Our Gun Worship Claims More Victims My class last week introduced the idea of objectivity in the social sciences; inevitably, the students ask me if I can be objective about the subjects I study since they are so, well, human. I answer them honestly: I try as hard as I…

Roe Approaches Its Demise Well, this is unprecedented. In a stunning move, the draft of a majority opinion of a tremendously consequential Supreme Court case was leaked to the public. This breach of the norms of confidentiality is shocking. But not as shocking as the draft itself. There are implied…

Shiny Distractions from Real Issues It’s been a strange couple of weeks as the GOP in Florida waged a full war with…wait for it…Disney? Disney halfheartedly denounced the new bill in Florida deemed “Don’t Say Gay”, as they felt it was harmful to LGBTQ kids. The denouncement was pretty mild…

The Mask Battle Continues There was a fascinating incident a few weeks ago in Florida when Ron DeSantis walked into a room of high schoolers that were masked and told them, in no uncertain terms, that they could remove them because it was time to end this “COVID theater”. As…

Leading Questions and Tainted Answers Russia’s last independent television station made a symbolic gesture by playing “Swan Lake” as they went dark this weekend; there will be no updates on the war if Putin can help it. Unlike Russia, the U.S. media isn’t flinching in showing us the grim reality…

“I Need Ammunition, Not a Ride” As the Russian invasion unfolds in Ukraine, there has been an emerging narrative about the Ukrainians and their leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They are tough. They are proud. And they are not letting go of their country without a fight. The rest of the world…

Why Is This Happening? As a professor of sociology, I talk about gender a lot. It’s a huge topic in every class I teach. As I tell my students all the time, gender has far-reaching tentacles; it influences everything it touches, even if we don’t realize it. I have to…

Sociology and Personal Choices As we enter year three of a global pandemic, we seem to be at a loss when it comes to what to do next. We’ve had several major waves, a torrent of death and suffering, and knee-jerk reactions that often led to confusion, but what we…

Book Banning Ramps Up Book banning. Again. Honestly, it might be funny to watch people work so hard to remove books in the age of the internet if it wasn’t so disconcerting. I was reading an article to my teenage son that Maus had been banned in a school district…