• Arlie Russell Hochschild (Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley) was interviewed in Salon, discussing how former president Donald Trump appeals to white, working class voters. “I think we live in both a material economy and a pride economy,” Hochshild explained. While Trump’s policies as president did not materially help these voters, “Trump helped those same poor and working-class white people feel proud and seen again. He talked about national pride and Making America Great Again. His voters feel that language and take it personally.”
  • The MacArthur Foundation announced its ‘Genius’ fellowship recipients for 2024, including several sociologists. Loka Ashwood’s (Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Kentucky) work focuses on helping communities overcome environmental injustices. Ruha Benjamin (Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University) studies how technology reproduces inequalities. Dorothy Roberts (Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania) examines racial inequalities within social service systems. This story was covered by the New York Times.
  • Diario de Cuba ran a story on the “migration crisis” in Cuba, as large numbers of Cuban people are emigrating out of the country, and the effects on children and families. Helen Ochoa Calvo (Sociologist from Cienfuegos, Cuba) commented that migration had become “the only solution left for those who can and want to live a dignified life through their work, the regime has left them with no other.” Ochoa Calvo described the current migration as the most distressing separation of parents and children since the Cuban Revolution: “Not only are parents leaving their younger children behind, they’re also leaving their older parents.”