Julian Go
@jgo34
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Professor, U-Chicago. I write about Postcolonial-Anticolonial theory; US & British Empire; Colonialism & other previously arcane topics
Chicago, the US, the World
Joined October 2008
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Pinned Tweet
Now available: Policing Empires: …. Promo code for 30% off is ASFLYQ6. Honored to have endorsements from these formidable writers
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Ironically, my talk at
@UCIrvine
on militarized policing and empire is cancelled because of the police actions on campus there.
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What non-academics have to understand about the Claudine Gay situation at
@Harvard
: it is NOT routine to read the dissertation of an administrator looking for error. There are reasons why her work was investigated & they have everything to do with Israel & right wing politics.
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This sort of anti-intellectualism and ignorant name calling is among the first steps towards book burning and fascism.
Books that were in the UC Irvine encampment “library.” I took this photo while undercover.
At least 3 books written by Karl Marx, the father of communism, just in this photo alone. Another is called “The End Of Policing”
They’re literally revolutionary communists.
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Columbia when it gave tenure to Edward Said embraced his postcolonial critique of texts. Columbia today, when students are applying the postcolonial critique to real world live events? Not so much.
UPDATE: The NYPD have now arrested the legal observers at the Columbia University Palestine solidarity encampment
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I don’t know what’s worse: that he was fired or that he’s the only full history professor of African descent in ALL OF THE UK! Pathetic. The field is history in the UK needs to take a long hard look at themselves and ask how this can be
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If you want to criticize the encampments then fine. But do so by criticizing not dismissing. You must explain (1) why universities should NOT divest from the Israeli state and the US defense industries supporting it and (2) why Israel should NOT stop killing innocent people. 1/2
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To be clear "Postcolonial" theory does NOT refer to a historical moment after colonialism nor say that colonialism is over. It rather refers to ideas and frameworks that critique and aim to transcend the pernicious structures & epistemic constraints of colonialism. Just sayin'
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Dropping soon from Oxford University Press. (Well, soonish: fall of 2023)
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As Director of Graduate Studies in my department & a faculty member, I am happy to be able to say that the University of Chicago graduate students are now officially unionized.
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To paraphrase Fanon, colonialism corrupts the colonizer just as it degrades the colonized
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The curious rise of the trend of discrediting concepts as meaningless jargon because one doesn’t like that they unmask systems of power from which one benefits. Next up: the ‘trendy’ terms of “exploitation”, “patriarchy”, “authoritarianism” & “racism.”
The Curious Rise of 'Settler Colonialism' and 'Turtle Island' My essay for
@TheAtlantic
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Happening right now at UChicago: Kohei Saito on “Degrowth communism.”
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Hilarious how so many blame Brandon Johnson and his social programs for these events last night Brandon isn’t even in office yet. If anything, what last night shows is that the existing system - which includes 1.9 billion to police - isn’t working. 1/2
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My article "Reverberations of Empire: How the Colonial Past Shapes the Present" based upon my
@socscihist
Presidential Address is now published & open access in Social Science History.
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On the Theory & Society scandal: this is not a coup of ‘science’ over ‘non-science’ or data-driven sociology vs. non-data sociology. T&S had been publishing theoretically informed and rigorous social science for decades. This is a takeover by a wing of sociology…1/8
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There is a horrible tendency for scholars to read your work, absorb your arguments, ideas, concepts & and even turns of phrases and then assume that they are their own, forgetting to cite you. It has happened to me throughout my career, and still happens. Some thoughts 1/5
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The older I get as a scholar the more I come to see: solace is not to be found in books but rather in the streets, where where collectivities face down power and pulsate, resist and create
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What I’ve learned: Everyone is against colonialism. Until they’re not.
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Can anticolonial thought serve as the basis for a new critical social theory that offers an alternative to social science’s imperial standpoint? In this publication version of my
@BJSociology
Annual Lecture, I say hells yes.
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I was there today at
@UChicago
. I’m here in this video. Here’s what went down. 1/7
After some brief scuffles, activists were able to successfully defend their space with plywood shields as well as faculty linking arms. The Israeli nationalists were outnumbered by community support on the Palestinian liberation side by this point.
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For all those who think DEI hiring in academia is a significant threat.
