The Angle

The Angle: Dr. Fake Edition

Slate’s daily newsletter on Trump’s possible path to victory, racism and jury selection, and Russia’s dissertation plagiarists. 

Ben Bernanke, whose dissertation submitted in pursuit of a Ph.D. in economics from MIT was not plagiarized, marches into the university’s graduation ceremonies in 2006. 

Darren McCollester/Getty Images

Leon Neyfakh investigates the plague of dissertation plagiarism among elite politicians and administrators in Russia, for many of whom the desirable letters “Ph.D.” are considered a purchasable commodity. “Many of the alleged fraudsters are politicians. Some are judges. Others are prosecutors, police officials, and heads of universities,” Neyfakh writes. “In the past few years alone, there have been credible allegations of dissertation plagiarism made against Russia’s minister of culture, the governor of St. Petersburg, and the head of the country’s top federal investigating authority.”

Jamelle Bouie reverse-engineers a scenario in which Donald Trump might become president. “How would Trump win, assuming key parts of the electorate are aligned against him?” Bouie writes. “The answer is easy: He wins and turns out white voters in historic numbers.”

On Monday, the Supreme Court decided in favor of inmate Timothy Foster in the case Foster v. Chatman, which Dahlia Lithwick calls “a truly hideous claim of racially tainted jury selection that has kept the defendant on death row for nearly 30 years.” This decision meant justice for Foster but didn’t give us a good path forward to fix a larger problem, Lithwick writes: “Study after study reflects the fact that black jurors are struck far more frequently than white ones. Foster gave us a way to talk about it but not a way to fix it.”

On ProPublica, an investigation into law enforcement’s use of algorithms to predict recidivism found bias against black offenders. “As states struggle to pay for swelling prison and jail populations, forecasting criminal risk has made a comeback,” writes the ProPublica reporting team. “Dozens of risk assessments are being used across the nation”—and when the tools are deployed in sentencing, some defendants are arguing, it’s a violation of due process. 

A certain death on Game of Thrones has Sam Adams in mourning. “George R.R. Martin doesn’t traffic in heroism,” Adams writes, “but if any character’s end qualifies as heroic, this one did.” SPOILERS at the link. 

For fun: Simon Doonan offers a field guide to the five tribes of modern men’s fashion, as he sees them. 

Arty ninjas FTW, 

Rebecca