Matthew Clair

DOGE and other day 1 Trump appointees head for the exits at multiple agencies The Interior Department and General Services Administration are seeing significant turnover in the leadership ranks.

More and more of the original DOGErs are leaving government.(via @almsnatalie.bsky.social).
The implication is their influence is declining with Musk gone. We should still remember the damage they have done, which they leave as they exit government.
www.govexec.com/management/2...

The British Journal of Sociology Call for Papers The precarity of work and life: how insecurity equalizes and stratifies people’s experiences Submission deadline: Tuesday, 2 September 2025

Just a month left until the deadline for the BJS special issue that Lorenza Antonucci and I are co-editing on "The Precarity of Work and Life," focusing on people's experiences with socioeconomic insecurity! We've heard about some really interesting papers in progress so far--consider submitting!

Public Records Analyst/Staff Writer in United States | The Regents of the University of California on behalf of their Los Angeles Campus UCLA is hiring a Public Records Analyst/Staff Writer in United States. Review all of the job details and apply today!

The @law.ucla.edu Behind Bars Data Project is hiring a combined public records analyst and staff writer to help us collect and disseminate data on mortality and morbidity in prisons and jails. This work has become even more pressing of late. Please share and apply! jobs.ucla.edu/jobs/8221

Amy Sherald Cancels Her Smithsonian Show, Citing Censorship

Let everyone that has breath condemn this wholesale bowing and scraping. Shame on Lonnie Bunch. Kudos to Amy Sherald for refusing to surrender her artistic integrity to the state.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/a...

Incredible. Federal prosecutors are seeing many cases of people accused of assaulting Border Patrol agents being turned down by grand juries!

Los Angeles federal prosecutors are privately saying it’s because CBP agents are just “arresting first and asking questions later.”

Latino tenants sued their landlord. A lawyer told them they would be 'picked up by ICE.' When a Latino tenant filed a lawsuit against a landlord and real estate agent for selling the home she was evicted from, an opposing lawyer suggested she'll likely be deported by ICE before trial.

A Latino family in L.A. sued over an illegal eviction. The landlord's lawyer, Rod Fehlman, warned in an email that they'd "likely be picked up by ICE and deported prior to trial thanks to all the good work the Trump administration has done."

The kicker? Every member of the family is a U.S. citizen.

PBS News is not going anywhere.

We will continue our work without fear or favor, as we have for nearly five decades on the air.

We are profoundly grateful to Viewers Like You for your loyalty and unwavering support.

Science and Democracy Under Siege Documenting Six Months of the Trump Administration’s Destructive Actions

We are six months into the second Trump administration and the scale and severity of its assault on our nation's science and democracy has been unrelenting.

Today, @ucs.org releases a detailed assessment of the damage so far and where we go from here: www.ucs.org/resources/sc... #ProtectScience

YouTube video by Social Problems "The Author's Attic" with Faith M. Deckard

@socprobsjournal.bsky.social featured me on “The Author’s Attic” to summarize this article! It feels cringe for me to watch it 😅, but if you want to learn more, by all means, check it out ☺️

"The Author's Attic" with Faith Deckard youtu.be/6elFmh2LjbM?si… via @YouTube

What Happens to Kids’ Learning if Dad Is Incarcerated? - JSTOR Daily Nearly two million minor children in the United States have an incarcerated father at any given time.

Always cool to find your work profiled.

daily.jstor.org/what-happens...

Duke School of Medicine plans salary cuts for tenured faculty who do not meet grant expectations Set to go in effect in 2026, the proposed policy would apply to the School’s basic sciences units. These units rely heavily on grants from the National Institutes of Health, which have been increasing...

👀

What a time to propose this policy:

"Duke University School of Medicine (SOM) plans to implement new faculty productivity guidelines that would tie tenured professors’ salaries to external research funding, according to documents reviewed by The Chronicle"
www.dukechronicle.com/article/2025...

A screenshot of a brief article in Contexts Magazine summarizing the research of Prof. Matt Clair and PhD candidate Sophia Hunt on morals in the legal profession. The title of the summary is "good lawyer, bad lawyer" and contains an image of a law school graduate with a sign that reads "NOW WHAT?" The brief article was written by Elena G. van Stee. 

Prof. @mathuclair.bsky.social and PhD candidate Sophia Hunt's recent article on moral reconciling in the legal profession is featured in the latest issue of @contexts.org. The feature was written by @elenavanstee.bsky.social
journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10....