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The fact that certain phrases (“river to the sea”, “intifada” etc) always get interpreted as racist means this: we are constantly asked to privilege one groups’ voice & meaning over the other, even as the voices being suppressed are also physically silenced thru violence. 1/2
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I’m honored that my book got the B. Wells-Barnett Distinguished Book Award for the best book in Crime, Law and Deviance; Honorable Mention for Best Book in Comparative Historical Sociology & Honorable Mention for Best Book in Global & Transnational Sociology from
@ASAnews
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5 students of mine told me they felt unsafe. They are all Jewish. They said they felt unsafe from white nationalist counter protestors & rabid right wing Israeli Zionists who spew hate at them. I support them.
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A new article in which I claim that theoretical innovation in the social sciences depends upon listening to the experiences of marginalized populations, not ignoring them on the grounds of 'me-search'. Firewall free access for the first 50 views.
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The first state police were created in Penn, meant to crush immigrant miners’ strikes in the coal fields. The Penn state police was inspired by the US colonial state’s Philippine Constabulary meant to crush the Filipino insurgency against US rule. So yeah, this tracks.
@UTAustin
BREAKING: Texas State Troopers are violently dispersing a Palestine solidarity protest on the campus grounds of University of Texas at Austin
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Honored to give the Inaugural Lecture of the "Decolonising Sociology" series at U-Lisbon Portugal org'd by Institute of Social Sciences of Lisbon and the Soc Dept at Cambridge University (Sofia Aboim and Filipe Carreira da Silva). In-person and Zoom.
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uchicago alum protesters have occupied the institute of politics on campus
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It always makes me laugh when economists pretend like their “science” is not “political” whilst they accuse everyone else. Read a book.
"..sociology as a form of liberatory praxis: an effort to not only understand structural inequities, but to intervene in socio-political struggles" -- official theme of 2024 American Sociological Association annual meeting. Seriously? [
@JohnHCochrane
]
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Despicable liars
@FoxNews
saying protestors walking out because Seinfeld is Jewish.
Fails to say that his wife funded violent assaults on peaceful protestors. Typical ignorant brainwashing lies paid for by the US-Israeli corporate-military complex
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Christakis’ Lab peddles in ‘biology of social interactions’ (a tradition rooted in social evolution & eugenics) & network analysis (used by military counter-insurgency campaigns & militarized racist policing). But he’s complaining about ‘ideology’ in academia
"Harvard online course catalog has a search box. Type in “decolonize.” That word is in the titles of 7 courses and the descriptions of 18 more. “Oppression” and “liberation” are in the descriptions of more than 80 courses. “Social justice” is in >100."
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Fascinating article by the brilliant Loic Wacquant on racial capitalism in
@eurjsoc
. Does it say anything different than I say in my 2020 article? One key difference: I conclude that the rc concept should be embraced. Loic rejects it. U be the judge.
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The Jewish sociologist at Harvard Marshall Ganz is being investigated for anti-semitism because he is critical of Israeli policy. How has the world come to this?
A Jewish professor who comes from a long line of rabbis and is critical of Israeli policy is currently being investigated for “antisemitism” by a Dean who is the WASPiest person ever and whose blue blood ancestors barred Jews from their clubs. You just can’t make this stuff up.
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My book Policing Empires is now available for preorder and will ship in August. Hate to boast but I will; see the blurbs from the most amazing group of intellectuals I can imagine:
@avitale
,
@SimonBalto
,
@ForrestDStuart
,
@reubenjmiller
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Police as we know it today from LA to London would not exist but for imperialism overseas. Its tactics and arms from predictive policing to SWAT were invented, tried and tested for use on colonized black and brown folk. True story.
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The bs of this article & the broader vacuous discourse it represents is exactly why we need MORE courses & research on colonialism, empire, racialization, colonial capitalism not less. In America ignorance of an intellectual field becomes justification for dismantling it 1/3
The Curious Rise of 'Settler Colonialism' and 'Turtle Island' My essay for
@TheAtlantic
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2/2 cause those are what are issue here. Anything else is just meaningless diversion.
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Of course Florida is defunding DEI & sociology. Sociology is the field that gathers data that shows that racism exists. And guess what Martin Luther King’s major was? Sociology. Sociology is a threat. It can speak truth to power.
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While our politicians, uni officials & critics are losing their sh*t about some kids in tents exercising free speech, this assault on 1.7 million Palestinians by one of the most technologically advanced & powerful US-supported militaries in the world is happening. Right Now.
BREAKING: Israel’s criminal invasion of Rafah, the last place of refuge for Palestinians in Gaza, has begun.
