Harris Policy

The official Twitter feed of the @UChicago Harris School of Public Policy. For the latest in evidence-based research and news, visit

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

Finnegan Keilty, MPP Class of 2027, reflects on his summer internship on State Farm’s municipal bonds team, his first experience in public finance and the career pivot that motivated him to pursue graduate study at Harris.

Read Finnegan's blog: https://t.co/ZfFfY3AeGj

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

Join Ryan Kellogg, energy economist and Harris School of Public Policy professor, for an AMA on Reddit! https://t.co/xkFspxDadv

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

Join us on October 29 for an event exploring America's crisis response system, and celebrating the release of 911, What’s Your Emergency?: The Promise and Peril of Crisis Response, a new book by Rebecca Neusteter.

Register: https://t.co/3NkGj6hFVn

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

In @UniteAi, Prof. Alexander Fouirnaies and coauthors warn that multi-agent AI systems can mistake consensus for accuracy. Agents can herd toward shared but unsupported answers, raising questions about systems that reward evidence, not just agreement. https://t.co/3ZSjFUKAhT

[Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth @UChiClimate]

Save the date! Join us on Oct. 28 for Climate Frontiers! 🌍

Featuring a climate showcase, student poster session, career fair, and leadership forum.

Learn more: https://t.co/Y3v9ii1fAX

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

Join @JohnUChicago and @Travelers to learn practical tips to build connection and rewire workplace technology as a force multiplier for collaboration, innovation and performance. https://t.co/pJp4EQRlst

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

Congrats to Zoe Dimmitt, MSCEP’27, whose work as a Marquette research assistant contributed to IceCube, the South Pole observatory at the center of this year’s @NobelPrize in Physics. Zoe helped build a particle telescope to observe cosmic rays. https://t.co/rJWoUrEIux

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

In @latimes, @k_sonin says Trump’s ads reflect a pattern familiar from authoritarian systems: blurring the line between leader and state, so that criticism of the leader becomes criticism of the country. “There is this authoritarian scent,” he says. https://t.co/yD7iRz2pdO

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

For anyone in the Keller Center who has been following recent news about the Kennedy Center and noticing something familiar: you’re not imagining it. Both buildings were designed by Edward Durell Stone, one of the defining modernist architects of the 20th century.

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

In @AP, @sndurlauf of @UCStoneCenter explains why the record-low official poverty rate needs context. The supplemental measure accounts for food aid, health care, housing, and other costs, giving a fuller picture of what families have and what they need. https://t.co/OyTrhNLbUz

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

Don’t miss the chance to hear Nobel laureate and world-renowned economist Roger Myerson deliver his Harris School valedictory lecture, “Local Politics in Nations and Empires,” on October 7th at 5:00 pm in the Keller Center. Secure your spot now: https://t.co/iZfkfoB36Y

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

Harris’ first executive education program in China brought 40 social-sector leaders together in Beijing to learn how behavioral science and evidence can strengthen program design, evaluation, and decisions about when programs can be adapted and scaled. https://t.co/oIhgdlCRYC

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

In @NextCityOrg, Research Professor Justin Marlowe puts Providence’s divestment ballot initiative in context: growing public scrutiny of local investments reflects “just how much money is at stake and just how opaque the decision-making can be." https://t.co/fCVVD7lNUb

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

Innovative new research from @fouirnaies and co-authors

[Andy Hall @ahall_research]

Our new Free Systems research shows how shared communication can cause agents to fall victim to shared delusions, and how we can use governance structures to correct these.

(1) We create HuggingFace-like simulations to "stress test" agent swarms, exploring cases where agents receive and report incorrect signals leading to bad information cascades

(2) In the "treatment" condition, agents can post their signals to a shared message board as they receive them. In these cases, agents who read the messages are remarkably quick to abandon their private information and "herd" on the bad signal. As a result, shared communication leads the swarm to a shared delusion in these cases.

(3) In the "control" condition, agents don't communicate at all, and as a result, there is no shared delusion---but on the other hand, agents lose the chance to aggregate their information together.

(4) Finally, we show that there are several interventions that can preserve the message board while mitigating the collective failure: in particular, a rule that agents must report the actual private signal they received corrects the behavior and largely eliminates the herding.

This is just one small experiment, using only Haiku, and within that experiment we're zooming in on a particular "stress test" that only occurs in rare instances where several agents receive incorrect signals at the start. There's tons more to do here. But we see this as a proof of concept for one particularly important failure that can occur with multi-agent swarms: information cascades that lead to shared delusions. We'll be doing lots more research to understand these delusions, what mechanisms explain agents' seeming "peer pressure" to abandon private information, and what we can do about it. Stay tuned!

(joint work with @fouirnaies, Sandy Handan-Nader, and @danmthomp)

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

In the @chicagotribune, Prof. @ariel_kalil and coauthors examine how competitive parenting can widen opportunity gaps. Their message: parents are responding rationally to high-stakes college admissions, but a good future shouldn’t feel like a tournament. https://t.co/gASQYPz3qM

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

In @Gothamist, the Health Lab’s Rebecca Neusteter explains why 911 outages point to a national problem: “911 is core civic infrastructure,” but outdated technology and underinvestment leave systems vulnerable. https://t.co/F1A9OJpuky

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

In @medicaldaily, economist Robert Kaestner examines what GLP-1 drugs do (and don’t) appear to change. His NBER working paper finds that among adults with diabetes, GLP-1 use did not measurably improve mental health, employment, or marriage outcomes. https://t.co/XOzblhaYax

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

Join us now on Reddit for an AMA with Rebecca Neusteter, executive director of the University of Chicago Health Lab and the author of the new book 911, What’s Your Emergency?: The Promise and Peril of Crisis Response. https://t.co/NHJPI6y9YQ

[Energy Policy Institute at UChicago @UChiEnergy]

Clean energy abundance or keep fossil fuels in the ground?

EPIC Scholar @RyanMKellogg of @HarrisPolicy argues for demand and supply-side carbon policy + public support for clean energy in new @BrookingsInst paper: https://t.co/T8oPZqBCgW

[Harris Policy @HarrisPolicy]

NEW from Harris Public Policy and Chicago Public Media: Chicago in Conversation will bring together 40 civic-minded Chicagoans for civil discourse training and faculty- and journalist-led conversations on serious policy issues shaping the city’s future. https://t.co/xUhEvjVmDI