Technology is often tough on labor, whether it’s automation eating jobs or “gig economy” platforms undermining the traditional social contract between employer and employee. Now, some workers are trying to leverage social media and other online networks to their own ends. Professor Jake Rosenfeld comments on this issue.
As the #BlackLivesMatter campus protests have swept across some 60 colleges nationwide, American students, especially the most liberal ones, are being criticized for their intolerance of free speech. Recent data show that 43% of incoming freshmen in 2015 thought it should be a college’s right to ban extreme speakers; 71% supported prohibitions against racist and sexist speech.
Mark Rank, PhD, the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, has received the 2016 Society for Social Work and Research Book Award for his book “Chasing the American Dream: Understanding What Shapes Our Fortunes.”
Ever since Anita Hill testified in front of Congress about her experiences working for Clarence Thomas, then the chair of the EEOC, the issue of sexual harrassment has received significantly more attention. The difference between the workplace culture Hill encountered then and many (though not all) corporate workplaces today is stark.
Despite recent debates around public engagement and the value of our work, there are indications that sociology is still valued and vibrant. One such indication is the return of sociology to Washington University in St. Louis.
The sociology department, re-formed this semester after a nearly 25-year hiatus, currently consists of three professors, all new or returning inhabitants of St. Louis: David Cunningham, Jake Rosenfeld and Adia Harvey Wingfield. Each has unique expectations for the department and for the University.
The Department seeks applications for two tenured positions at the associate professor (possibly early full) level. The 2016 search targets scholars who use state-of-the-art quantitative methods in their research with a focus on either (1) inequality and stratification or (2) social movements and political sociology.
The new Department of Sociology will offer three new undergraduate courses in the fall of 2015
Three newly recruited professors will teach three classes offered in the new sociology department next semester.
Union decline associated with rising income inequality. Professor Jake Rosenfeld expresses his opinion.
Barry Z. Cynamon and Steven M. Fazzari, researchers on consumer behavior and how it effects the economy, wrote an op-ed for the St. Louis Post Dispatch in October 2007 in which they predicted that an end to the relentless trend of rising household debt and a subsequent crash in household spending could lead to a killer U.S. recession.