Sports analytics is fueled by fans, and funded by teams. The 19th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC), held last Friday and Saturday, showed more clearly than ever how both groups can join forces.

After all, for decades, the industry’s main energy source has been fans weary of bad strategies: too much bunting in baseball, too much punting in football, and more. The most enduring analytics icon, Bill James, was a teacher and night watchman until his annual “Baseball Abstract” books began to upend a century of conventional wisdom, in the 1980s. After that, sports analytics became a profession.

Meanwhile, franchise valuations keep rising, women’s sports are booming, and U.S. college sports are professionalizing. All of it should create more analytics jobs, as “Moneyball” author Michael Lewis noted during a Friday panel.

“This whole analytics movement is a byproduct of the decisions becoming really expensive decisions,” Lewis said. “It didn’t matter if you got it wrong if you were paying someone $50,000 a year. But if you’re going to pay them $50 million, you better get it right. So, all of a sudden, someone who can give you a little bit more of an edge in that decision-making has more value.”

Would you like to be a valued sports analytics professional? Here are five ideas, gleaned from MIT’s industry-leading event, about how to gain traction in the field.

1. You can jump into this industry.

Bill James, as it happens, was the first speaker on the opening Friday-morning panel at SSAC, held at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. His theme: the value of everyone’s work, since today’s amateurs become tomorrow’s professionals.

“Time will reveal that the people doing really important work here are not the people sitting on the stages, but the people in the audience,” James said.

This year, that audience had 2,500 attendees, from 44 U.S. states, 42 countries, and over 220 academic institutions, along with dozens of panels, a research paper competition, and thousands of hallway conversations among networking attendees. SSAC was co-founded in 2007 by Daryl Morey SM ’00, president of basketball operations for the Philadelphia 76ers, and Jessica Gelman, CEO of KAGR, the Kraft Analytics Group. The first three conferences were held in MIT classrooms.

But even now, sports analytics remains largely a grassroots thing. Why? Because fans can observe sports intensively, without being bound to its conventions, then study it quantitatively.

“The driving thing for a lot of people is they want to take this [analytical] way of thinking and apply it to sports,” soccer journalist Ryan O’Hanlon of ESPN said to MIT News, in one of those hallway conversations.

O’Hanlon’s 2022 book, “Net Gains,” chronicles the work of several people who held non-sports jobs, made useful advances in soccer analytics, then jumped into the industry. Soon, the sport may have more landing spots, between the growth of Major League Soccer in the U.S. and women’s soccer everywhere. Also, in O’Hanlon’s estimation, only three of the 20 clubs in England’s Premier League are deeply invested in analytics: Brentford, Brighton, and (league-leading) Liverpool. That could change.

In any case, most of the people who leap from fandom to professional status are willing to examine issues that others take for granted.

“I think it’s not being afraid to question the way everyone is doing things,” O’Hanlon added. “Whether that’s how a game is played, how we acquire players, how we think about anything. Pretty much anyone who gets to a high level and has impact [in analytics] has asked those questions and found a way to answer some.”

2. Make friends with the video team.

Suppose you love a sport, start analyzing it, produce good work that gets some attention, and — jackpot! — get hired by a pro team to do analytics.

Well, as former NBA player Shane Battier pointed out during a basketball panel at SSAC, you still won’t spend any time talking to players about your beloved data. That just isn’t how professional teams work, not even stat-savvy ones.

But there is good news: Analysts can still reach coaches and athletes through skilled use of video clips. Most European soccer managers ignore data, but will pay attention to the team’s video analysts. Basketball coaches love video. In American football, film study is essential. And technology has made it easier than ever to link data to video clips.

So analysts should become buddies with the video group. Importantly, analytics professionals now grasp this better than ever, something evident at SSAC across sports.

“Video in football [soccer] is the best way to communicate and get on the same page,” said Sarah Rudd, co-founder and CTO of src | ftbl, and a former analyst for Arsenal, at Friday’s panel on soccer analytics.

3. Seek opportunities in women’s sports analytics.

Have we mentioned that women’s sports is booming? The WNBA is expanding, the size of the U.S. transfer market in women’s soccer has doubled for three straight years, and you can now find women’s college volleyball in a basic cable package.

That growth is starting to fund greater data collection, in the WNBA and elsewhere, a frequent conversation topic at SSAC.

