Raleigh Report - August 2026

“First, let's assume our own virtue. Second, let's assume our virtue is very popular. Third, what could possibly go wrong?" — Alex Massie

Our work here at ACLED is important and busy and has an obvious and immediate impact, but I love nothing better than diving back into seeing what is happening in academia. I can’t help it. It is like wondering about an old boyfriend who may (or may not) have fallen into an abyss. On both fronts, a little prayer (“there but for the grace of God go I”) and a grimace follow. 

There is some drama these days about whether universities are fit for purpose, or whether they are the most recent victims of an “occupy” movement. This time, the marauders are “activist-scholars,” who always manage to leave anything they touch in a far worse state than they found it. But this is not a practice vs. theory discussion (common in the past 20-30 years), because this sordid descent is mirrored in what is happening to humanitarianism; democracy promotion; human rights; and several other more liberal, Western, and left-coded causes. In the spirit of balance, causes on the far right are constantly sabotaging themselves due to internal contradictions and utterly despicable beliefs, but that is not my area today. 

What is notable about both issues in academia and left-internationalist causes is the two arguments happening within: The first is ideological, consisting of how far can we go, having long abandoned pragmatism, sense, and public opinion on our legitimacy? The second is forward-looking and not a popular discussion: What is coming next? What is salvageable? Who are the reformers? 

The first is a damning form of entertainment, as dozens of entreaties by academics and NGO workers suggest your skepticism of their worth is because of your limitations, not theirs (you don’t know your Foucault, are a casual racist, etc., etc.). It is cringe, it is exasperating, and a little fun. 

In academia, this most recent round involves Piketty. (Remember him? Looking back, this was the first sign of total madness.) Anyway, he and a few others came out and said some absolutely insane things about intentionally “degrowthing” economies (which, joke is on him, as the recent United Kingdom prime ministers are managing that without his insights). Concurrently and aptly, a report on the state of the social sciences arrived, which focused on the “quality of academic scholarship” and found it sorely lacking for these reasons: 1) “careful scholarship has been subordinated to, or even displaced by, a ‘political’ goal: the aim of realizing a conception of social justice nowadays associated with the progressive left”; 2) “academic work have been distorted within these disciplines both to privilege work on topics that are taken to be relevant to social justice, and much more importantly, to replace more traditional standards for assessing academic scholarship with political standards designed to ensure that only politically acceptable work is published, taught and valorized”; and 3) the generation of an “academic ecosystem in which much of what passes as scholarship in the humanistic disciplines is in fact a mix of tendentious, biased research, feeble academic agitprop and jargon-laden nonsense.” Yes, correct. Those are entirely correct points. All true — the dogs in the street know that it is true. Do you know who is denying it? Those who benefit from this. 

To wit — defenses of this poor substitute for academia started to pour in: In trying to answer who and what counts in academia, Prof. Rouse of Princeton said (no, really) that doing nothing counts most of all, as long as you do it in a decolonial way. Reader, this was only the most notable of her many similar points.

This fuss is not new to the social sciences. Across many universities during the 1980s and 1990s, Anthropology and Geography departments were disbanded. Why? A few reasons, but it definitely included post-structuralism and professors doing cocaine in campus bathrooms during the day (those two trends are not entirely unrelated). This has now come full circle again. 

There are other real problems too — from limiting free speech to dismantling out-of-fashion legacy studies. But all the energy in the room is on explaining away poor work, grift, cons, waste, etc., by using the word “decolonial.” (Note to all: Tyler Austin Harper in the Atlantic is fantastic on this subject.)

A typical academic now looks like someone with consensus opinions and an elite admin job. Yet, they are on a moral quest! In fairness, this quest is much more exciting than reviewing footnotes or writing a course review. But succumbing to this inanity has led to tedious, thoughtless, repetitive resuscitation of social justice platitudes; flat, boring assertions about inverted hierarchies; and painful defenses of advocacy that looks a lot like overt bias.  

How did this become a problem? The rise of the activist-scholar and the sense that everyone who deviates even slightly from “values” espoused by the most extreme among us is “contaminated.” Do you have scholar/activist in your job title? Did you put it there? Everyone hates you and thinks you do nothing all day. You — yourself — are the reason that universities will fail as a public good. 

