Michel Estefan
@mestefan.bsky.social
📤 766
📥 169
📝 1648
Sociologist at UCSD. Views my own; not employer’s. Repost ≠ endorsement.
Here’s my potentially controversial hot-take of the day on higher ed pedagogy: let’s move away from the language of “data-driven” pedagogy. Yes, of course your pedagogy should be data (and research) *informed*… But not to the neglect of your expertise and judgement as an instructor.
1 day ago
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On the one hand, I’m glad that restrictions on doing research about the health effects of psychedelics are being loosened.
2 days ago
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Today I attended an education research talk by a math professor and, as someone who mostly lives in these pedagogical spaces within the social sciences and humanities, it was a total breath of fresh air.
6 days ago
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#Looksmaxxing
7 days ago
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Ooof, definitely not a pic you want to be remembered by. 16 years in power is, like, you know, A LOT of years.
#AlwaysStandForDemocracy
#DemocracyRequieresTheCirculationOfElites
#MaxWeber
9 days ago
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Seems like Trump really enjoyed the UFC fight on Saturday. Meanwhile, Iran talks collapsed.
#Priorities
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/11/u...
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Trump Was Watching a U.F.C. Fight in Miami While Iran Talks Collapsed
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/11/us/politics/trump-ufc-iran-war.html
10 days ago
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Cool research on a classic higher ed question: are the wage benefits of college just about the credential, or do you actually learn stuff in college that matters for getting (and doing well in) jobs?
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The effect of human capital on earnings: Evidence from a reform at Colombia's top university
In this paper I test whether the return to college education is the result of human capital accumulation or instead reflects the fact that attending c…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272717301809
11 days ago
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“Trump’s excursion has proved to be a march to disaster. His “major combat operation” has shifted from aiming to block Iran achieving a nuclear capability that was supposedly “obliterated” last June to unblocking the S. of Hormuz and restoring the situation that existed before the operation began.”
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The end of the American empire
Donald Trump’s war in Iran presages the destruction of US authority, not its renewal
https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/geopolitics/2026/04/the-end-of-the-american-empire
11 days ago
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Leadership… or its absence, has consequences.
#gallup
12 days ago
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The article argues that people often confuse two different things: giving everyone the chance to go to college versus saying everyone should go. The real goal is access, making sure students who could benefit from college actually have the information and support to choose it.
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“Not Everyone Needs College” Is a Straw Man (opinion)
Too often, the claim that “everyone needs college” serves to derail conversations about access.
https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2026/04/06/not-everyone-needs-college-straw-man-opinion
12 days ago
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Repeat after me: “the percentage of college grads who are underemployed has DECLINED over time.” “the percentage of college grads who are underemployed has DECLINED over time.” “the percentage of college grads who are underemployed has DECLINED over time.”
13 days ago
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Important correction to that bubble graph about engagement on X/Twitter by Nate Silver. Apparently, the data source is trash, which makes the graph questionable but also weirdly confirms the point Nate Silver was trying to make (that there’s a lot of misinformation on X, including Nate’s post).
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Nate Silver says unreliable conservative accounts dominate engagement metrics. He might be right. #natesilver #twitter #politicaldebate
TikTok video by Quick Thoughts
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8g8Jvtb/
16 days ago
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16 days ago
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Fascinating research! “‘Without the labour of social reproduction – nursing infants, caring for children, cooking meals, laundering clothes, making beds, tending to sickness – there could be no wage labourers marching off to the fields and the workshops.
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Tom Johnson · Save My Beer: Industrious Revolution
Labour was once an organic part of the peasant household, done in the interest of subsistence. Certainly many people in...
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n06/tom-johnson/save-my-beer
17 days ago
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This is an excellent piece by Beth McMurtrie that takes grade inflation as an entry point to unpack a series of complicated institutional, pedagogical, cultural and teaching dynamics.
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Grade Inflation Is Called a Crisis. The Real Problem Is Deeper Than That.
Students are showing up to college with weaker skills. Colleges need them to succeed. Professors are stuck in the middle.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-real-problem-behind-grade-inflation?utm_campaign=campaign_17521772_nl_Teaching_date_20260402&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Iterable&sra=true
20 days ago
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New research on the ROI of various grad degrees, using data from Texas. On average, graduate school does boost your earnings. But that average fails to reveal differences across students and programs.
www.nber.org/system/files...
