Game / 9 decisions · 3 guidance levels
Ministry of Truth
Your job is to correct the past. A perfectly normal first day at the Ministry. Work through surveillance, language, fear, and evidence in a game inspired by Orwell’s 1984.
Play & exploreTeaching / Open the question
CLASS
WORK.
The world is complicated.
The worksheet should know that.
Games, visual arguments, syllabi, and things to try in a room full of people. Built to make ideas do some work.
Use something. Tell me what happened.All topics 11Israel-Palestine1Comparative Politics6International Relations1American Politics2Immigration0Citizenship1
11 resources
Start anywhere.
Game / 5 regions · 10 simulated years
The Federal Bargain
Distribute power across five regions, negotiate a constitutional bargain, then see how it survives the next ten years. Everyone likes decentralization until somebody else gets the power.
Play & exploreGame / 7 rounds + an optional challenge
Crisis Cabinet
Take the cabinet seat and balance democracy, development, control, and legitimacy. The trade-offs are fictional. The temptation to call them unavoidable is less fictional.
Play & exploreGame / Solo strategy game · written decisions
The Repression Trap
Try to build a movement while managing public support, discipline, elite divisions, and state repression. Anger is available. Strategy takes a little more work.
Play & exploreGame / Case lab · 3 theoretical lenses
The Deviance Machine
Explore how strain, social learning, and social bonds change the explanation for the same behavior. A chance to stop at “bad people do bad things” and then keep going.
Play & exploreLearning bot / About 25 minutes
The Square Deep-Dive Bot
A guided conversation about Egypt's revolution, protest coalitions, military power, elections, and democratic backsliding. Builds arguments from concrete film scenes.
Open learning botLearning bot / Self-paced
Green Line Critical Reading Partner
A seminar partner for testing theory, evidence, and method in research on Israeli state authority and the settler movement.
Open learning botLearning bot / About 25 minutes
Things I Mean to Know Deep-Dive Bot
A conversation about evidence, expertise, belief, uncertainty, and the awkward gap between knowing something and feeling absolutely certain.
Open learning botLearning bot / About 25 minutes
Tweak the Vote Deep-Dive Bot
Explore electoral design, ranked voting, representation, and the way a ballot can change incentives as well as results.
Open learning botLearning bot / 20-30 minutes
Fanon Learning Companion
A patient but demanding reading partner for colonialism, racialization, lived experience, and dense political theory.
Open learning botLearning bot / 30-40 minutes
Competitive Authoritarianism Learning Companion
Investigate regimes where electoral competition is real but unfair, and why leaders tilt the playing field instead of eliminating the game.
Open learning botMUSE / AI & education
BETTER QUESTIONS.
BETTER CONVERSATIONS.
A little help getting from “I read it” to “I understand it.”
These learning bots help students read difficult texts, apply concepts, test arguments, and revise their thinking. Start with the source. Keep your judgment switched on.
The Square Deep-Dive Bot About 25 minutes
Watch The Square (2013) before starting.
Netflix subscription; availability varies by region and plan.
Green Line Critical Reading Partner Self-paced
Read Barak Mendelsohn, "State Authority in the Balance: The Israeli State and the Messianic Settler Movement" (International Studies Review, 2014).
Public abstract. Full article may require institutional access.
Things I Mean to Know Deep-Dive Bot About 25 minutes
Listen to This American Life episode 630, "Things I Mean to Know".
Official episode, with free download and transcript.
Tweak the Vote Deep-Dive Bot About 25 minutes
Listen to Radiolab, "Tweak the Vote".
Official episode. Free transcript; archive audio access may vary.
Fanon Learning Companion 20-30 minutes
Read the Introduction and Chapter 5, "The Lived Experience of the Black Man", from Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks.
Publisher page. Purchase or borrow the book; read the assigned sections.
Competitive Authoritarianism Learning Companion 30-40 minutes
Read Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, "The New Competitive Authoritarianism" (Journal of Democracy, 2020).
Public abstract. Full text may require library or subscription access.
These open in ChatGPT, which may require an account and has its own usage limits. Some retain their original course prompts. Explore voluntarily; no transcript is required here.
For educators
LET THE ROOM
FIND THE PROBLEM.
I also build activities that happen between people.
My workshops start with decisions, bargaining, uncertainty, and competing priorities. Then we use theory to make sense of what just happened.
Talk workshops