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Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard, author of "Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice," headlines a series also featuring Jeremy Brecher (author of "Common Preservation"), Joe Guinan (co-author of "The Case for Community Wealth Building"), Yvonne Yen Liu (Solidarity Research Center), and Melissa Scanlan (author of "Prosperity in the Fossil-Free Economy").

Dr. Jamie Clark, Assistant Professor, Sociology and Anthropology, Center for Social Science Research, has been awarded a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct research at the archaeological site of Sefunim Cave (Israel). Dr. Clark will lead research on climate change—and the nature of human responses to that change—during the Last Glacial Period (~115,000-12,000 years ago). The Last Glacial Period was characterized by profound shifts in climate, culminating in the Last Glacial Maximum, when sea levels dropped to 130 m below the modern coastline. On a human scale, the phase witnessed significant biological, cultural, and technological changes, including the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans.

The original Next System Fellows leaflets posed several thought provoking questions to their readers: “Where is our society going, and where does it need to go? How do we get there, and what must we do to get there?” By posing these questions, the program implies it can provide answers to them. And perhaps it can. But essential is the pedagogy involved. By calling students to address the systemic challenges of the 21st century, the Next System Fellows program invites students to become a part of creating solutions. 

Critical scholars have long recognized that theory and research methods are deeply entrenched in the production of structural racism and systemic oppression of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC). Institutions of higher education like Mason and related professional organizations (e.g., American Psychological Association) have acknowledged their roles in perpetuating BIPOC harms (e.g., Enslaved Children of Mason Project, Mason Land Acknowledgment) and have called for reparative structural change. Indeed, Mason has committed to Anti-Racist Inclusive Excellence. In support of this new mission, we have created this workshop series to introduce a new way of producing knowledge - new tools - that center an explicitly anti-racist and decolonizing stance, which can allow us to expose, challenge, and potentially repair some of the harms previously committed by and in the name of "research".

Now more than ever, we need a rebirth in our approaches and relationships to one another, our overarching institutions, and innovations. Public sociologists can help ensure equitable and sustainable approaches to the problems that impact us all at a time when creative and inclusive inter-collaborative resolutions have never been needed more. Interdisciplinarity can guide and inform the task of reimagining and implementing inclusive, data-driven approaches to solving these complex problems. Join the Public Sociology Association's 7th annual Public Sociology conference around Building an Interdisciplinary Community through Public Sociology October 20th-22nd on Zoom!

Maria Valdovinos Olson was selected as a recipient of the 2021 CHSS Dean’s Challenge Scholarship Award. The Dean’s Challenge Scholarship Award was established in 2007 to acknowledge exceptional graduate students who have excelled while making academically-challenging choices.

Think you know a lot about immigration? Take this quiz and find out!

Professor John Dale has been elected to serve on the Board of Directors of the Society for the Study of Social Problems for a three-year term (2013-2016).

“He clearly understood … that your treatment of people’s remains has implications for how you treat people in the present. Arguably, you can see a connection between how people of color are treated in everyday life and how it is their remains and sacred spaces are treated.”