As Jennifer Rizzotti, president of the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun, noted of her own playing days in the 1990s: “We didn’t have statistics, we didn’t have [opponents’] tendencies that were being explained to us. So, when I think of what players have access to now and how far we’ve come, it’s really impressive.” And yet, she added, the amount of data in men’s basketball remains well ahead of the women’s game: “It gives you an awareness of how far we have to go.”

Some women’s sports still lack the cash needed for basic analytics infrastructure. One Friday panelist, LPGA golfer Stacy Lewis, a 13-time winner on tour, noted that the popular ball-tracking analytics system used in men’s golf costs $1 million per week, beyond budget for the women’s game.

And at a Saturday panel, Gelman said that full data parity between men’s and women’s sports was not imminent. “Sadly, I think we’re years away because we just need more investment into it,” she said.

But there is movement. At one Saturday talk, data developer Charlotte Eisenberg detailed how the website Sports Reference — a key resource of free public data —has been adding play-by-play data for WNBA games. That can help for evaluating individual players, particularly over long time periods, and has long been available for NBA games.

In short, as women’s sports grow, their analytics opportunities will, too.

4. Don’t be daunted by someone’s blurry “eye test.”

A subtle trip-wire in sports analytics, even at SSAC, is the idea that analytics should match the so-called “eye test,” or seemingly intuitive sports observations.

Here’s the problem: There is no one “eye test” in any sport, because people’s intuitions differ. For some basketball coaches, an unselfish role player stands out. To others, a flashy off-the-dribble shooter passes the eye test, even without a high shooting percentage. That tension would exist even if statistics did not.

Enter analytics, which confirms the high value of efficient shooting (as well as old-school virtues like defense, rebounding, and avoiding turnovers). But in a twist, the definition of a good shot in basketball has famously changed. In 1979-80, the NBA introduced the three-point line; in 1985, teams were taking 3.1 three-pointers per game; now in 2024-25, teams are averaging 37.5 three-pointers per game, with great efficiency. What happened?

“People didn’t use [the three-point shot] well at the beginning,” Morey said on a Saturday panel, quipping that “they were too dumb to know that three is greater than two.”

Granted, players weren’t used to shooting threes in 1980. But it also took a long time to change intuitions in the sport. Today, analytics shows that a contested three-pointer is a higher-value shot that an open 18-foot two-pointer. That might still run counter to someone’s “eye test.”

Incidentally, always following analytically informed coaching might also lead to a more standardized, less interesting game, as Morey and basketball legend Sue Bird suggested at the same panel.

“There’s a little bit of instinct that is now removed from the game,” Bird said. Shooting threes makes sense, she concurred, but “You’re only focused on the three-point line, and it takes away all the other things.”

5. Think about absolute truths, but solve for current tactics. 

Bill James set the bar high for sports analytics: His breakthrough equation, “runs created,” described how baseball works with almost Newtonian simplicity. Team runs are the product of on-base percentage and slugging percentage, divided by plate appearances. This applies to individual players, too.

But it’s almost impossible to replicate that kind of fundamental formula in other sports.

“I think in soccer there’s still a ton to learn about how the game works,” O’Hanlon told MIT News. Should a team patiently build possession, play long balls, or press up high? And how do we value players with wildly varying roles?

That sometimes leads to situations where, O’Hanlon notes, “No one really knows the right questions that the data should be asking, because no one really knows the right way to play soccer.”

Happily, the search for underlying truths can also produce some tactical insights. Consider one of the three finalists in the conference’s research paper competition, “A Machine Learning Approach to Player Value and Decision Making in Professional Ultimate Frisbee,” by Braden Eberhard, Jacob Miller, and Nathan Sandholtz.

In it, the authors examine playing patterns in ultimate, seeing if teams score more by using a longer string of higher-percentage short-range passes, or by trying longer, high-risk throws. They found that players tend to try higher-percentage passes, although there is some variation, including among star players. That suggests tactical flexibility matters. If the defense is trying to take away short passes, throw long sometimes.

It is a classic sports issue: The right way to play often depends on how your opponent is playing. In the search for ultimate truths, analysts can reveal the usefulness of short-term tactics. That helps team win, which helps analytics types stay employed. But none of this would come to light if analysts weren’t digging into the sports they love, searching for answers and trying to let the world know what they find.

“There is nothing happening here that will change your life if you don’t follow through on it,” James said. “But there are many things happening here that will change your life if you do.” 

