I have this content highlighted throughout my blog but now seemed an opportune time to aggregate. I believe structure exists. If you do not believe in structure almost nothing I ever argue will make sense to you. Agency matters but is constrained by many processes beyond our immediate purview, much less our control. It makesRead More “On Arguments”
Monthly Archives: August 2013
When Your (Brown) Body is a (White) Wonderland
This may meander. Miley Cyrus made news this week with a carnival-like stage performance at the MTV Video Music Awards that included life-size teddy bears, flesh-colored underwear, and plenty of quivering brown buttocks. Almost immediately after the performance many black women challenged Cyrus’ appropriation of black dance (“twerking”). Many white feminists defended Cyrus’ right toRead More “When Your (Brown) Body is a (White) Wonderland”
For God, For country, For college, Forever: A Few Thoughts on #ObamasHigherEdPlan
Twas a big day in higher education news yesterday. Barack Obama gave a major speech on college affordability. He laid out several proposals to push down college costs, student loan burdens, and foster higher education innovation. The internet went NUTS! Not really unless you follow all the world’s higher education nerds, as I do. But,Read More “For God, For country, For college, Forever: A Few Thoughts on #ObamasHigherEdPlan”
Bulletproof Big Mommas: Black Women Cannot Stop Bullets #atl
Yesterday a man entered an Atlanta middle school with a semi-automatic weapon intending to kill some cops with as public a platform as possible. Antoinette Tuff is a clerk at the school. The gunman instructed her to call a local news station to record his attack. Tuff managed to talk the gunman down after heRead More “Bulletproof Big Mommas: Black Women Cannot Stop Bullets #atl”
The Privilege of Righteous Indignation and Why You’re Not The Boss of Me
I have piece in Slate on for-profit college students. The TL;DR version: critique structures and not people; descriptive statistics are not prescriptive; respect for-profit students’ agency even while examining the constraints on their agency. It’s a nuanced enough argument even for academics. I have no illusions about how it goes over with a general audience.Read More “The Privilege of Righteous Indignation and Why You’re Not The Boss of Me”
The Ridiculous Excesses of For-Profit College Marketing**
**Note: I have mentioned that I rarely do line edits on blog posts. Many have surely noticed. I can rarely type quickly enough to keep up with my internal dialogue, hence most of my writing flaws appear here regularly. Editing is always the final step of my writing process. It involves paper and pencil. ThatRead More “The Ridiculous Excesses of For-Profit College Marketing**”
Papers, Presentations, For-Profits, Social Media and Justice
The season of U.S. sociology professionalization is upon us. This year will be my most active as the American Sociology Conference joins the American Black Sociologists and the Sociologists for Women in Society in New York this week. New to the discipline, I spent my first couple of years just lurking about. This year IRead More “Papers, Presentations, For-Profits, Social Media and Justice”
A Bechdel-ish Test for Higher Ed “Disruption”
It’s not that I am unsympathetic to higher education’s many issues — particularly inequality, rising tuition, and corporatization — but the higher education disruption narrative has pushed me to the edge. You likely haven’t even noticed that narrative. I am keenly aware that I live in a bubble with a few hundred other people onRead More “A Bechdel-ish Test for Higher Ed “Disruption””
Data are Data, Analysis is Art
Most of the literature in my field comes from economists, education researchers that more often than not employ econometric models, and quantitative macro sociologists. There is nothing wrong with that. However, a recent rash of reading of such reports brought to mind how we conflate data with analysis. The former is something approaching empirical objectivityRead More “Data are Data, Analysis is Art”