• On Oct. 3rd, Kevin McCarthy was voted out as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Theda Skocpol (Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University) was interviewed in Politico, discussing the history of the Tea Party movement and how it connects to McCarthy’s removal. “It represents the culmination of [the tea party movement],” said Skocpol. “All the research that I and other political scientists have done on the movement shows that by the 2010s — just before Donald Trump emerges — the tea party had taken the shape of a just-say-no, blow-it-all-up, don’t-cooperate, do-politics-on-Twitter faction — and this is the perfect expression of it. This is where it leads.”
  • Noura Insolera (Assistant Research Scientist at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan) wrote a piece for The Conversation on the benefits of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) – a federally funded nutrition program. In 2019, at its peak, WIC helped feed over half of newborn babies in the U.S. Children who received benefits from WIC or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from 1984-2019 “were four times more likely to report improved food security years later, as young adults.” Insolera notes that WIC assistance could be jeopardized by a government shutdown.
  • David Schieber (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University) wrote an opinion piece for The Daily Northwestern in response to the recent allegations of racialized hazing in the Northwestern football program. Schieber discusses sociological work on rituals and group initiation processes, noting how small groups with initiation processes can “easily become sites of insidious abuse and hazing.”
  • Karida L. Brown (Professor of Sociology at Emory College) and visual artist Charly Palmer are releasing The New Brownies’ Book: A Love Letter to Black Families – a contemporary take on W.E.B. Du Bois’ monthly children’s magazine which centered on Black children. The new book is “an anthology showcasing the power of community and the foundations of the Black family via drawings, poetry, short stories, and other artistic formats.” Brown hopes the book will “put out that bat signal to Black children: we are thinking about you and you are not forgotten.” This story was covered by Publisher’s Weekly.
  • In response to the ongoing conflict, Maha Nassar (Associate Professor of Modern Middle East History and Islamic Studies at the University of Arizona) wrote a brief history of the Gaza Strip for The Conversation.