Exactly right

School is randomly canceled for our kids this Friday. Why????? How do parents deal with this? (I know how, by taking sick days if they have them, pleading with relatives to help, or leaving the (older) kids in charge.) But this is not sustainable. Sigh.

“It’s like seeing the eye of Sauron hanging over your city.” Featured story: A massive surveillance tower looming over Juárez is just part of a AI-powered network that extends far beyond the Texas-Mexico border.

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...

I love this book and remember talking about this situation in my sociology of gender class a few semesters ago.

Kimmel: "He might have to release the Epstein files to distract us from this now."

"you are the ones with the most to lose. My colleagues & I may have to leave this cherished institution & that would be a great loss for us. But we have already lived lives of consequence and can find other pursuits. You, however, would lose the education you deserve." 🔥 thebatt.com/news/anonymo...

Democratic women are disadvantaged in competitive district primaries, where party elites prioritize electability & view men as safer. Republican women are disadvantaged in safe district primaries, where elites & voters assume they are less conservative. www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Wow- this explains a lot

The new reality that is emerging in Texas is that certain topics or ideas are simply off the table in the classroom. The censorship of academic speech and entire fields of knowledge in service to an ideology poses an unprecedented danger to the future of higher education. #AcademicFreedom

One morning Toad sat in bed. “I have many things to do,” he said. “I will write them all down on a list so that I can remember them.”

“We will not allow authoritarians to dismantle higher education. We will not allow billionaires to profit while communities suffer. And we will not allow fear to silence students and workers who speak out.” — Todd Wolfson, AAUP President #DefendHigherEd #HigherEdBenefitsEveryone @aft.org

Texas A&M president resigns amid uproar over professor’s gender identity lesson www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

One student leveraged one viral video to create enough political pressure to push 4 people (now including College Station President) out of a job at A&M. What a horrible time to be a professor.

When someone says one thing to gain power and then a contradictory thing when exercising that power, the most useful lens for understanding it is power, not hypocrisy.

You know things are rough when the AAUP's advice on how to use social media is just "set all your accounts to private."

“We’re going to teach the truth,” Prof. Leonard Bright said. “We don’t know what the consequences of that may be...But we do know that if we were to censor the truth…that’s going to damage our society. That’s going to damage our students.” 👏👏 www.texastribune.org/2025/09/15/t...

Opinion | I’ve dedicated my career to promoting free speech on college campuses. Here’s why the murder of a red state college dropout by another red state college dropout means it’s time to fire liberal professors in blue states.

Your regular reminder that, whatever problems they may have, there are exactly <zero> societal institutions that are <more> protective of disagreement & debate & viewpoint diversity than universities.

In Washington, D.C., where close to 40% of child care workers are immigrants, fear has taken hold amid a crime crackdown that has raised ICE presence. “What kind of life is this? We are not delinquents, we are not bad people, we are here to work to support our family.” 19thnews.org/2025/09/chil...

Another professor in Texas is fired, this time after a selectively edited video of a talk he gave was posted on X, with the bogus claim that he was inciting violence www.texastribune.org/2025/09/10/t...

The MSNBC commentator saying that most political violence has historically come from the left just once again showed how we suffer from failing to learn history. Lynching, pogroms, race riots, the political violence that ended Reconstruction, and against the Civil Rights Movement. Come on.

This week, Texas A&M has presented the most startling example yet of the consequences of our state and federal governments’ quest to undermine higher education. Full statement from Texas AFT & @texasaaup.bsky.social: www.texasaft.org/membership/h...

The idea that an instructor can and *should* be fired for daring to teach something not explicitly mentioned in course catalog is the pinnacle of the "students as customers" idiocy that's been steadily destroying American universities for decades now. You're taking a class, not buying a product.

Same in sociology. I teach a class about domestic violence and we talk about everything- race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, politics/policy, law, police, you name it.

Not only is this coming for you, it is here and we are collectively behind in preparing.

If professors can be fired for discussing topics not explicitly mentioned in the course description and/or not toeing the ideological line of elected political leaders, there is no academic freedom in Texas.

We're hiring an Assistant Professor in Criminology (in our Sociology department)! Tenure track. 2/2 teaching load. Great colleagues. Fantastic location. jobs.colostate.edu/postings/165...

Also read this because it’s a genuinely good and funny piece of student writing. Also if you care about academic freedom and shared governance of course.

Exactly

I’m gonna have to talk about what potus said about DV in my DV class tomorrow, aren’t I. Sigh.

When "grit and faith" really means "dollars and cents." Mostly dollars. Lots of them.

Unexpected literacy development tool: my first grader loves reading the lyrics to songs we listen to on Spotify

The GOP's education playbook. Step 1: Make public schooling as shitty and stressful as possible for kids and parents and teachers. Step 2: Sell private schooling as the antidote to the stress and shittiness. Step 3: Funnel public education money into private hands.

A new research project about sexual and reproductive outcomes of violent crime in Mexico is recruiting two PhD students. The project is lead by Signe Svallfors who has received the five year starting grant from European Research Council. www.su.se/department-o... @signesvallfors.bsky.social

Is it "polarization" or has one political party decided to become a death-cult not beholden to any rules, social contracts, or commitments to democratic governance? Who can say?

I wrote about how the U.S. refuses to ratify the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. "ParentalRights.org is an organization that has been actively campaigning against U.S. ratification of “dangerous U.N conventions that “threaten parental rights” www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-p...

Watching the new documentary on the 20th anniversary of Katrina and it is just heartbreaking and enraging all over again seeing footage of all the suffering (and gov callousness and incompetence) I still remember from that summer all over again.

“Texas Democrats lost. But they drew attention to Republicans’ efforts to put their thumb on the scale, and demonstrated a valuable tactic for galvanizing their beleaguered party. They lost, but they lost loudly. Losing loudly has been a crucial feature of successful political movements.” Gift:

The bar for tenure at the majority of institutions should not be "are you a top scholar in your field," but rather "are you making a meaningful contribution to your field." This feels like an "all the children are above average" kind of metric that's destined to breed frustration and resentment.

Now what?

Tonight one of the CDC’s top public health leaders, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, has resigned from his post. Below is his full resignation letter. You should read every word. This is a truly scary moment for public health in America. 1/2

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey after school shooting kills two children: Don’t just say “thoughts and prayers”

Really rather surreal watching the optimism of Americans who think they can wait until their 2026 midterms to try and save themselves when their neighbours are already being kidnapped off the streets in broad daylight and their cities are being captured by militarized forces.

Dr. Dani Mathisen deserved to get the care she needed without crossing state borders, and she deserved to safely grow her family in her home state. All Texans deserve this—but due to the state’s abortion bans, many, like Dani, are leaving because they are scared to be pregnant in Texas. #TXBanWeek

The responses to this have me thinking about how critical we are as a society of parents, and how the increasing individualism of American society puts more and more pressure on parents to solve their parenting, childcare, even safety concerns all by themselves. Even school shootings.

People have embraced authoritarianism in large part because they've been sold individualistic explanations for social problems. If you think people are poor or unhoused because they've made "bad choices," then you'll see appeal in authoritarian leaders who promise to punish those who are "bad."

He sounds just like Bukele.

Pritzker: To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story.

I debated writing this. It can feel tempting, upon encountering yet another instance of this administration’s racism, to let it be. How many ways can you say the same thing over and over again? And yet we have to write it down, if for nothing else, so those who come after us know we were against it.