Currently the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in Harvard University’s Department of Government, Arthur Spirling is a political scientist specializing in political methodology. In addition, he is affiliated with Harvard’s Institute of Quantitative Social Science and is Director of its Program on Text Research.
Professor Spirling has been honored with Harvard University’s Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award, the Roselyn Abramson Award given to a junior professor at Harvard “in recognition of his or her excellence and sensitivity in teaching undergraduates” and the “Emerging Scholar” best paper award from the European Political Science Association. HisProfessor papers have appeared in numerous journals, including American Political Science Review, Journal of the American Statistical Association and Political Analysis.
In the fall of 2015, Professor Spirling will join the faculty of NYU with a joint appointment in the Center for Data Science and the Department of Politics. He spoke recently with ML Ball about his interest in political systems, how he’s looking forward to inter-departmental collaboration and his penchant for driving.
Raised in the London Borough of Sutton, Arthur Spirling earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Government and Economics and Master of Science degree in Public Administration and Public Policy, both from the London School of Economics. Next, he attended Nuffield College, Oxford University, then in 2003, traveled across the pond to join the University of Rochester as a graduate student in the Department of Political Science, defending his dissertation in 2008.
In the Acknowledgements section of his dissertation, “Three Essays in Political Methodology,” Professor Spirling quotes the social reformer Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, who observed that “with ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.”
Although Spirling might argue that his talents are ordinary, the case can easily be made that in fact, they are anything but. Publishing highly-received papers on such varied topics as British political development, the nature of movie reviewing, and gauging the effect of private information disclosure in international relations using the WikiLeaks “Cablegate” release, his talents rather lean toward the extraordinary.
At the University of Rochester, Spirling’s interest in political methodology truly emerged
At the start of Spirling’s career, it was game theory that initially piqued his interest. Hence the trek to Rochester, “which was at the time, and still is, famous for a very intense game theory or formal theory sequence,” he stated. He soon discovered, however, that his real interest was in the applied statistics of political science, known as methodology. “I decided to do quantitative analysis but on the statistical side, the data side, in particular a sub-field called measurement, which is about measuring things that we might care about intuitively but don’t really have a well-defined idea about,” he said.
To illustrate, Spirling gave an example of how people commonly say that one country is more powerful than another country, usually meaning the U.S. “But that’s actually very poorly defined,” he asserted. “What do we mean when we say a country is powerful, or effective at getting what it wants? I became very interested in the idea of being more formal about those types of problems.”
Spirling’s path to NYU started with a “Help Wanted” ad
While an Associate Professor at Harvard, Spirling saw an advertisement on the POLMETH (Society for Political Methodology) mailing list, offering a joint position with NYU’s Center for Data Science and the Department of Politics. “I was always intrigued about the idea of not being completely in a political science department,” he said, “because I’ve always thought that my work would be better in a home that was more interdisciplinary, a place where I wasn’t just in political science. In some ways, I’ve actually got more in common with people doing data science and statistics than I do necessarily with the median person in political science.”
Having heard about the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment Initiative, Spirling thought it would be an opportunity for him to “maybe play a leadership role, to sculpt and be part of building an institution.”
NYU is “one of those universities which is doing all the right things”
When describing his soon-to-be academic home, Spirling was extremely complementary, especially concerning NYU’s vision and cohesiveness. “NYU is relatively young, it seems to have very dynamic leadership at the dean level, the administration is very keen to break into new initiatives, they seem to always be hiring, and they seem in particular to not have any problems getting agreement at various department levels.”
He added, “It seems philosophically very unified, at least the politics department does. Everyone seems to have a base level of agreement, which is actually a great thing because political science is a very broad field and everyone doesn’t always agree on what the best approach is. To me, NYU is one of a handful of departments in the U.S. in which everybody seems to be pointing the right way.”
Spirling is equally impressed with NYU’s external measurements of success. “They’ve had a steady assault on the rankings and they’re gradually moving up,” he said. “They’re doing very well in methodology, they have some phenomenal mid-career faculty ― really active people who are tenured ― and they are hiring good junior people. The entire environment seems very, very exciting, quite apart from the fact that they have this locational endowment of New York City.”
To Spirling, the interdisciplinary nature of the Moore-Sloane Initiative is a massive asset
It is the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment Initiative’s focus on interdepartmental cross-pollination of ideas, insights and research that is so exciting to Spirling. “In general, if you’re in political science you spend most of your time talking to other people who are interested in politics,” he said. “In some ways that is great because you obviously have a lot in common in terms of the subject matter, but when you talk to astrophysicists and biostatisticians and computer scientists and so on, which is what the data science initiative is all about, you find that you have much more in common with them than you previously thought. In fact, on a technical basis, your problems often look very, very similar and this blurring of the lines can really open your mind to completely new ways of thinking about the problem you are working on.”
More and more, the future is data
As virtually anyone who is alive today knows, enormous amounts of data are constantly being amassed about things as varied as the universe, voters’ habits and the systems of cities. Spirling explained, “What we need to do is work out how to use that data. And that is not something that belongs to one discipline. Data in subsets belongs to us all, and so we all have this contribution to make in terms of bringing data to the table. We also have this duty or responsibility to work together and work out the best way to use that data. Even the term ‘interdisciplinary’ in the future will become redundant because there won’t be such a stark notion of a discipline.”
Spirling reasons that there are two great times to be at the forefront of doing data analysis: one was the Enlightenment and the other is now.
“I’m very lucky, we’re all very lucky, to be living in a time when data is really grabbing the attention of not just universities but policy makers, academics in different disciplines, movers and shakers. It’s a great time to be getting into this stuff and it’s all going in one direction. It’s only going to get bigger.”
“You don’t really know something until you’re teaching it”
“I think it’s good to have a slight feeling of nervousness every time you teach; that’s very much a part of the job,” Spirling confided. “When you no longer have that feeling of butterflies when you stand up in a lecture theater of a hundred very intelligent people, I think that’s when you’re losing your edge. I think you do your best work when you’re at least slightly worried about the performance.”
This upcoming academic year will find Spirling teaching a graduate-level course on text analysis in the Center for Data Science that will also be cross-listed in the Department of Political Science. “That’s going to be a nice mix in terms of a set of people who can learn from each other,” he said.
What he’s most and least looking forward to about New York
Having recently married — his wife, Amy Catalinac Spirling, has a PhD from Harvard and will also be joining NYU, as a Visiting Assistant Professor — Spirling confessed that what he will miss most once relocating to New York is driving. “I really enjoy driving, I find it very relaxing and therapeutic, and there’s not much driving to be done in NYC. I don’t think I can spend Sunday afternoons cruising around the Village, but that’s actually a good thing for me because I’ll do more walking and I’ll be healthier.”
What is he most looking forward to? “The fact that one is living in a magnet for dynamic people. And NYU is part of that magnet. It just strikes me as a place which has an energy that is very rarely seen outside of such a vibrant place. That’s probably what I’m looking forward to most.”
Welcome to New York, Arthur and Amy!
-By ML Ball