Category: Analyses
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Why Reflexivity is Important for Research and Activism
In a recent essay for Public Seminar, I explored Amy Cooper’s attempts to sic police on a black man for telling her to leash her dog. I argued that her actions should not be understood as novel or surprising, and explained how her likely (liberal) sociopolitical orientation may have contributed to how the confrontation played…
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‘Karen’ is a Democrat
Amy Cooper was asked to put her pet on a leash, in accordance with city ordinance. Rather than simply complying with the rules, Ms. Cooper tried to sic the police on the person who pointed out her violation – feigning to be in imminent danger from an ‘African American man.’ Fortunately, the man accused of…
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Who Defines What ‘Racist’ Means ?
One key insight of the “discursive turn” in social research is that how concepts are defined, and by whom, reveals a lot about power relations within a society or culture. These definitions are not just reflections of social dynamics, but can have important socio-political consequences downstream: they can help legitimize or delegitimize individuals, groups and…
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The Sacred Project of American Sociology
What is sociology “about?” According to the American Sociological Association (ASA), it is: “The study of society, a social science involving the study of the social lives of people, groups and societies; the study of our behavior as social beings, covering everything from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to…
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Disposable Scholars
Crises, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, often serve to clarify the state of the societies and institutions they impact – highlighting dynamics which have long been present but have previously gone unnoticed or underdiscussed. Higher ed is no exception. At colleges and universities nationwide, institutional responses to the coronavirus pandemic highlight just how much…
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The Crisis of Expertise
There has been a lot of talk in recent years about the “war on science” or the so-called “death of expertise.” However, according to the General Social Survey, there has been no radical decrease with respect to public trust in the scientific community per se. In fact, contemporary Americans have more trust in the scientific…
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What Coronavirus Reveals About the Lifestyles of the Professional-Managerial Class
In New York City and throughout the country, the professional-managerial class is hunkered down and making the best of a bad situation: working remotely, enjoying time with their families, making sure their children stay up on their schoolwork, finding ways to work out, exercising self-care, and catching up on all the shows they’ve wanted to…
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On Heterodox Academy and Effective Advocacy
I began working with Heterodox Academy in the fall of 2016, about a year after the group was formed. At that time, the organization (such as it was) was a handful of interesting people who met in Jon Haidt’s NYU office every week to talk about current events, ideas for blog posts and external publications,…
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Bloomberg Won’t Win. Sanders Could.
Joe Biden seems to think that Democrats are really well positioned for 2020, recently arguing “We could run Mickey Mouse against this president and have a shot.” The rest of us aren’t so sure: According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, a plurality (48%) of Americans want Trump to be unseated in 2020. Yet…
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Students are Ideologically Diverse. Here’s How to Surface that Diversity.
It has long been a talking point on the right that leftist professors are ‘indoctrinating’ college kids (an elaboration on why many quite reasonably hold this belief is available here). However, a number of recent studies suggest that this narrative is incorrect: students can reliably determine what their professors’ political beliefs are, and when they…
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Positionality and Homogeneity in Social Research: Towards a Holistic Exploration
Callosal disconnection syndrome, more colloquially known as ‘split brain syndrome’ occurs when the connections between the left and right hemispheres of the brain are disrupted or severed. The condition often makes it difficult for people to fully access and synthesize various flows of information or to properly coordinate their actions. This is, perhaps, a perfect…
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Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality
“Political discussion possesses a character fundamentally different from academic discussion. It seeks not to be in the right, but also to demolish the basis of its opponents social and intellectual existence… Political conflict, since it is from the very beginning a rationalized form of the struggle for social predominance, attacks the social status of the…
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The Media Really Is Obsessed With Donald Trump
Trump has an unhealthy fixation with the media. He seems to get most of his information about the world from newspapers and cable news, over and above the experts tasked with advising him. He obsesses over how he is portrayed in mainstream outlets, and regularly takes to social media to whine about the coverage in…
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Against Reactionary and Myopic Approaches to Higher Ed Reform
“The appeal to ‘social justice’ has by now become the most widely used and most effective argument in political discussion. Almost every claim for government action on behalf of particular groups is made in its name, and if it can be made to appear that a certain measure is demanded by ‘social justice,’ opposition to…
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Pelosi’s Impeachment Bid Will Fail
On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that a formal impeachment inquiry is going to be launched, looking into President Trump’s alleged attempts to get dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden from the Ukrainian government, among other accusations levelled against the president by a whistleblower from the U.S. intelligence community. Trump will definitely get impeached…