In 2022, Randall Pietersen, a civil engineer in the U.S. Air Force, set out on a training mission to assess damage at an airfield runway, practicing “base recovery” protocol after a simulated attack. For hours, his team walked over the area in chemical protection gear, radioing in geocoordinates as they documented damage and looked for threats like unexploded munitions.

The work is standard for all Air Force engineers before they deploy, but it held special significance for Pietersen, who has spent the last five years developing faster, safer approaches for assessing airfields as a master’s student and now a PhD candidate and MathWorks Fellow at MIT. For Pietersen, the time-intensive, painstaking, and potentially dangerous work underscored the potential for his research to enable remote airfield assessments.

“That experience was really eye-opening,” Pietersen says. “We’ve been told for almost a decade that a new, drone-based system is in the works, but it is still limited by an inability to identify unexploded ordnances; from the air, they look too much like rocks or debris. Even ultra-high-resolution cameras just don’t perform well enough. Rapid and remote airfield assessment is not the standard practice yet. We’re still only prepared to do this on foot, and that’s where my research comes in.”

Pietersen’s goal is to create drone-based automated systems for assessing airfield damage and detecting unexploded munitions. This has taken him down a number of research paths, from deep learning to small uncrewed aerial systems to “hyperspectral” imaging, which captures passive electromagnetic radiation across a broad spectrum of wavelengths. Hyperspectral imaging is getting cheaper, faster, and more durable, which could make Pietersen’s research increasingly useful in a range of applications including agriculture, emergency response, mining, and building assessments.

Finding computer science and community

Growing up in a suburb of Sacramento, California, Pietersen gravitated toward math and physics in school. But he was also a cross country athlete and an Eagle Scout, and he wanted a way to put his interests together.

“I liked the multifaceted challenge the Air Force Academy presented,” Pietersen says. “My family doesn’t have a history of serving, but the recruiters talked about the holistic education, where academics were one part, but so was athletic fitness and leadership. That well-rounded approach to the college experience appealed to me.”

Pietersen majored in civil engineering as an undergrad at the Air Force Academy, where he first began learning how to conduct academic research. This required him to learn a little bit of computer programming.

“In my senior year, the Air Force research labs had some pavement-related projects that fell into my scope as a civil engineer,” Pietersen recalls. “While my domain knowledge helped define the initial problems, it was very clear that developing the right solutions would require a deeper understanding of computer vision and remote sensing.”

The projects, which dealt with airfield pavement assessments and threat detection, also led Pietersen to start using hyperspectral imaging and machine learning, which he built on when he came to MIT to pursue his master’s and PhD in 2020.

“MIT was a clear choice for my research because the school has such a strong history of research partnerships and multidisciplinary thinking that helps you solve these unconventional problems,” Pietersen says. “There’s no better place in the world than MIT for cutting-edge work like this.”

By the time Pietersen got to MIT, he’d also embraced extreme sports like ultra-marathons, skydiving, and rock climbing. Some of that stemmed from his participation in infantry skills competitions as an undergrad. The multiday competitions are military-focused races in which teams from around the world traverse mountains and perform graded activities like tactical combat casualty care, orienteering, and marksmanship.

“The crowd I ran with in college was really into that stuff, so it was sort of a natural consequence of relationship-building,” Pietersen says. “These events would run you around for 48 or 72 hours, sometimes with some sleep mixed in, and you get to compete with your buddies and have a good time.”

Since coming to MIT with his wife and two children, Pietersen has embraced the local running community and even worked as an indoor skydiving instructor in New Hampshire, though he admits the East Coast winters have been tough for him and his family to adjust to.

Pietersen went remote between 2022 to 2024, but he wasn’t doing his research from the comfort of a home office. The training that showed him the reality of airfield assessments took place in Florida, and then he was deployed to Saudi Arabia. He happened to write one of his PhD journal publications from a tent in the desert.

Now back at MIT and nearing the completion of his doctorate this spring, Pietersen is thankful for all the people who have supported him in throughout his journey.

“It has been fun exploring all sorts of different engineering disciplines, trying to figure things out with the help of all the mentors at MIT and the resources available to work on these really niche problems,” Pietersen says.

Research with a purpose

In the summer of 2020, Pietersen did an internship with the HALO Trust, a humanitarian organization working to clear landmines and other explosives from areas impacted by war. The experience demonstrated another powerful application for his work at MIT.