Our latest "In Brief" summaries of new #sociology research fea. work on wildfires and out-migration, discrimination and policy preferences, structuring family lending, morals and the legal profession, aging with imagination, and more! journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10....

Immigration enforcement *is* a public health crisis, and a longstanding one at that. It harms both physical and mental health, and its effects burden immigrants and the U.S. born alike.

We talked to administration officials for this piece who straight up say as much: that a reason they’ve gone so hard at this case is the belief that if they back down too much or lose too much on Abrego Garcia, it risks a “domino effect” that could make it harder for them to do not just Alien…

Legal Plunder A searing, historically rich account of how US policing and punishment have been retrofitted over the last four decades to extract public and private revenues from America’s poorest and most vulnerabl...

It's hard to believe, but today is the day -- the release date for Legal Plunder: The Predatory Dimensions of Criminal Justice, a book that @joshpage.bsky.social and I have been working on for most of the past decade. If you’d like to check it out, you can get 30% off by entering the code UCPNEW.

Perhaps Du Bois said it best:

“It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white”

Dying of Whiteness A physician's "provocative" (Boston Globe) and "timely" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times Book Review) account of how right-wing ...

“Trump supporters were [are] willing to put their own lives on the line in support of their [white supremacist] political beliefs”

www.basicbooks.com/titles/jonat...

With this vote, Congress makes ICE the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in history, with more money per year at its disposal over the next four years than the budgets of the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals, and Bureau of Prisons combined.

Congrats to the brilliant and witty Mark Granovetter!

Also, follow our new @stanfordsoc.bsky.social account

bsky.app/profile/stan...

Tens of thousands defy Hungary’s ban on Pride in protest against Orbán Crackdown on Pride is part of effort to curb democratic freedoms ahead of a hotly-contested election next year Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Budapest in defiance of the Hungarian government’s ban on Pride, heeding a call by the city’s mayor to “come calmly and boldly to stand together for freedom, dignity and equal rights”. Jubilant crowds packed into the city’s streets on Saturday, waving Pride flags and signs that mocked the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, as their peaceful procession inched forward at a snail’s pace. Continue reading...

Tens of thousands defy Hungary’s ban on Pride in protest against Orbán

Congrats—on both counts!

📣 ICYMI! LPE Conference FEBRUARY 5-7, 2026 @ Richmond Law! CFP by August! Follow @a-lpe.bsky.social right now!! ✊

Mamdani support was highest in areas with most millennials 100% Mamdani share of two-way vote 75% 50% Largest ethnic group • Asian — Black — Hispanic White 25% 0% 0% 20% 40% Aged 25-39 60% Owen Winter, Sources: NYC Board of Elections, Census

Black voters are incredibly polarized by age within the Democratic Party. This happens in every Dem primary since 2016.

You might not know this because the punditry does such a bad job on Black politics, either ignorant or treating Black people as a monolith in service of some other narrative

Request for Articles - Gender Inequality Beyond Categories: CALL FOR ARTICLES - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences - Issue on Gender Inequality Beyond Categories: Femininity, Masculinity And Gender Expression

NEW! Call for papers for @russellsagefdn.bsky.social journal issue on "Gender Inequality Beyond Categories: Femininity, Masculinity and Gender Expression" edited by @stanfordsoc.bsky.social's Aliya Saperstein, @laurel-westbrook.bsky.social, & Bianca Wilson.

www.russellsage.org/request-arti...

7 Stories From Incarcerated Writers for Juneteenth A collection of stories from Prison Journalism Project examining the connections between Juneteenth and modern U.S. prisons.

7 Stories From Incarcerated Writers for Juneteenth

Juneteenth: Historian Clint Smith on Reckoning with Legacy of U.S. Slavery We feature a special broadcast marking the Juneteenth federal holiday that commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned of their freedom more than two years after the...

Juneteenth Special: Historian Clint Smith on Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

For this Juneteenth, look at this quilt and watch this short clip on Ms. Vera Hall asking & answering, "What did Black folks do to free themselves?". Gorgeous words and work. Thank you @profkfh.bsky.social for sharing your mama with us.

🚨 Apply for our PAID fall internship! 🚨

Interns work full time in our offices in Cambridge, MA and are immersed in the day to day work of the magazine. Come join our small team.

Applications are due July 15. Submit here:

www.bostonreview.net/about/jobs-a...

Sitting US Senator Alex Padilla forcibly wrestled to the ground and arrested by the FBI for attempting to ask a question of DHS secretary Kristin Noem.