Contexts Magazine is closing out 2025 by celebrating outgoing co-editors @aminghaziani.bsky.social and @sethabrutyn.bsky.social, along with senior managing editor @lettapage.bsky.social! Editor-elect David Grazian will take the helm in 2026, with @elenavanstee.bsky.social as managing editor.

The @nytimes.com Lost Science series continues. Here's my Q&A with a scientist who was studying how wildfire smoke threatens human health when the EPA decided that her research was no longer a funding priority. Gift link: nyti.ms/4jhpw14

Rich people threaten to leave of you raise taxes, but most won't. There's a great book on this from Cristobal Young that breaks this down.

This is indistinguishable from a post by The Onion.

“Kai Erikson, Who Studied the Collective Trauma Left by Disasters, Dies at 94 - He said Hurricane Katrina was ‘far and away the most telling disaster of our national experience’.” www.wsj.com/health/kai-e...

Two people were killed and nine were injured in a shooting on Saturday at Brown University. After determining that a man they had detained was not the killer, Rhode Island officials have searched for more evidence. Here's a timeline as the manhunt continues.

Students want Ai-proof pedagogy. “In a recent survey of college students by Inside Higher Ed… about 30 percent said colleges should design more AI-proof methods of assessment, including oral exams.” #ai #pedagogy #highered #teaching #oralexams @insidehighered.com h/t @tristanbridges.bsky.social

I wrote about Yglesias “defending liberalism” by joining a right wing moral panic over critical race theory. His vision of liberalism has room for bigots, but no room for scholars concerned about structural racism.

“The gray indicates the 4 states that have not had any school shootings since 2008, according to CNN's analysis.”🧪🛟

Is it political violence when students get killed after JD Vance and Trump call universities the enemy of the people? Or is that just "tragedy" while only the murder of far-right advocates of violence like Charlie Kirk qualifies for political recognition? www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

America is where it is statistically inevitable that many people will endure multiple gun massacres

My heart goes out to Brown. Also… it’s disgusting how responses to gun violence differ depending on who the victims are and how that squares with people’s politics. Watching elected officials be silent on incidents like this is deafening! And it’s sooo telling of who and what they care about.

Love to everyone at Brown today. Also: repeal the damned 2nd amendment and ban all the guns already. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/12...

Each semester I go in my classroom and I try to figure out what we would use to block the doors, if it would be safe to crawl out the windows, where we could hide if there was a mass shooter in campus. It’s such an indictment of this country how we have normalized these preventable tragedies.

The goal of the Trump administration is an ethnic cleansing that is actively being enacted, and that promises to destroy the diversity & freedoms that were ever the strength of this imperfect nation. My latest in @theguardian.com. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Found the coolest website that takes random found cassette tapes people submit and digitizes them. I’m listening to an NYC hip hop station from 1994: intertapes.net

Really excited for the next issue of Men and Masculinities. It’s a special issue on critical masculinities research is East Asia. And every article is amazing. We’re finalizing the introduction and I’m thrilled and can’t wait for it to be live.

Here's my latest column, on the natural history of misinformation. Gift link: nyti.ms/3MkcbJ1

This is interesting: “I analyze the puzzling trajectory of Men’s Liberation, which went from an ally to liberal feminism in the 1970s to the crucible of the antifeminist Men’s Rights’ movement in the 1980s” US Men’s Liberation in the 1970s: Autopsy of a Movement

A new article out: “Flexible Masculinities: Negotiating Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Global Asia.” I introduce the concept of “flexible masculinities” to understand how people navigate shifting gender norms across different cultural and geographic contexts. doi.org/10.1177/0011...

What a privilege to talk to @steven-d-roberts.bsky.social for #NowandMen. We discussed how men's violence impacts on *everyone*, but also the seeds of hope found in young working-class masculinities, and Steven's experiences of both - in his own life and his research: nowandmen.net/episode/stev...

Gary Barker on Redefining Manhood: How Equimundo Builds Gender Justice Worldwide Gary Barker reveals how healthier masculinities can reduce violence, empower families, and fuel global gender equality. A powerful roadmap for social transformation.