“We have post-conflict regions around the world where kids are trying to play and there are landmines and unexploded ordnances in their backyards,” Pietersen says. “Ukraine is a good example of this in the news today. There are always remnants of war left behind. Right now, people have to go into these potentially dangerous areas and clear them, but new remote-sensing techniques could speed that process up and make it far safer.”

Although Pietersen’s master’s work primarily revolved around assessing normal wear and tear of pavement structures, his PhD has focused on ways to detect unexploded ordnances and more severe damage.

“If the runway is attacked, there would be bombs and craters all over it,” Pietersen says. “This makes for a challenging environment to assess. Different types of sensors extract different kinds of information and each has its pros and cons. There is still a lot of work to be done on both the hardware and software side of things, but so far, hyperspectral data appears to be a promising discriminator for deep learning object detectors.”

After graduation, Pietersen will be stationed in Guam, where Air Force engineers regularly perform the same airfield assessment simulations he participated in in Florida. He hopes someday soon, those assessments will be done not by humans in protective gear, but by drones.

“Right now, we rely on visible lines of site,” Pietersen says. “If we can move to spectral imaging and deep-learning solutions, we can finally conduct remote assessments that make everyone safer.”

Three outstanding educators have been named MacVicar Faculty Fellows: associate professor in comparative media studies/writing Paloma Duong, associate professor of economics Frank Schilbach, and associate professor of urban studies and planning Justin Steil.

For more than 30 years, the MacVicar Faculty Fellows Program has recognized exemplary and sustained contributions to undergraduate education at MIT. The program is named in honor of Margaret MacVicar, MIT’s first dean for undergraduate education and founder of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Fellows are chosen through a highly competitive, annual nomination process. The MIT Registrar’s Office coordinates and administers the award on behalf of the Office of the Vice Chancellor; nominations are reviewed by an advisory committee, and final selections are made by the provost.

Paloma Duong: Equipping students with a holistic, global worldview

Paloma Duong is the Ford International Career Development Associate Professor of Latin American and Media Studies. Her work has helped to reinvigorate Latin American subject offerings, increase the number of Spanish minors, and build community at the Institute.

Duong brings an interdisciplinary perspective to teaching Latin American culture in dialogue with media theory and political philosophy in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing (CMS/W) program. Her approach is built on a foundation of respect for each student’s unique academic journey and underscores the importance of caring for the whole student, honoring where they can go as intellectuals, and connecting them to a world bigger than themselves.

Senior Alex Wardle says that Professor Duong “broadened my worldview and made me more receptive to new concepts and ideas … her class has deepened my critical thinking skills in a way that very few other classes at MIT have even attempted to.”

Duong’s Spanish language classes and seminars incorporate a wide range of practices — including cultural analyses, artifacts, guest speakers, and hands-on multimedia projects — to help students engage with the material, think critically, and challenge preconceived notions while learning about Latin American history. CMS/W head and professor of science writing Seth Mnookin notes, “students become conversant with region-specific vocabularies, worldviews, and challenges.” This approach makes students feel “deeply respected” and treats them as “learning partners — interlocutors in their own right,” observes Bruno Perreau, the Cynthia L. Reed Professor of French Studies and Language.

Outside the classroom, Duong takes the time to mentor and get to know students by supporting and attending programs connected to MIT Cubanos, Cena a las Seis, and Global Health Alliance. She also serves as an advisor for comparative media studies and Spanish majors, is the undergraduate officer for CMS/W, and is a member of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Education Advisory Committee and the Committee on Curricula.

“Subject areas like Spanish and Latin American Studies play an important role at MIT,” writes T.L. Taylor, professor in comparative media studies/writing and MacVicar Faculty Fellow. “Students find a sense of community and support in these spaces, something that should be at the heart of our attention more than ever these days. We are lucky to have such a dynamic and engaged educator like Professor Duong.”

On receiving this award, Duong says, “I’m positively elated! I’m very grateful to my students and colleagues for the nomination and am honored to become part of such a remarkable group of fellow teachers and mentors. Teaching undergraduates at MIT is always a beautiful challenge and an endless source of learning; I feel super lucky to be in this position.”

Frank Schilbach: Bringing energy and excitement to the curriculum

Frank Schilbach is the Gary Loveman Career Development Associate Professor of Economics. His connection and dedication to undergraduates, combined with his efforts in communicating the importance of economics as a field of study, were key components in the revitalization of Course 14.