I am eager for a return to the university that is filled with good-natured, socially awkward nutcases. It is a privilege to work in a university; it is a privilege to think about something you really care about all day long, and to serve a public need with that work. And although I think some of these ideas are quite strange, a good discussion about elite overproduction is warranted, as are the benefits of scarcity. The long, hard slog to regain public trust and legitimacy through unbiased and independent hard work is not even close to occurring. Here, the academic part is salvageable, and the reformers are people who wish to limit the number of universities and staff, and those who wish to give the students the bad news that learning something isn’t meant to be comfortable, or safe, or reassuring.

Let’s turn to sister institutions and their own reckoning. We have spoken many times about what has happened to humanitarianism and development. But the related institutions on human rights and democracy promotion are similarly suffering from that particular political bubble bursting. (Politics has bubbles just like the economy does, and the liberal international agenda was one.) 

But given that conflict and violations of freedoms and rights are all rising, why don’t we have a humanitarian system that is fit for purpose? The need is there, so why can’t we organize to better assist? How should we engage with conflict outside of the humanitarian-response lens? What is post-humanitarian conflict, if not military engagement? Here, we must force ourselves to distinguish between good intentions and real-world outcomes. Intentions don’t matter, especially when they are divorced from what people need and want. 

We need to have a very different argument for why humanitarian principles matter, not the same one just said more insistently or loudly. This isn’t a translation problem — people are not buying it anymore. But why not? Was there something wrong with the principles of how the West went about development and humanitarianism? Yes, yes, there was. It became obsessed with process and not making anyplace better. It became its own internal economy and system. According to the Oxford Institute For Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict:

“At the beginning of the 21st century, many non-governmental, Red Cross/Crescent and UN organizations pioneering in the humanitarian arena had become large transnational bureaucracies. 

“Together, these organizations formed what came to be called the “international humanitarian system” and they were funded from the tax base of Western governments, with additional private donations from Western publics, private foundations and high street trading in fair trade and second-hand goods. 

“Between 2000 and 2021, the annual budget for this humanitarian system rose from $5.9bn to $30.9bn and the sector saw exponential growth — a humanitarian boom. Western governments expanded aid to people affected by armed conflicts all around the world, and war aid eclipsed aid for climate-related and geological disasters. 

“The scale and operational reach of the system became consistently monitored by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs — OCHA and by the more independent Global Humanitarian Assistance’s annual report….”

Furthermore:

“Most humanitarians today are not working in the immediate violence of war and real-time destruction but rather with large groups of people enduring the consequences of war for many years in unplanned urban settlements of displaced people or badly damaged and deprived rural areas. Many agencies are in their second or third decade of work with communities in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Iraq, Syria, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

“In the early twenty first century, most humanitarian organizations are operating like UNRWA in Gaza, not Oxfam and MSF in Cambodia.”

In becoming its own universe, unaccountable to people, donors, deadlines, and progress, humanitarianism destroyed itself. Internal scandals, deep corruption, and costs were already difficult to take, but the negation of politics was the straw on the camel’s back. I would also argue that the celebrity faff was a terrible turn, making select conflicts a momentary focus point, forgotten forever when the famous moved on. Competing for celebrity sponsorship made conflicts vie with each other for a level of sheer/clickable PR horror. Internal to these bureaucracies, removed and largely technocratic exercises were expensive, narrowly focused follies with little to show for it in the end. Assumptions of support from domestic politicians buoyed USAID and the Department for International Development, but neither was saved in the end. 

Recently, I listened to an excellent TED talk from the wonderful Hiba Qasas, in which she spoke about how self-interest ends conflicts, and empathy comes later. Again, so true! Those lessons were complemented by a chat I had with ACLED’s wonderful Pearl Pandya, during which she explained to me that demonstrations in India and Pakistan are unlikely to lead to the same fates as Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Pearl noted that the government’s demonstration responses were completely different: Pakistan represses, at great cost to its citizens and to its state (i.e., power ceded to the military given the complete dependence on them to hold the temporary government in place), while in India, democracy (i.e., so many government offices, representatives, scales, elections, etc.) operates as a pressure value for the popular discontent. The way Pearl described it, fomenting a popular demonstration and rebellion is eased by the sheer number of potential adherents, but circumscribed by the sheer number of potential targets and agendas.  