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https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33530/w33530.pdf
21 days ago
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Two quick things about my UCSD undergrad students I've been meaning to post about, before I forget again.
26 days ago
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Finished reading the Amulet graphic novel to my daughter. So good! I can see how it could be used in a literature class to discuss AI. A nearly irresistible technology that makes you super powerful, but the more you use it, the more you lose yourself to it.
about 1 month ago
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Friends and colleagues, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to share a heart-wrenching story about parenting, childhood, friendship, cruelty, and growing up.
about 1 month ago
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Folks, a little fable for your feed. Imagine a guy (because, you know, of course it’s a guy, or at least it’s almost always a guy) who decides he's done with his long-time crew.
about 1 month ago
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🙏 to Fabio Rojas for posting my comments about sociology’s geographic concentration over at his his Temple of Sociology Substack! You can check it out here:
templeofsociology.substack.com/p/is-the-soc...
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Is the sociology degree a special California thing?
It is right now.
https://templeofsociology.substack.com/p/is-the-sociology-degree-a-special
about 1 month ago
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To all ya’ll mom scientists out there, 🙏🫡 🙇♂️.
about 1 month ago
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Here's your provocative claim of the day: the problem with the argument that academics are both too woke and not really woke because their views don't align with the American working class is that, wait for it....
about 1 month ago
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Academic and Teaching Centers staff colleagues: I’m writing a paper tentatively titled, “Anatomy of a Contested Pedagogical Landscape: A Conceptual and Historical Account of the Structural Contradictions at the Root of Higher Education Pedagogy.”
about 1 month ago
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Nothing like starting out my day with a bite of chocolate cake to make me feel like an accomplished adult. 🤦
about 2 months ago
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Got lots of pushback on this in another platform. In hindsight, I wish I had avoided the snark in my comment.
#Sorry
Mainly folks were arguing that the bar chart doesn’t add any info compared to the radial chart, but it does add a lot of visual clutter.
add a skeleton here at some point
about 2 months ago
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Anthropic should have just created a bar chart. Apparently none of their LLMs told them that.
about 2 months ago
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Here you go. Directly from Anthropic: how much work in different sectors of the economy is currently handled by
#Ai
vs how much could be theoretically handled by it.
#TheFutureofWork
#Ai
#labor
#AiEconomy
about 2 months ago
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One of my favorite parts of my job is being surrounded by a lot of people doing fascinating intellectual work. Recently, I’ve been cultivating the habit of asking my colleagues what has been on their minds recently, what questions or topics have drawn their intellectual attention.
about 2 months ago
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#PewResearchCenter
about 2 months ago
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Folks, two things I've been sitting with recently:
@insidehighered.com
has a piece out today by Kathryn Palmer about AI cheating in in-person classes.
www.insidehighered.com/news/student...
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In-Person Classes Aren’t Safe From AI Cheating Boom
One professor was surprised to learn how easy digital technology makes it for students to cheat on class participation assignments and some exams.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/academics/2026/03/05/person-classes-arent-safe-ai-cheating-boom#
about 2 months ago
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Really interesting piece by Ali Kadivar. Go read it if you want a nuanced and thoughtful political analysis of the war against Iran and its potential consequences for the country’s political development.
open.substack.com/pub/alikadiv...
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The Fantasy of Liberation by War
The current U.S.–Israel war on Iran is being celebrated in some quarters as a long-awaited rupture.
https://open.substack.com/pub/alikadivar/p/the-fantasy-of-liberation-by-war?r=90bt4&utm_medium=ios
about 2 months ago
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Board of Peace Established —> Attack on Iran 🤔
about 2 months ago
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Good piece mapping the micro-level power dynamics within the White House. Also, some absolutely chilling comments by and about the White House deputy chief of staff.
open.spotify.com/episode/2DE7...
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Who Has the Power in Trump's White House?
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2DE7pobhM7BqnvGNfBnZyS?si=EeV1dm-wT_y2SH6ifEOQpQ&t=2991&ct=2926
about 2 months ago
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Universities have always had an uneasy relationship with dissent. Elite public and private institutions, in particular, have long been cauldrons of youth protest.
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
Michel Estefan
This skeet will self destruct
about 2 months ago
The syllabus for my grad course in Economic Sociology is ready! A bit different, I hope, than other econ soc courses.
pardoguerra.org/socg-264-eco...
