and public opinion. I was stunned at how closely the two trends moved together. The figure below is very close to the original plot I coded more than a dozen years go. 4/ 
As you can see in the figure, when violent protest activity increases (as measured in arrests), the percentage of the public that identifies crime and riots and as the "most important problem" in America increases as well. 5/
Equally striking, though, were the decreases in public concern. What I had originally thought to be just noisy public opinion data actually had a seasonal structure. Attitudes about "social control" went up in the summer and down in the winter. What might explain that? 6/
One possibility was violent protests and the media they generated. This might seem obvious now but superb prior work on the topic had almost always looked only at yearly trends and missed the significant within-year variation. 7/
I sensed I was on to something and kept pulling on these threads. Eventually the work became part of my dissertation and part of why I had the privilege of being hired at @Princeton's Dept of @PUPolitics. But, along the way, there were also lots of tough times. 8/
One big challenge was my wife, @jenbrea, became ill (she's doing much better now). Smaller hurdles arose from how the work builds on my training in African American studies & Poli Sci. Some colleagues frustratingly suggested the work needed to fit cleanly into just one box. 9/
I tried to take care of my family, listen to the feedback but also push ahead. After years of revision, I finally submitted the article to an academic journal. It was rejected with reviews that were thoroughly dispiriting. I was crushed. 10/
Despite recent years being a period of exceptional social unrest in the United States, one peer reviewer wrote that a study of the political consequences of protests was 'interesting' but 'not the sort of empirical finding I am used to reading about in a top journal.' 11/
I thought seriously about quitting the academy. Maybe I just didn't fit. Once again, though, I tried to learn from the criticism. I pressed forward and the work got better. Even with substantial revisions and additional analyses, though, the paper continued to be rejected. 12/
In moments like this it can be hard to know what to do. Cut your losses and get minimal credit for years of work? Keep investing in a project that's not paying off? Thankfully, apart from my academic work, I'd been reading on the side about motivation and learning. 13/
Scholars like Teresa Amabile have shown that intrinsic motivation tends to produce more creative work than extrinsic motivation. And social psychologists like Carol Dweck have demonstrated across a range of domains that "effort makes ability." 14/
So I kept at it. I loved this research. Even if it never found a home, I was learning. That was my fuel. I had faith that if I focused on doing work I was proud of, good would come. 15/
And, that's why I'm so excited to be able to share that today, 14 years from when that initial seed was planted (!), the paper has been published. 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
And contrary to that dismissive reviewer, it happens to be in the top journal in my field. 😜
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16/
And contrary to that dismissive reviewer, it happens to be in the top journal in my field. 😜
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16/
Final version of paper: doi.org/10.1017/S00030…
And, an ungated pre-print version of the paper: omarwasow.com/APSR_protests3…
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fin/
And, an ungated pre-print version of the paper: omarwasow.com/APSR_protests3…
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fin/
In case anyone wants to just read the abstract of “Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting,” here’s a mobile-friendly version: omarwasow.com/apsr_title_abs…
And an image version:
And an image version:
