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the unc scandal, fall 2014 roundup
Since I last wrote about the UNC athletic/academic scandal in May 2014, we’ve had an intense summer and fall of revelations and reactions. Most visibly, the independent investigation by Kenneth...
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arum and roksa, “aspiring adults adrift”
I am a fan of Richard Arum and Jospia Roksa’s first book, Academically Adrift, which examined predictors of growth in critical thinking skills during the first two years of college. In their new book,...
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prestige trumps quality in faculty hiring? not so fast
This article (Clauset, Arbesman, and Larremore. “Systematic inequality and hierarchy in faculty hiring networks”) has been making the rounds lately. The article uses a network method to extract...
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fun with musical taste and identity
In my intro theory class yesterday I did an exercise using PollEverywhere to evoke associations between musical taste and identity. I played four musical pieces and asked the students to type free-text...
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the lacour and green retraction
News broke recently of very serious concerns about the data in a high-profile political science study. Not to put too fine of a point on it, it now appears that a UCLA graduate student and rising star...
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are all human traits heritable?
A new article by Polderman et al. in Nature Genetics, nicely summed up by Jeremy: Twin studies: what if we just meta-analyze the WHOLE LOT OF THEM? https://t.co/8SyqD8Mzsh [@JamesPsychol] — Jeremy...
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what does ‘why’ mean?
A couple of weeks ago I got in a friendly back-and-forth on Twitter with my friend and colleague Daniel Kreiss. Daniel was annoyed by this article, which purports to reveal why Mitt Romney chose Paul...
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cost-cutting in higher ed
In the Washington Post earlier this week, Steve Pearlstein published a piece promoting four things universities should do to cut costs: Cap administrative costs Operate year round, five days a week...
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morris, the scholar denied
I read Aldon Morris’s much-anticipated book, The Scholar Denied, with great interest. I heard Morris talk about the book when he visited UNC last year, and have read and taught some shorter work he’s...
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coaching and masculinity: a “natural” combination? (guest post)
Catherine Bolzendahl, Vanessa Kauffman, Jessica Broadfoot UC, Irvine, Department of Sociology Olympic fever has hit! As we all marvel at the power, precision, and grace of the athletes, a more...
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making the united states plural again
The following is a guest post by Charles Kurzman America may be divided these days, but it is hardly as divided as when the United States of America were plural. That’s the grammar used in the...
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vague questions for fragmented publics
Timothy Carney wrote an article earlier this week decrying what he calls the “rampant abuse of data” by pollsters and the press this election season. He faults North Carolina’s hometown polling...
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the downside of fact checking
The below is an excerpt from my book that seemed relevant to the current moment. It’s presaged by this post from 2012. Fact-checking during campaigns helps make sure the truth is communicated–but also...
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structure beats culture; culture roars back
In American Democracy, I argued that there are times in American politics when culture beats structure: when the popular will—the democratic culture, as Tocqueville imagined it—is represented even...
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on the fetish character of theory and the regression of reading
The seductive power of sensual charm survives only where the forces of denial are strongest. If asceticism once reacted against the sensuous aesthetic, asceticism has today become the sign of advanced...
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why i resigned from the political instability task force
The below is a guest post from Colin J. Beck, Associate Professor of Sociology at Pomona College. Since 2012, I have been a member of the Political Instability Task Force. The PITF is a US government...
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the voter fraud investigation: an opportunity for science?
President Trump’s announcement that he will launch an investigation of voter fraud is interesting for many reasons. Some of these have been well-documented, such as that he continues to believe massive...
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newfield, the great mistake
Christopher Newfield’s The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them is a great book – you should buy it, read it, teach it, and recommend it to your friends. In an...
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on carolina contextual transcript policy’s woes
Some background: since 2009 I’ve been working on grade transparency as one policy response to grade inflation, grade compression, and grade inequality at UNC. (See here, here, here, and here, among...
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blame it on pomo
Postmodernism is the first intellectual movement to acknowledge its own historical partiality. From that spring many of its faults and virtues, not to mention its caricatures. Because for a movement in...
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