When Schilbach arrived at MIT in 2015, there were only three sophomore economics majors. “A less committed teacher would have probably just taken it as a given and got on with their research,” writes professor of economics Abhijit Banerjee. “Frank, instead, took it as a challenge … his patient efforts in convincing students that they need to make economics a part of their general education was a key reason why innovations [to broaden the major] succeeded. The department now has more than 40 sophomores.”

In addition to bolstering enrollment, Schilbach had a hand in curricular improvements. Among them, he created a “next step” for students completing class 14.01 (Principles of Microeconomics) with a revised class 14.13 (Psychology and Economics) that goes beyond classic topics in behavioral economics to explore links with poverty, mental health, happiness, and identity.

Even more significant is the thoughtful and inclusive approach to teaching that Schilbach brings. “He is considerate and careful, listening to everyone, explaining concepts while making students understand that we care about them … it is just a joy to see how the students revel in the activities and the learning,” writes Esther Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics. Erin Grela ’20 notes, “Professor Schilbach goes above and beyond to solicit student feedback so that he can make real-time changes to ensure that his classes are serving his students as best they can.”

His impacts extend beyond MIT as well. Professor of economics David Atkin writes: “Many of these students are inspired by their work with Frank to continue their studies at the graduate level, with an incredible 29 of his students going on to PhD studies at many of the best programs in the country. For someone who has only recently been promoted to a tenured professor, this is a remarkable record of advising.”

“I am delighted to be selected as a MacVicar Fellow,” says Schilbach. “I am thrilled that students find my courses valuable, and it brings me great joy to think that my teaching may help some students improve their well-being and inspire them to use their incredible talents to better the lives of others.”

Justin Steil: Experiential learning meets public service

“I am honored to join the MacVicar Faculty Fellows,” writes associate professor of law and urban planning Justin Steil. “I am deeply grateful to have the chance to teach and learn with such hard-working and creative students who are enthusiastic about collaborating to discover new knowledge and solve hard problems, in the classroom and beyond.”

Professor Steil uses his background as a lawyer, a sociologist, and an urban planner to combine experiential learning with opportunities for public service. In class 11.469 (Urban Sociology in Theory and Practice), he connects students with incarcerated individuals to examine inequality at one of the state’s largest prisons, MCI Norfolk. In another undergraduate seminar, students meet with leaders of local groups like GreenRoots in Chelsea, Massachusetts; Alternatives for Community and Environment in Roxbury, Massachusetts; and the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Roxbury to work on urban environmental hazards. Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning and MacVicar Faculty Fellow Lawrence Vale calls Steil’s classes “life-altering.”

In addition to teaching, Steil is also a paramedic and has volunteered as an EMT for MIT Emergency Medical Service (EMS), where he continues to transform routine activities into teachable moments. “There are numerous opportunities at MIT to receive mentorship and perform research. Justin went beyond that. My conversations with Justin have inspired me to go to graduate school to research medical devices in the EMS context,” says Abigail Schipper ’24.

“Justin is truly devoted to the complete education of our undergraduate students in ways that meaningfully serve the broader MIT community as well as the residents of Cambridge and Boston,” says Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Biological Engineering Katharina Ribbeck. Miho Mazereeuw, associate professor of architecture and urbanism and director of the Urban Risk Lab, concurs: “through his teaching, advising, mentoring, and connections with community-based organizations and public agencies, Justin has knit together diverse threads into a coherent undergraduate experience.”

Student testimonials also highlight Steil’s ability to make each student feel special by delivering undivided attention and individualized mentorship. A former student writes: “I was so grateful to have met an instructor who believed in his students so earnestly … despite being one of the busiest people I’ve ever known, [he] … unerringly made the students he works with feel certain that he always has time for them.”

Since joining MIT in 2015, Steil has received a Committed to Caring award in 2018; the Harold E. Edgerton Award for exceptional contributions in research, teaching, and service in 2021; and a First Year Advising Award from the Office of the First Year in 2022.

Learn more about the MacVicar Faculty Fellows Program on the Registrar’s Office website. 

EFF is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Mark Klein, a bona fide hero who risked civil liability and criminal prosecution to help expose a massive spying program that violated the rights of millions of Americans.

Mark didn’t set out to change the world. For 22 years, he was a telecommunications technician for AT&T, most of that in San Francisco. But he always had a strong sense of right and wrong and a commitment to privacy.

Mark not only saw how it works, he had the documents to prove it.