1.7 million civilians trapped in Rafah are now being attacked through air, land and sea, in the middle of the night.
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The IDF are dropping bombs on Gaza, with investments made by
@uchicago
, while
@Uchicago
and other universities are sending police to shut protests against it.
1 am, on the way to UChicago because the university has decided to send police to raid a peaceful encampment of its own students in the middle of the night.
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Af a time when universities are repressing calls for change from their students, this book offers a horizon. “We are not cursed forever with the current models; we can design universities worth building, and think practically about how to build them”.
@raewynconnell
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The United States needs not only to demilitarize policing but to decolonize it
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Im fascinated how so many scholars out there spend their careers studying things like business administration, inequality in the us, or org theory and then suddenly become experts on colonialism, anti colonialism or postcolonial theory. Truly fascinating.
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Fanon is good to think with in the present moment, but only if we do not reduce him to an exactor of postcolonial revenge (and note: I don't mean Fanon is someone to support unconditionally, but rather to think with in a productive and indeed critical way). Some thoughts: 1/7
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6/8 this insistence that activist sociology is dominant & that it is the cause of ASA decline - this is an example of ideologically motivated claims lacking scientific validity - the very thing they are complaining about.
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When certain sociologists speak against war other sociologists decry them as shameful, unsociological & unscientific. But when the latter do ‘sociology’ and ‘science’ that uncritically adopts the standpoint of capitalist and imperial power, they expected to be rewarded. Classic.
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Speaking of sociology, let me elevate a couple of mind blowing works re Palestinians by sociologists:
Areej Sabbagh-Khoury’s “Colonizing Palestine”
@areejsabbagh26
Anaheed Al-Hardan’s “Palestinians in Syria: Nakba Memories of Shattered Communities”
@anaheedo
Look em up.
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A great pleasure to be part of this UChicago Paris workshop on "Tropical Marxism" organized by my wonderful colleague Jennifer Pitts and student Arwa Arwan. Open to all in person or Zoom. Losts of great comrades incl
@maxajl
among many others
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Police “militarization” is the wrong term. It really means the “imperiality” of policing: police import the violent tactics & tools of colonialism to thrash black & brown folks at home who appear in the feverish & racist fears of the white establishment as barbarians at the gates
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@TomiLahren
like the billionaires in trumps cabinet are so in touch with the workers they exploit
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How to deflect: 1/5
1. call any reference to the Israeli state's actions as 'settler-colonial' and near genocidal "anti-semitic"
2. call any reference to the Israeli state's actions as 'settler-colonial' and near genocidal "anti-semitic" propaganda
I was deeply disappointed to read this vacuous statement. It is (1) dehumanizing to Israelis (and implicitly antisemitic), (2) simplistic, (3) self-righteous, and (4) intellectually dishonest. Here’s why:
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1/3 I wrote this book a while back that showed that sociology was born within the culture of empire and is therefore imprinted at its core with the imperial episteme.
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A short piece where I claim that social explanation is vital for speaking truth to power. Open access! “Unveiling power, or why social science's task is explanation.”
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The origins of police militarization in America lie in America’s brutal colonial conquest of the Philippines in the early 20th century. Go to: (
@ChicagoJournals
has taken down the paywall)
#policebrutality
@UChicagoSoc
@UChicagoSSD
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Ecstatic that my
@JasonBJackson
,
@zyedwards
,
@A1RWhite
and I have successfully created a permanent network w/in
@SASE_Meeting
called "Postcolonialism and Legacies of Empire." Plz Join us at the 2024 meetings in Limerick Ireland
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“Thinking Against Empire: anticolonial thought as Social Theory”: I’m giving the British Journal of Sociology Annual Lecture at
@LSEpublicevents
. Register to watch on Zoom
@UChicagoSSD
@UChicagoSoc
@LSEsociology
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@ChrisDHazlewood
@shaunking
Yeah not the same. Insurrectionists at the capitol planned to kidnap and assassinate & disrupted the congressional process of inaugurating the next president. Leftists have never done that. You can’t equivocate this one. Thank you for your service.