Sure, Galloway is better than Peterson But he still believes the natural order of things requires men to be supreme. Men must protect, provide and procreate. It's dressed in progressive language, but it's fundamentally a patriarchal box to trap men in www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

NEW PUBLICATION 📣 “Researching Young Masculinities During the Rise of ‘Misogyny Influencers’: Exploring Affective and Embodied Discomfort and Dilemmas of Feminist & Queer Researchers” So proud of Betsy Milne & Idil Cambazoglu for leading on this article. 1/6 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I’ve been writing about political polarization in U.S. baby names, but kept running into a possible ecological fallacy: Are these political patterns or just urban v. rural geography? So I tried to answer it definitively. inequalitybyinteriordesign.wordpress.com/2025/12/02/w...

I have a piece in the current issue of the New York Review of Books on the anti-trans agenda and the dangers it poses for the rights of cis women. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

I put this in a post with a few links and the code: "Stopping rules don’t affect the population’s sex ratio at birth"

Libs got traditional names in the national divorce.

I’ve been writing about political polarization in U.S. baby names, but kept running into a possible ecological fallacy: Are these political patterns or just urban v. rural geography? So I tried to answer it definitively. inequalitybyinteriordesign.wordpress.com/2025/12/02/w...

Building on this work, I just published a new post on baby-name polarization: Is it politics … or just place? I dig into a core methodological concern: maybe what looks like partisan naming patterns are just urban-vs-rural sorting. inequalitybyinteriordesign.wordpress.com/2025/11/30/i...

If your marginal (expected) return from outside labor is greater than your marginal cost of forgoing domestic work, it's because you have more power than the person who ends up doing the domestic work that you've forgone.

"The problem isn’t girls’ gains—it’s a competitive culture that equates boys’ worth with dominance over other boys and offers no workable script for competing with girls as peers." @sorayachemaly.bsky.social time.com/7335723/auto...

Leopards, faces, etc.

Baby names aren’t just personal choices; they reflect culture, geography, gender, identity, and as i've been investigating, politics too. I’ve been analyzing 50 years of U.S. baby naming to see how they map onto political polarization in the U.S. Here’s what I found 🧵

Building on this work, I just published a new post on baby-name polarization: Is it politics … or just place? I dig into a core methodological concern: maybe what looks like partisan naming patterns are just urban-vs-rural sorting. inequalitybyinteriordesign.wordpress.com/2025/11/30/i...

America™

“The notion that American anti-Semitism is an outside influence operation rather than a homegrown menace is a comforting story. Unfortunately, it’s not true,” Yair Rosenberg writes. “Foreign actors may exploit our divisions, but they don’t create them”: theatln.tc/HXqtgsbo

Nearly every mechanism that made my career possible—Ford, NSF, Harvard BiGS—is gone or on the way to the chopping block.

Publication alert! If you are interested in gender & environmental issues you should know that we have just published a Special Issue on "planetary masculinities" edited by Kadri Aavik, Jeff Hearn, Martin Hultman & Tamara Shefer. Don't be a stranger and visit us: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

My colleague, Dr. Vahid Abedini, was illegally detained by ICE on Saturday. He is currently being held without a court date in sight, despite being in the country legally. Please spread the word! We must ensure his due process rights are upheld. www.oudaily.com/news/ou-prof...

So interesting!!!

This is a fascinating rabbit hole.

Even child naming practices are starting to show signs of politically polarization in the U.S. today - these sorts of unexpected studies are why I love sociology!

Fascinating!

My theory for why white Republican Texans are coming up with k-substituted boy names like 'Kooper, Kase, Kolter, Kolson, Kodi'. They're said the same as their C equivalent (Cooper, Case, Coulter, etc.), but K signals "hardness", because K has no soft voicing equivalent. They want masculine boys.

Interesting thread! My biggest surprise is seeing K/Cohen for baby boys.

This whole thread is a wild ride. Get a cup of coffee and enjoy!

Baby names aren’t just personal choices; they reflect culture, geography, gender, identity, and as i've been investigating, politics too. I’ve been analyzing 50 years of U.S. baby naming to see how they map onto political polarization in the U.S. Here’s what I found 🧵

#sociologists who like fiction! I am the new Books section editor for @contexts.org, and I would *love* to see your pitches for essays + reviews on sociological novels, memoirs or trade books! More info here: contexts.org/submission-g...

Come join me @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social new BRES Program (hiring 2 senior profs) - cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/... #ASA2025