Very much looking forward to this next month. We have a great program put together for the conference! #SSSR_RRA2025

new pub alert! 🚨

Reminder--"Femininity, LGBTQ Identity, and Paranormal Belief" is free to read through the end of September!

BREAKING: Oklahoma Education Superintendent Ryan Walters says he is resigning. (Of course, he announced this on Fox News.) www.koco.com/article/ryan...

New in Social Forces: @profsamperry.bsky.social new article Secularism, Sorting, and Americans’ Political Knowledge shows secular Americans score highest on civics & politics, especially liberals/Democrats. Evangelicals trend opposite with conservatism. Read it here: doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...

ONLINE FIRST In this new TSQ article, Da Eun Jung, David J. Harding, Stephanie Luna-Lopez, and Maria S. Smith examine how small business owners develop new organizational practices to help evaluate candidates with criminal records. Read more at bit.ly/46wabUk

Religiosity & gender attitudes go hand-in-hand. But which influences which? New study by McElroy et al. shows earlier gender views tend to predict religious trajectories more than the reverse (except for young women). Once again: Cultural/political conflicts --> Religion doi.org/10.1177/2378...

Looking for an easy way to follow other members of ASA Religion? Look no further than this Starter Pack! go.bsky.app/6cTpB24

JOB ALERT FOR #SOCIOLOGIST: Come work with me. We have FOUR Assistant Professor positions in the Sociology Department at the University of Calgary. careers.ucalgary.ca/jobs/1672106...

Our special issue of Sociological Focus on Religion and Politics in American Congregations is now published and all articles are open access (at least for now). This is the highest concentration of such work ever published together and it's very good. I put the details and links in a blogpost.

FREE TO READ! "Femininity, LGBTQ Identity, and Paranormal Belief: Doing Gender and Religious Individualism" by Tony Silva and Dan Cassino (@dancassino.bsky.social) is free to read until September 30. Read the article at bit.ly/4iP0ZiR

Great to see an article by my Oklahoma State colleague Alex Diamond in the newest issue of @amjsoc.bsky.social: “On the Road to State Power? State Formation Through Relationship Building in Rural Colombia”

The offer still stands today

As you finalize your syllabi and go over your AI policies with students, let them know about this very recent study that they probably have never heard about. AI is not inevitable. Link to MIT study here - www.artificialintelligence-news.com/wp-content/u...

NEW IN TSQ In this TSQ article, Taimur Ahmad considers how social scientists can better understand the social roles of natural entities such as rivers. Read more at bit.ly/3VirZNn

ONLINE FIRST Analyzing data from France, Célia Bouchet, Michelle Maroto (@mmaroto.bsky.social), and David Pettinicchio (@dnpetti.bsky.social) show that, even among part-time workers, people with disabilities earn less than those without disabilities. Read more at bit.ly/4lHPUAJ

Hopefully this retraction (along with other recent papers casting doubt on the promise of AI for productivity) means we've reached the peak of the AI hype cycle. gizmodo.com/mit-backs-aw...

SCOOP: The NIH is moving to prohibit funded scientists, inside and outside the agency, from collecting data about gender, according to a draft policy I obtained. It’s part of the NIH’s aggressive crackdown on gender-identity research. www.chronicle.com/article/gend...

ChatGPT shows signs of the same biases that arise in audit studies of human beings. When you give ChatGPT resumes, it's biased in how it evaluates minorities. When you ask ChatGPT to generate resumes for women & minorities, it generates systematically different types of resumes

An even bigger deal: it appears that all federal grant announcements are frozen until a new review process is developed.

ONLINE FIRST In this new TSQ article, Andrea DeKeseredy, Michelle Maroto, and Amy Kaler examine how trust in institutions and their messages shapes parents’ decisions around childhood vaccination. Read more at bit.ly/4ls1m3u

🚨🚨🚨 New Publication Alert Working Part-Time: Earnings Penalties Among People with Disabilities Across Occupational Groups in France By Célia Bouchet, Michelle Maroto, & David Pettinicchio www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

ONLINE FIRST Focusing on the case of Ukrainian refugees in Poland, Marta Skowrońska examines how hosts navigate the complexities of power, intimacy, and reciprocity in long-term hosting. Read more at bit.ly/41psclh

FREE TO READ! "The Sociology of Digital Inequality: The Stratification of Social Media Popularity in College Sports" by Joshua Woods and Julia Galiffa is free to read through August 31. Read it at bit.ly/41ZMDGc

"The War on Woke--and What It Means" 4 #sociology essays underscoring what we lose by abandoning #DEI efforts across business, healthcare, and academia. ↪️Intro @aminghaziani.bsky.social @sethabrutyn.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10....

