One of the big issues in the past few weeks has been the criminal trial of George Zimmerman. In the aftermath of that trial there has been a great deal of argument about the rightness of the verdict and of the “stand your ground” law. To be honest I do not want to make comments on either of those issues. I have found a lot of the discussion on these issues to not be very productive. But there is one... Read more
This is a guest blog written by Jeff Guhin, a sociologist doing a post-doc at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at UVA. His current work is on morality and citizenship in public schools. He’s also interested in theory, science studies, qualitative methods, religion, and how to be a decent human being. He originally posted his reflections on his own blog, and gave me permission to re-print it here. By Jeff Guhin In their books, authors can appear wise... Read more
Originally posted in the Huffington Post: 7/29/13 By: Julie J. Park The New York Times recently reported on a new study by economists from Harvard and UC Berkeley on income mobility across the country. The research team found stark differences by geographical region, with the odds of moving to a different income bracket being lowest in the southeast and higher in major metropolitan areas. They identified four broad factors in areas that contribute to income mobility: mixed-income neighborhoods, two-parent households,... Read more
Robert Bellah once wrote: “Because good social science is always morally serious, we can transpose Weber’s saying that only a mature man can have the calling for politics into the statement that only a mature person can have the calling for sociology. Moral vacuity creates cognitively trivial work.” (The Robert Bellah Reader, p. 400) One of the greatest American sociologists, Robert Bellah has passed away in these finals days of July. I got the email from my graduate school mentor Robert Wuthnow of Princeton while I sat... Read more
Right now Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner and Mark Sanford are trying to become Bill Clinton. Not that they are trying to become president of the United States, at least not at this time, but they are trying to overcome past sexual “indiscretions” and renew their political careers. Who can forget the big hullabaloo over the sexual mores, or lack thereof, of President Clinton? Except that we have largely forgotten about it. Clinton today is seen as a respected elderly statesman... Read more
This summer, thousands of high school and college students across the country will go on service trips, some of them with faith-based groups like the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and Dominican Volunteers, and others with do important service work with secular groups. Going out from one’s normal environment to help others is like an institutionalized version of the Good Samaritan parable. But what do we do when the “mission” is over? While in college, I personally had intense mission experiences in... Read more
In the wake of the weekend verdict over George Zimmerman’s shooting and killing of Trayvon Martin, my Facebook page was ablaze as various news outlets repeated the same story and as some friends expressed shock and a few fear. In the midst of this a colleague asked her friends for their reflections on how churches in America ought to respond to this moment that clearly bespeaks of the continuing racial divides in our nation. She sent us to noted progressive... Read more
Laying on her bathroom floor sobbing, my former student cried out, “I have low-well being…My PERMA is shot to hell!” She then dragged herself up and wrote me an email entitled “I just wanted to thank you” and thanked me me for being the only professor who ever taught her what her well-being is. Sara’s email [I changed her name for confidentiality] astounded me for how it expresses how much many young adults–even high-achieving ones –struggle to build strong relationships,... Read more
Early next year I am going to attend a symposium on Neil Gross’s book Why are Professors Liberal and Why do Conservatives Care? (2013). So last month I read the book and have been working on my assessment of it. This book tackles the important academic issue of the political makeup of academia within our current political economy since the disproportionate politically progressive nature of academia is well established in previous work. Gross uses data to theorize why academics are... Read more
Did you know that “gumbo” is “okra” in the Bantu dialect of the peoples in southern and central Africa? That’s just one of the tidbits I learned from this fascinating new documentary which I would encourage university libraries to carry and for faculty to use in the classroom. Soul Food Junkies chronicles the social history and contemporary experience of consuming foods originally created by African Americans from slavery through emancipation, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Era through today. It’s a fascinating... Read more
Black, White and Gray
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