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SOCG 264 – Economic Sociology
Last Minute Economic Sociology What do sociologists even know about the economy? Surprisingly, maybe as much as economists[*]! In this ten-week graduate course, we will explore recent sociological …
https://pardoguerra.org/socg-264-economic-sociology/
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Sociologists: the concentration of sociology degrees in CA is not a population size thing. CA does produce a ton of undergrad degrees because of its size; around 12% of national total (BAs across all fields). But it accounts for 41% of sociology BAs.
#Sociology
#HigherEd
#California
#UC
#CSU
about 2 months ago
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Sociology colleagues: I'd love your take on this data. American sociology is, to a striking degree, Californian and public.
#Sociology
#HigherEd
#ASA
#Academia
@asanews.bsky.social
about 2 months ago
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Colleagues and friends in sociology: Join me tomorrow for an ASA webinar on “Navigating the Current Academic Landscape.” (2/26 at 4pm EST / 1pm Pacific). I promise to make it interesting. You can register here (free for ASA members):
my.asanet.org/cv5/cgi-bin/...
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Navigating the Current Academic Landscape
https://my.asanet.org/cv5/cgi-bin/eventsdll.dll/EventInfo?sessionaltcd=ASAOEWEB0226
about 2 months ago
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Public Service Announcement: Em-dashes are a dead giveaway you’re using Ai to write. ChatGPT, in particular, loves them.
#IfYouSayYouWroteItProveItWorld
#Ai
about 2 months ago
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Are we headed to a world (or maybe we’re in one already?) in which any claim to authorship over a piece of writing carries with it the moral expectation that you make all your AI prompting for that project public? Kind of like the way researchers make their data and code public.
about 2 months ago
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Saw Hedda Gabler last night at The Old Globe with Katie Holmes in the title role. Highly recommend.
www.theoldglobe.org/pdp/26-seaso...
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Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler | The Old Globe
https://www.theoldglobe.org/pdp/26-season/hedda-gabler/#?startDate=2026-02-01&%3FendDate=2026-02-28
about 2 months ago
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Folks, if you’re one of those people trying to go full Lestat and live forever, you might want to check out this TikTok from Professor Anne Churchland over at
#UCLA
.
www.tiktok.com/@neuroanne/v...
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#ucla #neuroscience #longevity #aging
TikTok video by NeuroAnne
https://www.tiktok.com/@neuroanne/video/7603421332432342285
about 2 months ago
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“Karen has no criminal record. She is a grandmother who spent eight years working as an admin assistant at a primary school before her retirement. “I don’t even have parking tickets in the background anywhere,” she says.
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‘Don’t go to the US – not with Trump in charge’: the UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeks
Karen Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, ‘If it can happen to me, i...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/karen-newton-valid-visa-detained-ice?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
2 months ago
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“It is only in popular parlance that social movements “die” or political eras “come to a close.” The finality of these phrases is rarely borne out in reality. Movements do not so much die as survive on a much smaller scale.
2 months ago
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Thrilled to share that my new TRAILS assignment, “Practicing Ethnography with Visual Media: A Step-by-Step Assignment Using Downton Abbey,” is now live!
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Practicing Ethnography with Visual Media: A Step-by-Step Assignment Using Downtown Abbey | TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology ...
https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/practicing-ethnography-with-visual?fbclid=IwY2xjawQBtKdleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETJqeFE1VFVUQURMQzk0TGVtc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHtrTLEWIwOo0LXp389NWIagD0XOq-Fqod55XazYMYkxE_CxPnhex4urmcjTS_aem_PudAxT_fQRFmBEmxTIweJg
2 months ago
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The Mexican federal government does this; it provides free, easy to obtain voter IDs to every eligible voter.
2 months ago
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In the summer of 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—one of the central grassroots organizations of the Civil Rights Movement—worked with local Black communities in Mississippi to create Freedom Schools as part of Freedom Summer.
2 months ago
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Very helpful discussion that demistifies tenure and explains what it is and what it’s not as a type of labor contract.
open.spotify.com/episode/21c6...
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Tenure’s Endless Numbered Days
https://open.spotify.com/episode/21c6jzGPn9dyqB01hH02Dk?si=pHDWmHKpSO6VYKUgpeX-Kw
2 months ago
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One common phrase you’ll hear in Silicon Valley is, “I want to change the world.” In contrast, I’ve never heard my sociology students say that. What I have heard them say (often, and without irony) is, “I want to help people.”
2 months ago
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