Study maps #WhyIDidntReport tweets onto #NCVS. Finds key gaps particularly involving interpersonal crimes and when perp is within network and known to victim (as in sooo many crimes!!) #crim #sociology #surveyconstructionmatters #VAWA #violenceagainstwomen #AggieSoc #UNOProud #OKStatetoo

Long Live Queer Nightlife is a Finalist in the LGBTQ+ Nonfiction category for the 2025 Lambda Literary Awards! 1,339 submitted titles in total spanning 26 categories, evaluated by 80 judges over 6 months. #sociology @princetonupress.bsky.social @arts.ubc.ca @ucsb.bsky.social @asanews.bsky.social

In our polarized political environment, I’m excited to share my new ASR publication: “Competence over Partisanship: Party Affiliation Does Not Affect the Selection of School District Superintendents”. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Reminder: Elizabeth Felix's article "Who is Labeled a Potential Mass Shooter? Mental Health Status, Perceived Propensities for Mass Violence, and Mental Health Stigma" is free to read until July 31!

Well this is a first. My 2004 ASR article with Nicola Beisel on abortion in the 19th century was cited in the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court decision striking down the state's 1849 abortion ban! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/u...

BREAKING: The Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to move forward with the abolition of the Department of Education. It gives no explanation for its order. All three liberals dissent. www.documentcloud.org/documents/25... From Sotomayor's dissent:

Delighted to talk publishing, public writing, and sociological R&D with @aminghaziani.bsky.social and Doug Hartmann in the new issue of @contexts.org. link: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Harvard has removed websites for its women's, LGBTQ+, and multicultural student centers.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS In her Midwest Sociological Society (@midwestsoc.bsky.social) Presidential Address, LaShaune P. Johnson emphasizes the importance of building relationships with people and organizations in one's local community. Read more at bit.ly/4lpzBJw

🧪 BREAKING (good news): Senate subcommittee says NO! to Trump's proposed slashes to NASA & NSF funding. Today, the subcommittee said to keep NASA + NSF funding at $33.9 billion, the same as in FY24. See 7:15 below. Full Senate appropriations committee meets tomorrow about it. 🧵 1/3

🚨 BREAKING 🚨 The National Science Foundation has sent an email out to its members to collect signatures for a dissent declaration similar to the NIH’s Bethesda Declaration and the EPA’s Declaration of Dissent. This comes on the heels of Lee Zeldin putting 139 EPA declaration signers on admin leave

New publication in @sociologicalsci.bsky.social with Delia Baldassarri. We show that in the US, social relationships remain politically heterogeneous, and that heterogeneous close ties and acquaintances lower partisan animosity through distinct mechanisms. A thread on the main findings:

It’s publication day!!🎊 In a new Urban Affairs Review @urbanaffairsreview.bsky.social piece, Rebecca Johnson, Tyler Simko @simko.bsky.social & I ask: How do you measure conflict in local politics in the United States? journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Big news on the "Johnson Amendment" (!, ?) A collapse of the wall between church and state? A new plank in the floor of religious liberty? Observations from a sociologist of religion.... I.R.S. Says Churches Can Endorse Candidates From the Pulpit www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/u...

Holding It Together is currently ~1/2 off the regular price. If you want the backstory of how we got here--to the point where billionaires are destroying the social safety net and forcing women to be our crisis management team--I've got the book for you. www.amazon.com/Holding-Toge...

🏮NEW WORKING PAPER ALERT🏮 Scientists collectively spend tens of millions of hours peer reviewing each year, mostly for no $$. Why?? In new work w/ Charles Ayoubi and @innovation.bsky.social, we observe a private benefit for participating in evaluation: 💡💡Learning💡💡

This is one way of sabotaging the roll out of AI.

First paper from our American Local Leaders Survey, a representative survey of county, municipal, and school district officials done with @mayrl.bsky.social @jonathancoley.bsky.social rebecca sager and eric plutzer.

One cool trick to increasing trust in elections and government: make everyone a public official. Okay, maybe not, but still our new paper shows that local officials trust elections more. Why? Partly because they have a lot of social trust. dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Being a social scientist means holding two truths at once: 1. This is all deeply complicated 2. I have to submit something by Tuesday

OPEN ACCESS In a new TSQ article, Matthew Erkenbrack finds that parental involvement in school activities such as PTAs is associated with larger parental networks, but not with improved learning or behavioral outcomes Read more at bit.ly/4ekNohC

Wow that’s broad. Incredibly broad. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

Reminder: "The Preparedness Paradox in Climate Attitudes" is free to read until June 30!

Plain cruelty. Abject animus. These are life saving measures that are not really expensive by any stretch of the imagination when one considers the lives it saves