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2/8 that has been claiming that soc is declining & only because of presumably ‘ideological’ nonscientific work. But those claims are unscientific - lacking data, logic, or causal inference; and is not situated within the scholarship on scientific fields nor history of sociology
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What I've learned talking to anti-CRT people: they hate it bc they cannot wrap their minds around the idea of institutional racism. They can't comprehend social outcomes except as the product of individual racist attitudes. It's a tragic lack of sociological imagination 1/2
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4/8 It does not consider membership numbers in other associations, rise in membership costs, decline in # of tenure track sociologists or sociology students, decreasing budgets etc etc - lots of possible variables that MIGHT be at work but which are not even mentioned
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Don’t let them tell you that unless you’re protesting Hamas ur anti-Israel” & “anti-semitic.” They are either ignorant or propagandists. THE US IS NOT FUNDING HAMAS AND GIVING IT WEAPONS, why then should we ‘protest hamas’? We are protesting genocide & US support it. End of story
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It's always disappointing when people cannot fathom the difference between explanation and excuse. To explain why Gay was targeted is not to excuse plagiarism. Some people just can't seem to get there; but it's an important analytic skill which I recommend you all learn. 1/3
All these academics coming out defending massive academic fraud in order to protect their woke fiefdoms: As if you wanted to be put on a list of people who need to be removed so academia can return to principles of truth, merit, and color blindness.
Cc
@realchrisrufo
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I’m sorry but voting should not be an identity game nor virtue signaling. That’s excessive narcissistic bourgeois individualism sh*t. It should be a realistic & pragmatic calculation of collective action that might help minimize societal pain. Tell me I’m the problem.
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Some thoughts on why sociological explanation should be the cornerstone of critical thought rather than its enemy. Open access:
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And the cops should take off their military grade helmets and weaponry and put down their equipment; they’re dealing with kids who are doing some chants and sleeping in tents. Who’s the “chicken littles” here hiding behind helmets and guns?
@Jairo_I_Funez
The protesters need to take off the masks if they’re serious. Chicken little kids hiding. Arrest them all.
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M. Burawoy on the
@asanews
resolution: "sociologists...have real material interests in the domination that feeds them. In the Israeli case sociologists, often indistinguishable from anthropologists...have become accomplices of the Israeli state. But more to the point..." 1/3
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For not realizing that “Born in the USA” is an antiwar protest, I give these counter protesting chads an “F”
NEW: Counter protesters are blasting 'Born in the USA' while waving their USA flags at the University of Chicago.
The Chads are taking over the country 🇺🇸
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3/8 for example one of the new editors claims that “the only conceivable reason” for why ASA membership dropped is due to “activist” sociology taking over the field & edging out “scientific” sociology. It doesn’t even entertain the countless other possible reasons for the drop
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I get it Left twitter X: Biden is genocide enabler & a tool of wall street & so is kamala. But did you really think that the state is NOT structurally predisposed towards imperialism and capitalism? Do you actually believe that political leaders could be anything but? Smh
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1/2 I wrote “Anticolonial Thought as Social Theory” for
@BJSociology
, wonderful commentators like
@alim1213
offered responses; and my reply is now published open access.
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Check out this documentary on Netflix. Not only do I make an appearance but so do amazing scholars like
@stschrader1
,
@nikhil_palsingh
among many others!
Weekend viewing… 👀📺
‘Power’ — documentary film about police — on Netflix.
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The Nobel winning economist Deaton finally recognizing the problem with Economics. I esp like where he questions methods like Randomized Control Trials saying "historians...often do a better job than economists" at causal explanation
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For my U-Chicago Spring course "Global Social Theory" I have organized an accompanying lecture series open to all. Please register and join us!
@UChicagoSSD
@UChicagoSoc
with
@raewynconnell
,
@GKBhambra
, Karida Brown, Jose Itzigsohn, Bedour Alagraa and Syed Farid Alatas
Amazing events lined up at the Global Studies department at University of Chicago! including Raewyn Connell, Gurminder Bhambra, Karida Brown and Jose Itzsigsohn, Bedour Alagraa, and Syed Farid Alatas!
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5/8 instead the editor claims that “the only conceivable reason” is the takeover by ‘activist’ sociologists. Really? Even the claim that unscientific ‘activist’ sociology has taken over the field is unsubstantiated. Have they seen what’s published in ASR, AJS, Demography, etc?
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Lots to say here about Kendi at my former BU but for now note this is yet another reason why tenure must be protected. It took the bravery of my (tenured) colleagues
@saigrundy
&
@SpencerPiston
to stand up to the BU admin and call bs out when they saw it
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Excited my colleague's
@kimberlykhoang
paper on "Engendering Global Capital" and my paper on the "Imperial Origins of Policing" are co-winners of the
@ASAnews
GATS award for Best Paper. Critical global studies at
@UChicagoSoc
is a thing folks.