I am not advocating democracy as a crowd control measure (but I am not not doing that either), but pointing out that we need to appeal to those who actually hold power if we are speaking about the benefits of its redistribution. For example, democracy allows leaders to cycle out a lot of poor performers in office (via elections or public sacrifices to quell crowds that need a head to dissipate). In non-democracies, you are far more beholden to the military and are more likely to violently dispose of poor performers and potential competitors. “It’ll cost you not to” may not be an attractive way to promote democracy and human rights, but if it is effective, who cares! We don’t need to all agree on the how. 

So, what is salvageable here? The desire to help those worst off; the hard work that goes into the delivery and generation of humanitarian aid; the real-world tradeoffs that allow for people to be helped; the smartest approaches to self-interest that get us further than endless workshops, diktats, and processes. Who are the reformers? Hopefully, all who recognize the problem we have, rather than the problem we want. To summarize: Our problem is not Trump or the right or those who disagree with us; it is that — as a collective — we engaged in very expensive and wasteful decades because of popular, but wrong, assumptions about what works in poorly governed countries, and now no one trusts our ideas of progress. Let’s change for the better. 

Notes and notions

I often get into hot water regarding my takes on fatality counts. But please read these very interesting accounts of how counting is changing in Ukraine and in the US.

Saudi Arabia is busy fighting Houthis and creating camel passports (note, this article is in pidgin, and no, I can’t explain why). 

But these camels need passports right away, and these ladies are the best. 

I am going on a brief holiday, during which I hope to read as many books as possible while treating the children with benign neglect (which they are doing right back to me). Currently, I am getting through: “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump” by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan; “Black Bag” by Luke Kennard; “They Came to Baghdad” by Agatha Christie; and “In At the Kill” by Gerald Seymour. They are getting confused in my head, and the result is utter madness. 

“Golf is essentially a form of posh outdoor darts.” — Nicholas Harris on “The Hawk.” 

This is the best and final take on the awful halftime show for the World Cup.

Keir Starmer is gone.

“Superior people suffer” — as relevant today as it was when Joan Didion wrote it. 

This article is about how the current vibe among Gen Z suggests that while women are permitted to achieve wealth and status, it is social suicide to be caught actually striving for it. In general, though, women love being both prevented from making progress and then being told how to act once we do. 

A tale of a country in two stories: one where someone committed a bad crime, and people are upset he may be punished; another where a meeting is canceled because a few protestors showed up, and those who wanted to meet are held responsible for scaring people. 

ACLED webinars

Webinar | Extraction under fire: How mining reshapes conflict in the Sahel

Our most recent webinar, held in collaboration with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) and the International Land Coalition, drew on ACLED's latest research, which shows that the role of mining extends far beyond financing conflict. Our West Africa Senior Analyst, Héni Nsaibia, examined how jihadist groups exploit mining economies to finance their operations, strengthen territorial control, and wage economic warfare against the states they are fighting. Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo, director of the West Africa Observatory at GI-TOC, examined the intersection between armed groups and the mining economy. If you missed this fascinating conversation, watch the full video here.

Select ACLED in the media!

• I spoke to the Associate Press for their article “A new threat by Yemen’s Houthis could widen the Iran war and put another trade chokepoint at risk.”
• Ali Mahmoud Ali shared his insights with Al Jazeera for their Inside Story “Can the RSF take control of Sudan’s el-Obeid?”
• More Sudan mentions: Nohad Eltayeb was quoted by The Guardian, the BBC, and German publication NZZ in articles covering the conflict. 
• ACLED data on reported fatalities and conflict in Myanmar have been widely syndicated this past month. This France24 article, which quotes Su Mon, is one such example.
• Moving to LATAM, Sandra Pellegrini spoke to The Guardian about gang expansion in Haiti, and Tiziano Breda spoke to The Guardian and the Associated Press about elections in Nicaragua. 
• ACLED data were also used by the BBC, The Economist, The New York Times, the Financial Times, Bloomberg, adf magazine, CNN, and by Al Jazeera for some great graphics.  
• Susanna Deetlefs’ and Ladd Serwats’ comments on anti-migrant unrest in South Africa have been cited far and wide. Some examples include Reuters, South African publications EWN and Briefly, and Afriquinfos.
• Newsweek quoted Kieran Doyle in a piece about an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump.
• Nasser Khdour spoke to The New Arab about Israel’s new strategy in southern Lebanon, to The Intercept on the West Bank, and to Al Jazeera about settler violence in Palestine.