Clik here to view.
of sandwiches and cultural exclusion
David Brooks, liberals’ favorite conservative, came out with an(other) entirely Brooksian column today, this one riffing on Richard Reeves’s important, if flawed, book, Dream Hoarders. Reeves...
View Articleearnestly explaining the right
I heard Ken Stern on Morning Joe this morning, discussing his new book, Republican Like Me. This is not a carefully thought out response, but a quick thought and a question: First, the title, which is...
View Articledoes non-falsifiable imply not true?
This post is a longer-form discussion following this Twitter thread. The thread began with Steve Vaisey expressing interest in how gender scholars would respond to this article, which apparently shows...
View Articlewhy the liberal arts? the value of general education
This post comes out of my work chairing UNC’s General Education Curriculum Revision effort. I’m posting it here on Scatterplot instead of on the Curriculum site because it represents my own view, not a...
View Articleselective college admissions games
Alongside the well-publicized scandal of super-rich parents covertly buying their kids entry into super-elite colleges (as distinguished from super-rich parents overtly buying entry through donations,...
View Articlethe democratic electorate
The current conventional wisdom, expressed for example in this NYT Upshot piece, as well as by Bret Stephens on MSNBC yesterday (June 5) is that the vocal “left” of the Democratic party has lost touch...
View Articlewhat I’ve learned: chairing unc’s general education curriculum redesign
From 2016-2019 I had two positions that have taught me a lot about academic leadership and organizations. I led the process of redeveloping UNC’s General Education curriculum, “IDEAs in Action,” which...
View Articlewhat i’ve learned: three years on asa council
From 2016-2019 I had two positions that have taught me a lot about academic leadership and organizations. I led the process of redeveloping UNC’s General Education curriculum, “IDEAs in Action,” which...
View Articledon’t sacrifice college to the pandemic
I wrote a letter to the NY Times in response to Richard Arum and Mitchell Stevens’ “What is a College Education in the Time of Coronavirus?“. Unsurprisingly, the letter was not published, so I offer it...
View Articlegalloway and the perpetually-to-come disruption
What is transmitted in higher learning?… Limiting ourselves to a narrowly functionalist point of view, an organized stock of established knowledge is the essential thing that is transmitted. The...
View Articledecolonizing classical theory: some appreciatively skeptical thoughts
Yesterday’s panel on teaching classical social theory was fantastic. Erin McDonnell did a great job organizing and facilitating, and the four panelists — Greta Krippner, Jose Itzigsohn, Zine Magubane,...
View Articleon decolonizing sociological theory – a reply to perrin
This is a guest post by Jose Itzigsohn, written in response to my prior post . Erin McDonnell organized a wonderful panel on Rethinking Sociological Theory and Andrew Perrin published in Scatterplot a...
View Articlewhich lessons learned?
As I’m sure everyone knows, after an ambitious plan to open the campus for in-person instruction one week earlier than normal, we at UNC-Chapel Hill had to reverse course only a little more than week...
View Articleon leaving unc
Last week was my last week at UNC. I never thought I would leave; I’ve loved my 20 years on the UNC faculty. I was hugely fortunate to be hired at UNC directly out of graduate school, and I’ve stayed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
defending democracy: institutions and principles
In the leadup to the anniversary of last year’s January 6 insurrection, a couple of Tweets combine into some interesting questions about the relationship between support for democracy in theory;...
View Articleguest post: why you should attend asa (yes, you)
The following was written by my colleague Ryan Calder to our JHU graduate students; I offered to post it as a guest post because I think the ideas are helpful to students elsewhere too, though some...
View Articleasa panel – the future of democracy
ASA 2023 has been a good meeting (thus far at least)! A well-attended session on the future of democracy featured Melissa Murray and Louise Seamster (ably moderated by Scatterplot’s own Dan...
View ArticleClik here to view.
college and underemployment
The Strada Education Foundation released last week a major report, “Talent Disrupted,” on college graduates and underemployment. Trumpeted by the Wall Street Journal as demonstrating the importance of...
View Articlequalitative standards, heated arguments
Late last week, sociologist Justin Pickett opened a debate on X: “We need more attention to selection bias in qualitative research.” The reason: his critique of a Social Problems article by...
View Article