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Why did the London Metropolitan Police became militarized beginning in the 1970s? On the Special Patrol Group, racialization, and empire. Part of the fantastic special volume edited by
@stschrader1
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"The hostility to theory...which prevails in contemporary public life is really directed against the transformative activity associated with critical thinking"
-Max Horkheimer "Traditional and Critical Theory" (1937)
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I'm saddened that this Chair of the PWSC is accusing the
@Soc4Pal
resolution as "antisemitic." I'm sorry if he feels that way & am also sorry to any other sociologists who feel that way. But the resolution is not the veiled racist declaration that he implies it is 1/2
@ASAnews
Actually you know what? Let me just post the receipts. I’m not tiptoeing around this shit anymore while they stomp stupid
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The problem is when you presume it’s mutually exclusive. We can have a discipline where sociologists wear their politics and other sociologists pretend they don’t have any. Pluralism enriches; narrow minded imperialism impoverishes. 1/2
I reject this form of sociology. To me, sociology can be a magnificent science. And the less ideological and explicitly political, the better. Here is a part of an old lecture via
@bigthink
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I’m giving a two-part lecture in Paris on my recent thinking on racial capitalism as social theory. Open to all. Feb 28-Feb 29.
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Thanks to
@CamSociology
for hosting me to give my talk on Policing empires. Sorry to anyone who couldn’t enter; I heard room was at standing room only!
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The accusation that if you’re critical of the IDF’s assault on Gaza you are pro-Hamas is about as logical as the accusation in 2003 that if you criticized the US war on Iraq you were pro-terrorist. It’s all just so much propaganda
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2/5 It isn't always malicious. Often senior scholars (and often certain gender/race) who are so narcissistic that they assume any good idea/phrase must be their own. I can point to prominent scholars who did this to me when I was a jr. scholar (and who still do). But I won't.
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Sociology in the service of Empire: Max Weber's theory of authority is used by the US Army for counter-insurgency (photo is a page from the US Army's Counterinsurgency Field Manual). Just sayin'.
#PostcolonialSociology
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I hate that we have to prove that these courses are a small % of classes, as if the small % is a good thing. Normally I’d contend that having only 1.3% of classes with those words was a BAD thing. Alas this is where we r, beset by the terms of debate laid by bitter reactionaries
In
@thecrimson
, Harry Lewis, CS prof & former dean, argued
@Harvard
catalog is littered w oppression, liberation, decolonization, & social justice
Repeated search for
@Princeton
Spring 24
They account for *only 1.3% of ugrad course seats*
1.3%=237/20K seats (5K UGs*4 courses)
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4/5 I admit I might have this tendency too but I'm always careful to be aware and hold it in check when I can. So here's some unsolicited advice to jr. scholars: also be aware, not just of people plagiarizing you but also of your own tendencies to do this. Be kind.
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7/8 I welcome a proper data-driven theoretically informed analysis of if/why sociology is in crisis. But that can’t be had if we as these editors do dismiss without any backing colleagues as ‘lazy’, ideological & making other unsubstantiated claims under the guise of true science
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To condemn racism, colonialism and murderous rage everywhere, whether as antisemitism, Islamophobia, Hamas’ violence or that of the colonial-Israeli regime. Not in the name of Palestine, Israel, God or nation but in the name of humanity. This is my ‘postcolonial’ vision.
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We at
@UChicagoSoc
are hiring 2 assistant professors: one in China studies and the other in quant/computational. See ads below
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2/2 in other words, peoples’ voices are being physically suppressed with bombs over “there,” and suppressed by propaganda over “here”, and the murder of Arab Americans means violent suppression is also coming “here”
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Wrong. 💯 wrong. If it wasn’t antisemitism, or plagiarism, it would’ve been something else. That’s kinda how white male imperial power works.
They were not fine, they were never fine, and it's embarrassing to the academy to insist they were. Teach your students good citation practices rather than excusing their lousy ones. If someone had taken time to do that for Gay, maybe we would've avoided this whole mess.
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5/5 Even if you feel you are a victim of it, be angry and indignant of course but try your best not to reproduce it. Can we strive to make the academic world, for all its bs and awful crap, just a little bit better?
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