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(Why) Liberal Faculty Don’t Discriminate Against Conservative Students in Grading
Many right-of-center students (especially those who are grade-obsessed) fear that their professors will punish them for their political and cultural views if they were to express them in class discussions or assignments – and choose to self-censor instead. It’s easy to understand why they are concerned: there is a significant lack of ideological diversity among…
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There’s No Reason to Be Smug About the Partisan Diploma Divide
“We were laughing at the stars while our feet clung tight to the ground — so pleased with ourselves for using so many verbs and nouns…” Modest Mouse, “Black Cadillacs,” Good News for People Who Love Bad News Dr. Amir Attaran, a professor of Law and Medicine at University of Ottawa recently set off a…
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On Amy Wax, Tenure and Academic Freedom
In mid-July the Edmund Burke Foundation hosted its inaugural National Conservativism Conference – an event intended to “bring together public figures, journalists, scholars, and students who understand that the past and future of conservatism are inextricably tied to the idea of the nation, to the principle of national independence, and to the revival of the…
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How Universities Help Shape Local and Regional Politics
In a previous essay, I demonstrated that there seems to be a longstanding relationship between the ideological skew of colleges and universities, and the political leanings of the communities they are embedded in. Over the last 30 years, university faculty have shifted dramatically leftward – and so have the communities hosting elite private universities, the…
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Resistance as Sacrifice: Towards an Ascetic Antiracism
This essay is part of a forthcoming special issue of Sociological Forum: “Resistance in the 21st Century.” Suggested citation: al-Gharbi, Musa (in press). “Resistance as Sacrifice: Towards an Ascetic Antiracism.” Sociological Forum. “Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two closely related forms…we call these individual racism and institutional racism… The second type…
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On the relationship between ideological and demographic diversity
It is often said that the academy is dominated by the left. There is certainly a sense in which that is true. In terms of ideological self-identification, for instance, students, faculty and administrators trend decisively left (in ascending order of political homogeneity). However, this narrative is also a bit simplistic. First, because ideological self-identification is…
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Comparing Perceived Freedom of Expression on Campus v. Off
As an organization, Heterodox Academy is growing increasingly focused on highlighting not just problems, and what is going wrong – but also solutions, and what’s going right, who is doing it well, and how. Consequently, many of us were thrilled reading Jeffrey Sachs’ recent Niskanen essay highlighting positive trends on campus (although an implication of…
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Trump’s Executive Order on Campus Speech is a Raw Deal for Conservatives
“The political world is playing a very different game, and it’s a game that almost always damages our work in universities.” Jonathan Haidt, Chronicle of Higher Education One year ago, almost to the day, President Trump declared that the campus free speech crisis was ‘overblown.’ Since then, the trends have actually moved in an even…
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How the Media Could Get the Last Laugh on Trump
“Behind every image, something has disappeared. And that is the source of its fascination.” Jean Baudrillard, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared (p. 32). According to a New York Times report, “At the midpoint of his term, Mr. Trump has grown more sure of his own judgment and more cut off from anyone else’s than at…
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Securitization Vs. Social Justice
It must have felt fresh the first time a political figure equated civil rights with national-security crises. Perhaps it was when Frederick Douglass told Abraham Lincoln that by keeping the Union Army all white, he was “fighting rebels with only one arm,” or more recently when advocates for women’s rights competed for who was quicker…
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Longitudinal Trends: Ideological Diversity In Universities v. Surrounding Communities
In a recent book, Land Grant Universities for the Future, Stephen Gavazzi and Gordon Gee analyze polling data from land grant universities and their host communities and find that institutions of higher learning tend to be “islands of blue” which mirror state capitals and major urban areas, inside “vast seas of red” – i.e. the…
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You Can’t Change the World From a ‘Safe Space.’
Most of us who go into the humanities and social sciences don’t just want to understand social problems — we want to help resolve them as well. There strong agreement about what our societies’ biggest problems are (for instance, inequality), and broadly, how to go about solving them (i.e. harness expertise and leverage the state or…
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The Radical Black Liberation Theology of Kanye West
Kanye West has always had a streak of what one might call conservatism. He defiantly included “Jesus Walks” on his 2004 debut album, despite repeated urging from record execs to drop it, and predictions that it would never get play. Instead, the single helped make his career. The track begins with Kanye revealing, “We at…
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Democrats Should be Very Alarmed by the 2018 Midterm Results
After flipping dozens of seats in the midterm elections, Democrats are set to take control of the House of Representatives. Many pundits and analysts have attempted to frame the race as a referendum on President Trump. Among these, there seems to be a consensus that the president has somehow been “repudiated.” Not so fast. To…
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What Was Elizabeth Warren Thinking?
