Sure, ZL's research is a little more nuanced than people here are making it seemed. But it still seems a bit too..."un-insightful"...to warrant a job at Harvard...
It's a wonderfully executed project that sets a higher bar for the field. Observational AND experimental DiD. Solid paper that would receive more praise if unemployed ABDs weren't so jealous of her success.
I am neither unemployed nor an ABD, just a person at Harvard who followed the search closely and felt that some candidates were clearly more exciting than others.
There's a question of standards here. It is great that ZL's work was well executed. That's the least we can and should expect from someone shortlisted for a tenure-track job at one of the top departments. But I believe that good political science should be more than a smart and well-executed research design. It should tell us something insightful about the world. Something that we couldn't learn just from being people who read the news everyday and talk to other people about politics. This is where ZL's work does not do as well.
Reasonably people can disagree with that. But that's where I (and others here, apparently) are coming from, not from a place of jealously or pettiness.