Alice Wong–writer, disability rights advocate, and 2024 MacArthur Genius–recently passed away at the age of 51. Wong earned a master’s degree in medical sociology from UC-San Francisco in 2004 and is known for her prolific writing on her own experiences of discrimination growing up in Indiana with muscular dystrophy, life-long work amplifying the stories of others, and policy advocacy against laws that overlooked the needs of people with disabilities. In 2014, she founded the Disability Visibility Project, which collected hundreds of oral histories about the lives of disabled Americans. This story was covered by the New York Times, Teen Vogue, and LGBTQ Nation.

Scott Schieman (Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto) and Alexander Wilson (Sociology PhD Student at the University of Toronto) wrote an article for The Conversation on whether Canadian workers think AI will displace them. They found mixed opinions. Among Canadians who thought job loss was likely, they found concern over corporate greed and loss of dignity and respect for workers. Others felt more confident that the market would adapt and adjust roles to fit new technologies. “Understanding worker attitudes toward automation is a crucial part of studying AI’s broader impact on work and society,” Schieman and Wilson wrote. “If large segments of the workforce feel threatened or left behind by AI, we risk not just economic disruption but a loss of trust in institutions and technological progress.”

Musa al-Gharbi (Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University) spoke at a Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education event at Tufts University on how liberal elites have gained “a lot more influence over society and culture, but the consequences of that are not what we might have hoped or have expected.” Al-Gharbi described that elites focus on “symbolic change more than substantive change” and that the ways they engage in political action can be off-putting: “During these periods of Awokening, we become much more militant about mocking, demonizing, and censoring people who disagree with us, even for views that we adopted five minutes ago,” he said. This story was covered by TuftsNow.

Bates News interviewed Francesco Duina (Professor of Sociology at Bates College) about his upcoming book, The Social Acceptance of Inequality: On the Logics of a More Unequal World–a collection co-edited with Luca Storti (Associate Professor Economic Sociology at the University of Torino). The book examines why we accept inequality in our social world. “We were very eager to understand that acceptance — it is, after all, a major factor that sustains those inequalities and something that we may want to grasp if we in fact want to do something about those inequalities,” Duina commented. Duina described four main justifications for inequality: (1) market/economic logics – thinking of inequality as a byproduct of a functioning economic system; (2) moral logics – thinking in terms of fairness, justice, and deservingness; (3) group logics – the idea that a certain group is entitled to more; and (4) cultural logics – cultural ideas (like the “American Dream”) that help us tolerate inequality.

Bailey Brown (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Spelman College) wrote an article for The Conversation describing how “school choice” – the expanding range of school options for young children – is a source of anxiety for parents. Parents “felt pressure trying to select a school for their elementary school-age children” and “some parents experience this pressure a bit more acutely than others,” Brown writes. “Women often see their choice of school as a reflection of whether they are good moms, my interviews show. Parents of color feel pressure to find a racially inclusive school. Other parents worry about finding niche schools that offer dual-language programs, for example, or other specialties.”

Mike Savage (Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science) wrote an article for The Conversation on changes in UK personal wealth and wealth inequality over time. “The UK, like many rich countries, has become much wealthier, and these benefits are being more widely spread,” Savage explains. However, Savage argues that this increase in wealth has been largely in private hands, with limited investment in the common good. Savage argues that the idea that wealth should be treated as a private good “leads to the deeply dysfunctional view that wealth assets are free to be amassed, spent and passed on by their owners with scant encroachment in the form of taxation.”

The Atlantic ran an article on the concept of “groupthink” and how it is often used as a negatively loaded term to explain catastrophic decision making. The article cites critiques of groupthink theory from Sally Riggs Fuller (Organizational Sociologist and former Professor at the University of South Florida) and Ramon Aldag (Professor of Management and Human Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business). Contrary to “groupthink” theories that suggest that quick consensus leads to poor decision making, their research suggested that “tight-knit groups—ones with that cohesive “we-feeling”—tend to make better decisions.”

The Washington Post ran a story on how China is attracting scholars–particularly in STEM fields–in the wake of the Trump Administration’s funding cuts and immigration restrictions. The article cites research from Yu Xie (Professor of Sociology at Princeton University) and Junming Huang (Research Scientist at Princeton University), finding that “In the first six months of this year alone, about 50 tenure-track scholars of Chinese descent left U.S. universities for China” and “more than 70 percent of these departed scholars work in STEM fields.” Xie also commented that scholars relocating to China have to work in a more restrictive environment. “In China, scholars’ freedom at work is also constrained, as they are subject to bureaucratic control,” Xie said. “The university system in China is rigid.”