Dan Little

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: “Intellectual Freedom in an Authoritarian Age” As I promised in an earlier post, here is the video of Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s outstanding Davis, Markert, and Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom at the University of Michigan. I…

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: "Intellectual Freedom in an Authoritarian Age" affirmingdemocracy.org/2025/11/18/r...

Terrorism and the White House (Gary Krenz) The Oxford English Dictionary defines “terrorism” as “2. gen. A policy intended to strike with terror those against whom it is adopted; the employment of methods of intimidation; …

Terrorism and the White House (Gary Krenz) affirmingdemocracy.org/2025/11/17/t...

Collective Action for Academic Freedom I mentioned in a comment that last week, we released a new collection of essays on academic freedom: In the Spirit of H. Chandler Davis: Activism and the Struggle for Academic Freedom. (Shameless p…

Collective Action for Academic Freedom affirmingdemocracy.org/2025/11/16/c...

NYTimes: Texas A&M Tightens Rules on Talking About Race and Gender in Classes This is simply appalling. It is a blatant interference in the freedom of students to learn honest truths about their history and the freedom of professors to discuss matters of race and gender open…

NYTimes: Texas A&M Tightens Rules on Talking About Race and Gender in Classes affirmingdemocracy.org/2025/11/13/n...

Aziz Huq in the Atlantic — America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State Donald Trump doesn’t need to destroy the court system to get his way, Aziz Huq writes. He just needs to create a shadow zone where the law no longer applies. Welcome to America’s “prerogative state…

Aziz Huq in the Atlantic -- America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State affirmingdemocracy.org/2025/11/12/a...

Shutdown Resolution: Debacle, Destiny, Deliverance? Like many of us, I suspect, I am still reeling from the Democrats’ whiplash reversal on the shutdown, thanks to 8 Dems going rogue and siding with Republicans to fund the continuing resolutio…

Shutdown Resolution: Debacle, Destiny, Deliverance? (Gary Krenz) affirmingdemocracy.org/2025/11/10/s...

The Washington Post Trump administration orders states to pause paying full SNAP benefits The deliberate cruelty of this action is stunning … To deliberately interfere with states’ own efforts to cover the food crisis created by MAGA intransigence about SNAP is nothing short…

The Washington Post Trump administration orders states to pause paying full SNAP benefits affirmingdemocracy.org/2025/11/09/t...

The role of political education in social progress Stephen Esquith has spent much of his career observing, teaching, and engaging in “conflict societies”, and trying to develop an understanding of how best to move from high-violence to …

The role of political education in social progress undsoc.org/2025/11/07/t...

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: “Never underestimate the American people” This evening Barb and I attended the University of Michigan’s annual Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom. This is, as far as I know, the nation’s long…

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: "Never underestimate the American people" affirmingdemocracy.org/2025/11/06/r...

Affirming Democracy If you are concerned about the fate of our democratic institutions, the rise of xenophobia and hate, and the rule of law, please consider visiting affirmingdemocracy.org — an ongoing group bl…

Affirming Democracy undsoc.org/2025/11/06/a...

Affirming Democracy, Gathering Resistance Changing Public Opinion about Current Government Lawlessness

Please visit affirmingdemocracy.org -- an ongoing group blog aimed at affirming our democracy and opposing the racism, lawlessness, and authoritarianism we now face ...

A guide to being a sociologist Karl Marx Imagined The social world is more complex and heterogeneous than most parts of the natural world, with diverse causal processes, different tempos of change, and multiple influences on a g…

undsoc.org/2025/10/28/a...

Confronting race through Rawls’s political philosophy

Rawls believes that a just society must be a pluralistic society, and that means that it must be neutral across (reasonable) comprehensive conceptions of the good. Citizens must be enabled to pursue their own comprehensive conceptions without…

Grounds for impeachment

In his speech to the top officers of the United States military Donald Trump has crossed the line from reckless right-wing authoritarian politician to aspiring fascist dictator. Here is a report from the Washington Post the unprecedented event; scroll down to Amy Wang's…

Racial assumptions in western political philosophy MLK, Rousseau, Rawls (Gemini) A prior post asked whether liberal political philosophy can be “anti-racist”. Charles Mills addresses a related question in much more radical terms. He off…

Racial assumptions in western political philosophy undsoc.org/2025/09/24/r...

