James Ron

Minneapolis

Senior Researcher at Freelance

James Ron is a social scientist, former journalist, and former human rights investigator. Learn more at https://t.co/zvOTJGrwRC, https://t.co/h3qxFpvl2u, https://t.co/zpqJvtX9gD.

Articles

Opiate of the Masses? Religion and Agency in Colombia and Mexico

1 week ago | james-ron.medium.com | James Ron

Karl Marx famously argued that religion was the “opiate of the masses,” promoting a sense of individual and collective resignation in the face of material deprivation and difficulties. To explore this proposition, my colleagues and I conducted surveys in Mexico City and Bogotá, Colombia. We interviewed 960 persons in each location and asked a series of questions about religious faith and individual agency.
Religious Faith and Agency

1 week ago | jamesron.org | James Ron

James Ron12 minutes ago3 min readMarxist perspectives have long argued that religion is an illusion that suppresses the willingness of ordinary people to change the world. To explore this claim, my colleagues and I ran surveys in Mexico City and Bogotá, and we found the precise opposite to be true. The more respondents believed religion was important in their lives, the more likely they were to believe they could change the world.
Opiate of the Masses? Evidence from Surveys in Mexico and Colombia

1 week ago | researchgate.net | James Ron

Opiate of the Masses?
Polling Populations in Times of Conflict

3 weeks ago | jamesron.org | James Ron

On June 3, I posted a striking public opinion survey published in the English edition of Haaretz, Israel’s leading liberal newspaper. The poll indicated that a large majority of Jewish Israelis supported the expulsion of Gazans—an alarming finding that, I believed, merited attention and analysis. The poll’s author is a respected scholar, and my intention in sharing the post was to contribute to a broader reflection on the direction of Israeli political culture.
The Demise of the Global Human Rights Sector: A Tragedy Foretold

1 month ago | james-ron.medium.com | James Ron

About ten years ago, a prominent British academic, Stephen Hopgood, wrote that the human rights movement was in its “end times,” chiefly because it had allied itself too closely with the ideas and politics of Western powers. The real end times arrived in 2025, however, with the collapse of the global human rights funding model. Once the US government under Donald Trump eliminated most forms of foreign aid, European governments followed suit, shifting their funds from aid to defense.
The Demise of the Human Rights Funding Model

1 month ago | jamesron.net | James Ron

The new US administration has heavily curtailed foreign aid, and many European donors are following suit. The foreign aid sector is collapsing, and some of the hardest hit groups are those working on liberal norms such as human rights, gender rights, and democracy. I hate to say "I told you so," but about ten years ago, I started worrying about the global human rights sector's heavy dependence on Western government money. All of my fears have come to pass, and then some.
The Dog-Training Approach to Political Domination

2 months ago | jamesron.net | James Ron

Watching Trump handle US tariff policy reminds me of how a dog trainer once instructed me to teach my Labrador Retriever to walk off-leash. "Leash your dog," she said, "and go for a walk while holding a piece of cheese in your extended fingers. Walk rapidly in one direction, stop without warning, and then charge off in a new direction. Repeat several times a minute for 10 minutes, periodically and irregularly offering the cheese for consumption.
Why Is Public Support for Elite Universities so Weak?

2 months ago | james-ron.medium.com | James Ron

James Ron·Subscribe2 min read·--A few years ago, I worked with a colleague doing fieldwork in Ethiopia. She asked what happened to Ethiopian NGOs after a government crackdown on foreign aid, and learned that local groups working on sensitive topics like human rights had been forced to shut down or go into other work. Interestingly, she found that the Ethiopian public did not protest these NGOs’ closure, even though their work was — in theory — squarely within the public interest. Why?
Why Don't Elite Universities Enjoy Broader Public Support?

2 months ago | jamesron.net | James Ron

The Trump administration has declared war on elite universities, mostly of the East Coast variant. In the name of combatting anti-Semitism and "woke" ideologies, the US government has threatened and/or followed through with drastic cuts to federal research grants for Brown, Columbia, Harvard Johns, Hopkins, the University of Pennsylvania, and several others. The crackdown has also included the arrest and/or deportation of students who allegedly engaged in pro-Hamas or extreme anti-Israel speech.
Survey Data Provides Hope for Late-Life Divorcers

Mar 21, 2025 | jamesron.net | James Ron

Seven years ago, I went through a very unexpected divorce after being together with someone for 24 years. My ex's decision took me entirely by surprise, and the choice to divorce wasn’t mine. The two factors lent an acute sense of helplessness and abandonment to the whole experience. To get a better handle on what I had experienced, I turned to the scholarly literature. I focused in particular on a piece by M. Tosi and T.