When the New York Times reported in late 2005 that the NSA was engaging in spying inside the U.S., Mark realized that he had witnessed how it was happening. He also realized that the President was not telling Americans the truth about the program. And, though newly retired, he knew that he had to do something. He showed up at EFF’s front door in early 2006 with a simple question: “Do you folks care about privacy?” 

We did. And what Mark told us changed everything. Through his work, Mark had learned that the National Security Agency (NSA) had installed a secret, secure room at AT&T’s central office in San Francisco, called Room 641A. Mark was assigned to connect circuits carrying Internet data to optical “splitters” that sat just outside of the secret NSA room but were hardwired into it. Those splitters—as well as similar ones in cities around the U.S.—made a copy of all data going through those circuits and delivered it into the secret room.

A photo of the NSA-controlled 'secret room' in the AT&T facility in San Francisco (Credit: Mark Klein)

Mark not only saw how it works, he had the documents to prove it. He brought us over a hundred pages of authenticated AT&T schematic diagrams and tables. Mark also shared this information with major media outlets, numerous Congressional staffers, and at least two senators personally. One, Senator Chris Dodd, took the floor of the Senate to acknowledge Mark as the great American hero he was.

We used Mark’s evidence to bring two lawsuits against the NSA spying that he uncovered. The first was Hepting v. AT&T and the second was Jewel v. NSA. Mark also came with us to Washington D.C. to push for an end to the spying and demand accountability for it happening in secret for so many years.  He wrote an account of his experience called Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine . . . And Fighting It.

Archival EFF graphic promoting Mark Klein's DC tour

Mark stood up and told the truth at great personal risk to himself and his family. AT&T threatened to sue him, although it wisely decided not to do so. While we were able to use his evidence to make some change, both EFF and Mark were ultimately let down by Congress and the Courts, which have refused to take the steps necessary to end the mass spying even after Edward Snowden provided even more evidence of it in 2013. 

But Mark certainly inspired all of us at EFF, and he helped inspire and inform hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans to demand an end to illegal mass surveillance. While we have not yet seen the success in ending the spying that we all have hoped for, his bravery helped to usher numerous reforms so far.

And the fight is not over. The law, called Section 702, that now authorizes the continued surveillance that Mark first revealed, expires in early 2026. EFF and others will continue to push for continued reforms and, ultimately, for the illegal spying to end entirely.

Mark’s legacy lives on in our continuing fights to reform surveillance and honor the Fourth Amendment’s promise of protecting personal privacy. We are forever grateful to him for having the courage to stand up and will do our best to honor that legacy by continuing the fight. 

As a legal organization that has fought in court to defend the rights of technology users for almost 35 years, including numerous legal challenges to federal government overreach, Electronic Frontier Foundation unequivocally supports Perkins Coie’s challenge to the Trump administration’s shocking, vindictive, and unconstitutional Executive Order. In punishing the law firm for its zealous advocacy on behalf of its clients, the order offends the First Amendment, the rule of law, and the legal profession broadly in numerous ways. We commend Perkins Coie (and its legal representatives) for fighting back. 

Lawsuits against the federal government are a vital component of the system of checks and balances that undergirds American democracy. They reflect a confidence in both the judiciary to decide such matters fairly and justly, and the executive to abide by the court’s determination. They are a backstop against autocracy and a sustaining feature of American jurisprudence since Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).  

The Executive Order, if enforced, would upend that system and set an appalling precedent: Law firms that represent clients adverse to a given administration can and will be punished for doing their jobs.  

This is a fundamental abuse of executive power. 

The constitutional problems are legion, but here are a few:  

• The First Amendment bars the government from “distorting the legal system by altering the traditional role of attorneys” by controlling what legal arguments lawyers can make. See Legal Services Corp. v. Velasquez, 531 U.S. 533, 544 (2001). “An informed independent judiciary presumes an informed, independent bar.” Id. at 545. 
• The Executive Order is also unconstitutional retaliation for Perkins Coie’s engaging in constitutionally protected speech during the course of representing its clients. See Nieves v. Bartlett, 587 U.S. 391, 398 (2019).  
• And the Executive Order functions as an illegal loyalty oath for the entire legal profession, conditioning access to federal courthouses or client relationships with government contractors on fealty to the executive branch, including forswearing protected speech in opposition to it. That condition is blatantly unlawful:  The government cannot require that those it works with or hires embrace certain political beliefs or promise that they have “not engaged, or will not engage, in protected speech activities such as … criticizing institutions of government.”  See Cole v. Richardson, 405 U.S. 676, 680 (1972). 