Ethnography of the far right Can we understand the dynamics of far-right extremism without understanding far-right extremists? Probably not; it seems clear we need to have a much more “micro” understanding of the a…

Ethnography of the far right undsoc.org/2025/09/10/e...

Can liberal political philosophy support anti-racism? John Rawls and Philip Pettit agree about the idea that a liberal democracy depends on the idea that all citizens have equal liberties, rights, worth, and dignity. Therefore they also agree that soc…

Can liberal political philosophy support anti-racism? undsoc.org/2025/09/04/c...

A political philosophy for an inclusive multicultural democracy We might say that a political philosophy is a formulation of the normative ideals that the philosopher holds to be primary in implementing the moral and social facts of “assemblages of free i…

A political philosophy for an inclusive multicultural democracy undsoc.org/2025/09/03/a...

The consequences of a trillion dollars Many thoughtful people in the US are concerned about the effects that the 2025 federal budget reconciliation law will have on poor people in many states who are currently enrolled in Medicaid healt…

The consequences of a trillion dollars undsoc.org/2025/08/24/t...

Real multicultural democracies Chicago is a highly diverse city, and it is a good example of life in a multicultural democracy. The image above is a photo of the crowd on Navy Pier on a recent Saturday summer evening. According …

Real multicultural democracies undsoc.org/2025/08/11/r...

Ethnography of high-energy physics MICE, Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment, team at the facility during construction at STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, 11th February 2015. The experiment is designed to demonstrate the …

Ethnography of high-energy physics undsoc.org/2025/07/30/e...

Stock ownership as system-wide exploitation? A prior post made an effort to gain greater analytical clarity concerning the unfairness involved in the separation between the “one percent” economy and the rest of us. In what ways is…

Stock ownership as system-wide exploitation? undsoc.org/2025/06/26/s...

A new form of exploitation Much thinking about economic justice for working people has been framed by the nineteenth-century concept of “capitalism”: owners of enterprises constitute a minority of the population; they hire w…

A new form of exploitation undsoc.org/2025/06/22/a...

Republicanism and multicultural democracy Philip Pettit’s writings about republicanism offer a valuable and distinctive perspective on individual freedom and the nature of a good society. He develops those ideas most fully in Republicanism…

Republicanism and multicultural democracy undsoc.org/2025/05/24/r...

The micro and the social In his influential article “A definition of physicalism” (1993) Philip Pettit attempts to formulate a consistent and coherent account of physicalism as an ontology of the world. I belie…

The micro and the social undsoc.org/2025/05/20/t...

Why “DEI”? The current war on DEI has proven to be unrelenting and highly destructive to the independence, academic freedom, and inclusiveness of American universities. And yet the values that gave rise to DE…

Why "DEI"? undsoc.org/2025/04/29/w...

A conversation with Gemini about Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier In previous posts I’ve been fairly skeptical about the value of ChatGPT as a research tool (link). In recent weeks I’ve been exploring Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash and Gemini Deep Re…

A conversation with Gemini about Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier undsoc.org/2025/04/15/a...

The continuing reality of racism source: The rightwing extremist war on DEI intensifies by the week, it appears. And the scope of its prohibitions expands as well. Universities throughout the United States are being bullied throug…

The continuing reality of racism undsoc.org/2025/03/31/t...

Rethinking Analytical Sociology My current book Rethinking Analytical Sociology has now appeared in print, and an ebook version is available on the Elgar website here. The book is intended to provide a sympathetic but critical re…

Rethinking Analytical Sociology undsoc.org/2025/03/15/r...

Artificial intelligence tools for historians Historical research may seem to be a field in which AI tools will be especially useful. Historians are often confronted with very large unstructured digital collections of documents, letters, image…

Artificial intelligence tools for historians undsoc.org/2025/07/19/a...