Elizabeth Warren has repeatedly identified herself as Cherokee. For most of her early career, while she worked at the University of Texas, this was not the case. However, beginning in the mid 1980s, as she was aspiring to move from University of Texas to the Ivy Leagues, she also began identifying herself as ‘Native American’…
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On the Sokal Squared/ Grievance Studies Hoax
Over the past year, Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay & Peter Boghossian published a series of hoax papers in humanities journals oriented towards the “critical study” of gender and sexuality. Their plot was discovered midway through, forcing them to go public prematurely. In a journal-length essay explaining their methods, findings, and intentions, “Academic Grievance Studies and…
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Vox’s Consistent Errors on Campus Speech, Explained
The Free Speech Project (FSP), based out of Georgetown University, attempts to document “incidents in which Free Speech has been challenged or compromised in recent years, and collect analysis from various points of view of the struggle to sustain First Amendment Values.” This is a great initiative. In fact, Heterodox Academy recently ran a post…
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Q&A: Why Care About Ideological Diversity in Social Research?
Perhaps the most common response I get from my fellow scholars when I mention the dearth of conservative perspectives in the academy (and especially in social research fields) is something like, “what about other historically disadvantaged or underrepresented groups? Isn’t the underrepresentation of blacks, Hispanics, women, LGBTQ scholars a bigger problem than the lack of…
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Abandoning the Iran Deal is a Grave Miscalculation
Many people understand credibility to mean something like, “sticking to one’s word” or “following through on one’s commitments.” By this standard, President Trump’s Tuesday decision to withdraw the United States from the Iran Deal (formally, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) would bolster Trump’s cred. After all, during his campaign he claimed it…
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Rethinking the Role of Race/Racism in the 2016 Election
I am pleased to announce a publication in the peer-reviewed journal, The American Sociologist: “Race and the Race for the White House: On Social Research in the Age of Trump” (non-paywalled link). The essay demonstrates that a good deal of the social science research “proving” that race / racism was one of the primary drivers of…
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(How) The Lack of Conservatives in the Academy Harms Progressive Scholars (Most)
It is no longer a matter of dispute whether increasing diversity of perspectives enriches understanding of social issues. Conversations about diversity at institutions of higher learning typically turn on questions of race, gender and sexuality. More recently, class, geography and the intersections between categories of underrepresentation have been integrated into the discussion. However, viewpoint diversity…
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First the Farce, then the Tragedy
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” Karl Marx, ‘The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ (Chapter 1) “Be careful how you move, the traps are covered in the lights. Landmines…
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Navigating Moral Disagreements: Three Strategies from the Literature on Moral and Cultural Cognition
We in America and Western Europe, and by now many other places in the world, have this idea of people as fundamentally rational. On this account, our profound cognitive abilities are designed to help us discover objective truths about the world through logical argument and empirical observation. Contemporary research in cognitive science, psychology and related…
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Any Progressive Scholar Could End Up Like George Ciccariello-Maher
George Ciccariello-Maher, formerly an Associate Professor of Politics & Global Studies at Drexel University, was effectively forced out of his position after describing the Las Vegas massacre as a product of a ‘white supremacist patriarchy’ which must be dismantled. In truth, this is actually a fairly standard narrative among progressives in response to mass shootings…
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Charlottesville and Americans’ Increasingly Polarized Response to Terrorism, Political Violence
On the night of August 11th, white nationalists held a torch-lit pride parade through the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. They were met with counter-protests, and the demonstrations descended into a melee. The next morning, these same organizers held a “Unite the Right” rally in Emancipation Park, centered on a statue of Confederate General Robert…
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Gender Differences, Silicon Valley and that Controversial Google Memo
Google software engineer James Damore set off a firestorm with the publication of a company memo titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.” The essay criticized Google’s policies for promoting a more diverse and inclusive workplace, alleging that they instead fostered a company culture of fear and conformity which runs contrary to the company’s stated ethos–and likely…
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Want to shake up the status quo? Account for the default effect.