Civil liberties advocates such as EFF rely on the rule of law and access to the courts to vindicate their clients’, and the public’s, fundamental rights. From this vantage point, we can see that this Executive Order is nothing less than an attack on the foundational principles of American democracy.  

The Executive Order must be swiftly nullified by the court and uniformly vilified by the entire legal profession.

Click here for the number to listen in on a hearing on a temporary restraining order, scheduled for 2pmET/11amPT Wednesday, March 12.

The Anchorage Police Department (APD) has concluded its three-month trial of Axon’s Draft One, an AI system that uses audio from body-worn cameras to write narrative police reports for officers—and has decided not to retain the technology. Axon touts this technology as “force multiplying,” claiming it cuts in half the amount of time officers usually spend writing reports—but APD disagrees.

The APD deputy chief told Alaska Public Media, “We were hoping that it would be providing significant time savings for our officers, but we did not find that to be the case.” The deputy chief flagged that the time it took officers to review reports cut into the time savings from generating the report.  The software translates the audio into narrative, and officers are expected to read through the report carefully to edit it, add details, and verify it for authenticity. Moreover, because the technology relies on audio from body-worn cameras, it often misses visual components of the story that the officer then has to add themselves. “So if they saw something but didn’t say it, of course, the body cam isn’t going to know that,” the deputy chief continued.

The Anchorage Police Department is not alone in claiming that Draft One is not a time saving device for officers. A new study into police using AI to write police reports, which specifically tested Axon’s Draft One, found that AI-assisted report-writing offered no real time-savings advantage.

This news comes on the heels of policymakers and prosecutors casting doubt on the utility or accuracy of AI-created police reports. In Utah, a pending state bill seeks to make it mandatory for departments to disclose when reports have been written by AI. In King County, Washington, the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has directed officers not to use any AI tools to write narrative reports.

In an era where companies that sell technology to police departments profit handsomely and have marketing teams to match, it can seem like there is an endless stream of press releases and local news stories about police acquiring some new and supposedly revolutionary piece of tech. But what we don’t usually get to see is how many times departments decide that technology is costly, flawed, or lacks utility. As the future of AI-generated police reports rightly remains hotly contested, it’s important to pierce the veil of corporate propaganda and see when and if police departments actually find these costly bits of tech useless or impractical.

Former CISA Director Jen Easterly writes about a new international intelligence sharing co-op:

Historically, China, Russia, Iran & North Korea have cooperated to some extent on military and intelligence matters, but differences in language, culture, politics & technological sophistication have hindered deeper collaboration, including in cyber. Shifting geopolitical dynamics, however, could drive these states toward a more formalized intell-sharing partnership. Such a “Four Eyes” alliance would be motivated by common adversaries and strategic interests, including an enhanced capacity to resist economic sanctions and support proxy conflicts...

Tech giants joined states and cities as a pillar of resistance during President Donald Trump’s first term. Now the coalition is in turmoil.

The move comes just one day before a hearing in a lawsuit brought by a grant recipient seeking access to funds frozen by the Trump administration.

Electric vehicles now account for half of Chinese auto sales.

Commercial fishing groups are pressing the Supreme Court to overturn a Biden-era approval of the Massachusetts offshore wind farm.

More than 20 House Republicans say renewable energy subsidies should be protected. That may not be enough to save them.

Urban fires rarely start with a wall of flame roaring down the street. Instead, the spark often comes from small burning materials carried by the wind.

Brussels caved to the auto sector’s pleas for leniency on emissions targets, giving lobbyists and politicians an opening to push for more.

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QS World University Rankings has placed MIT in the No. 1 spot in 11 subject areas for 2025, the organization announced today.

The Institute received a No. 1 ranking in the following QS subject areas: Chemical Engineering; Civil and Structural Engineering; Computer Science and Information Systems; Data Science and Artificial Intelligence; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Linguistics; Materials Science; Mechanical, Aeronautical, and Manufacturing Engineering; Mathematics; Physics and Astronomy; and Statistics and Operational Research.

MIT also placed second in seven subject areas: Accounting and Finance; Architecture/Built Environment; Biological Sciences; Business and Management Studies; Chemistry; Earth and Marine Sciences; and Economics and Econometrics.

For 2024, universities were evaluated in 55 specific subjects and five broader subject areas. MIT was ranked No. 1 in the broader subject area of Engineering and Technology and No. 2 in Natural Sciences.

Quacquarelli Symonds Limited subject rankings, published annually, are designed to help prospective students find the leading schools in their field of interest. Rankings are based on research quality and accomplishments, academic reputation, and graduate employment.

MIT has been ranked as the No. 1 university in the world by QS World University Rankings for 13 straight years.

For those looking to climb the corporate ladder in the U.S., here’s an idea you might not have considered: debate training.

According to a new research paper, people who learn the basics of debate are more likely to advance to leadership roles in U.S. organizations, compared to those who do not receive this training. One key reason is that being equipped with debate skills makes people more assertive in the workplace.

“Debate training can promote leadership emergence and advancement by fostering individuals’ assertiveness, which is a key, valued leadership characteristic in U.S. organizations,” says MIT Associate Professor Jackson Lu, one of the scholars who conducted the study.

The research is based on two experiments and provides empirical insights into leadership development, a subject more often discussed anecdotally than studied systematically.

“Leadership development is a multi-billion-dollar industry, where people spend a lot of money trying to help individuals emerge as leaders,” Lu says. “But the public doesn’t actually know what would be effective, because there hasn’t been a lot of causal evidence. That’s exactly what we provide.”

The paper, “Breaking Ceilings: Debate Training Promotes Leadership Emergence by Increasing Assertiveness,” was published Monday in the Journal of Applied Psychology. The authors are Lu, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management; Michelle X. Zhao, an undergraduate student at the Olin Business School of Washington University in St. Louis; Hui Liao, a professor and assistant dean at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business; and Lu Doris Zhang, a doctoral student at MIT Sloan.

Assertiveness in the attention economy

The researchers conducted two experiments. In the first, 471 employees in a Fortune 100 firm were randomly assigned to receive either nine weeks of debate training or no training. Examined 18 months later, those receiving debate training were more likely to have advanced to leadership roles, by about 12 percentage points. This effect was statistically explained by increased assertiveness among those with debate training.

The second experiment, conducted with 975 university participants, further tested the causal effects of debate training in a controlled setting. Participants were randomly assigned to receive debate training, an alternative non-debate training, or no training. Consistent with the first experiment, participants receiving the debate training were more likely to emerge as leaders in subsequent group activities, an effect statistically explained by their increased assertiveness.

“The inclusion of a non-debate training condition allowed us to causally claim that debate training, rather than just any training, improved assertiveness and increased leadership emergence,” Zhang says. 

To some people, increasing assertiveness might not seem like an ideal recipe for success in an organizational setting, as it might seem likely to increase tensions or decrease cooperation. But as the authors note, the American Psychological Association conceptualizes assertiveness as “an adaptive style of communication in which individuals express their feelings and needs directly, while maintaining respect for others.”

Lu adds: “Assertiveness is conceptually different from aggressiveness. To speak up in meetings or classrooms, people don’t need to be aggressive jerks. You can ask questions politely, yet still effectively express opinons. Of course, that’s different from not saying anything at all.”

Moreover, in the contemporary world where we all must compete for attention, refined communication skills may be more important than ever.

“Whether it is cutting filler or mastering pacing, knowing how to assert our opinions helps us sound more leader-like,” Zhang says.

How firms identify leaders

The research also finds that debate training benefits people across demographics: Its impact was not significantly different for men or women, for those born in the U.S. or outside it, or for different ethnic groups.

However, the findings raise still other questions about how firms identify leaders. As the results show, individuals might have incentive to seek debate training and other general workplace skills. But how much responsibility do firms have to understand and recognize the many kinds of skills, beyond assertiveness, that employees may have?

“We emphasize that the onus of breaking leadership barriers should not fall on individuals themelves,” Lu says. “Organizations should also recognize and appreciate different communication and leadership styles in the workplace.”

Lu also notes that ongoing work is needed to understand if those firms are properly valuing the attributes of their own leaders.

“There is an important distinction between leadership emergence and leadership effectiveness,” Lu says. “Our paper looks at leadership emergence. It’s possible that people who are better listeners, who are more cooperative, and humbler, should also be selected for leadership positions because they are more effective leaders.”

This research was partly funded by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 12 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02277-2

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a key pattern of climate variability for surrounding land areas during winter. Here the authors constrain projections to show that the magnitude of the NAO increases under high emissions, leading to more severe winters.