Observers typically assume that if people are dissatisfied with a state of affairs, they will work to change it. Cognitive and behavioral scientists know that this assumption frequently fails as a result of the “default effect” For instance, Americans have widespread concerns about how software and entertainment companies are collecting and using their data or…
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Progressives, Vulnerable Groups Most in Need of Campus Free Speech Protections
Harvard President Drew Faust gave a ringing endorsement of free speech in her recent 2017 commencement address. There was, however, one passage where Faust chose to focus on the price of Harvard’s commitment to free speech, arguing that it “is paid disproportionately by” those students who don’t fit the traditional profile of being “white, male,…
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Historical Patterns Suggest Trump Will Probably Win a Second Term
6/30/2020 Update: I have been bullish about Trump’s prospects from 2016, through the midterms, his impeachment, and even through the COVID-19 outbreak. In the early stages of the pandemic, Trump’s approval ticked up. And indeed, even today Trump continues to receive high marks for his handling of the economy, despite many Americans being out of…
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The Media Bubble is a Thing. For Real.
In a recent article for the Times Higher Education I pointed out how the lack of ideological diversity among social researchers not only undermines the extent to which research is trusted, funded or utilized, but also undermines researchers’ “capacity to understand phenomena, predict trends, or craft effective interventions.” Journalistic outlets face many of the same…
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Trump’s Opponents Need to Stop Playing into His Hands
What gives terrorists power are the reactions they are able to elicit from their intended targets: hysteria leads to poorly-calibrated reactions that can be exploited to the insurgents’ advantage. For instance, it is beyond the capacity of Islamic terror groups like ISIS to, themselves, meaningfully challenge the prevailing global order. However, they have been able…
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Social Research Will Benefit from Greater Ideological Diversity
Beginning in the late 18th century, post-secondary education was restructured across Europe—in part under the auspices of accelerating the transition to an envisioned rational and secular age.[1] In order to enroll the broadest swath of the public in this enterprise, institutions and curricula were rendered more accessible, inclusive, and professionally-oriented. Similarly, across the pond, in…
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In the Trump Administration, Principled Civil Servants Like James Comey Are Critical
Let’s be clear about one thing straightaway: James Comey did not sabotage Hillary Clinton. If that had been his intention, it was well within his power to outright destroy her candidacy. In the wake of Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s improper meeting with former President Bill Clinton, the Department of Justice was scandalized. Under pressure, Lynch…
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The Big Debate About Microaggressions
The concept of microaggressions gained prominence with the publication of Sue et al.’s 2007, “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life,” which defined microaggressions as communicative, somatic, environmental or relational cues that demean and/or disempower members of minority groups in virtue of their minority status. Microaggressions, they asserted, are typically subtle and ambiguous. Often, they are inadvertent…
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An Emerging Democratic Majority? Don’t Count on It.
“What is at stake in the conflict over representations of the future is nothing other than the attitude of the declining classes to their decline—either demoralization, which leads to a rout….or mobilization, which leads to the collective search for a collective solution to the crisis.What can make the difference is, fundamentally, the possession of…
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Trump’s 2016 Victory Should Not Have Been Surprising
As an epistemologist, I generally avoid predictions in favor of trying to determine what is known and how to build upon or utilize knowledge. But when I do feel compelled to go on record with predictions, it is generally with a sense of urgency–to draw public attention to an approaching black swan. Black swans are…
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Why Conservatives Must Reject Trump’s Homonationalism
In a RNC nomination acceptance speech widely maligned as dystopian, Donald Trump received rare mainstream media praise for asserting: “Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist targeted LGBTQ community. No good. And we’re going to stop it. As your president, I will…
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Racially Profiling “Jihadists” Sounds Like Common Sense. Here’s Why It Doesn’t Work
Over the weekend there was a series of bombings, and attempted bombings, in New Jersey and Manhattan (where I live). Authorities have identified and arrested one Ahmed Khan in connection with the attacks, which injured dozens of people in the New York area. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was quick to seize on this incident…
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Who Cares About Bernie Sanders’ Historic Candidacy?
In March 2016, the Green Party nominated Dr. Jill Stein as their candidate for President of the United States. They have had female vice-presidential nominees on every single ticket since 1996, and ran all-female tickets in 2008 and 2012. But unfortunately, the highest the Green Party has ever performed in a general election was in…