The University of Chicago Division of the Social Sciences

UChicago Press awards top honor to Lisa Wedeen for ‘Authoritarian Apprehensions’

achristofersen — Wed, 25 May 2022 18:34:31 +0000

UChicago Press awards top honor to Lisa Wedeen for ‘Authoritarian Apprehensions’ achristofersen Wed, 05/25/2022 - 13:34

Political scientist wins 2022 Laing Award for book on Syrian uprising and conflict

The University of Chicago Press has awarded the 2022 Gordon J. Laing Award to political scientist Lisa Wedeen for Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria, which examines the country’s 2011 uprising and ensuing conflict.

'Authoritarian Apprehensions', by Lisa Wedeen

Given annually as the Press’ top honor, the Laing Award is presented to a UChicago faculty author, editor or translator of a book published in the previous three years that has brought the greatest distinction to the Press.

In Authoritarian Apprehensions, Wedeen draws on decades of scholarship and research on Syria to offer an erudite and compassionate analysis of the uprising of 2011—the revolutionary exhilaration of the initial days of unrest, and then the devastating violence that shattered hopes of any quick undoing of dictatorship.

“It is deeply gratifying—thrilling, really—to receive the 2022 Laing Award, because I love the Press and so value the views of my peers,” said Wedeen, the Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science. “Academic writing can be a lonely venture but it is also collaborative, and I am appreciative in particular of my Syrian friends, colleagues and interlocutors, without whom this book would not exist.”

In its review, the Times Literary Supplement praised Authoritarian Apprehensions as “a lucid and thought-provoking study” that “forces us to ponder the possibilities for political judgement in a world where facts no longer hold sway.” The reviewer noted how Wedeen helped to answer perplexing questions, including why so many ordinary Syrians have accepted the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

“I am appreciative in particular of my Syrian friends, colleagues and interlocutors, without whom this book would not exist.”

—Prof. Lisa Wedeen

Wedeen is also the author of Ambiguities of Domination and Peripheral Visions, both published by the UChicago Press. In addition, she is co-director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at UChicago, and an associate faculty member in the Department of Anthropology.

The Gordon J. Laing Award is named in honor of the scholar who, serving as general editor from 1909 until 1940, firmly established the character and reputation of the University of Chicago Press as the premier academic publisher in the United States. The prize is conferred by vote of the Board of University Publications, a committee of faculty members who oversee the Press’ imprint.

President Paul Alivisatos presented the award to Wedeen during a May 17 gala reception at the University of Chicago’s David Rubenstein Forum.

President Paul Alivisatos (right) presents the 2022 Laing Award to Prof. Lisa Wedeen. (Photo by Nancy Wong)

“The University of Chicago Press has been an important channel of engagement for our scholars since it first was conceived by William Rainey Harper at the time of our founding,” Alivisato said. “The Gordon J. Laing Award is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the work of our faculty and the special relationship they have shared with UChicago Press for more than 130 years. I am pleased to offer Lisa Wedeen my sincere congratulations for this well-deserved award.”

Added Garrett Kiely, director of the Press: “We are very proud to have published Lisa Wedeen’s work, which offers an insightful, research-driven engagement with authoritarianism and some of the most troubling concerns of our political present and future. Lisa is a great friend of the Press and we are excited to see her receive this honor.”

Prof. Christine Mehring, chair of the Board of University Publications, lauded Wedeen’s cross-disciplinary scholarship, expanding beyond political science to fields such as ethnography, media and film studies, social theory and artistic practice.

“Beyond providing an urgently needed contemporary account of an urgent contemporary crisis, Lisa mobilized her longstanding expertise on the Middle East and Syria to help us understand the ideological make up and media operations that have sustained a civil war and authoritarian regime, and challenged the very possibility for political change,” Mehring said.

Wedeen joins a distinguished list of previous recipients that includes Eve L. Ewing, Michael Rossi, Adrian Johns, Deborah Nelson, Alison Winter, Robert Richards, Martha Feldman, Bernard E. Harcourt, Philip Gossett and W. J. T. Mitchell.

—Adapted from a press release from the University of Chicago Press.

In the News Faculty Political Science Show

In new book, UChicago scholars confront white supremacy across American life

achristofersen — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 16:44:34 +0000

In new book, UChicago scholars confront white supremacy across American life achristofersen Wed, 10/27/2021 - 11:44

This story was originally published by UChicago News. Read the article on their site here.

Historians bring together essays that offer insight into white power violence

Characterizing white supremacy and putting it in context can be complicated, but a new book co-edited by two University of Chicago historians seeks to do just that.

“Some in the white power movement—neo-Nazis, Klansmen and others—openly espouse racist beliefs and conduct racist violence,” said Asst. Prof. Kathleen Belew. “But events like the Jan. 6 insurrection also involved people who would not themselves identify as white supremacists, but who espouse viewpoints that nevertheless uphold white supremacy.”

Asst. Prof. Kathleen Belew

Identifying and untangling these ideas is one of the goals of A Field Guide to White Supremacy, which Belew co-edited with Ramón A. Gutiérrez, the Preston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of U.S. History.

Published Oct. 26, the book brings together essays from some of the nation’s leading thinkers on race, violence and systems of exclusion—including Jamelle Bouie, Rebecca Solnit and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.

“Ramón and I realized that the way academic experts usually talk about racial violence, inequality and white supremacy is often very siloed,” said Belew, one of the nation’s leading experts on white power violence.

What was needed, she and Gutiérrez decided, was a public resource that provided background information for a more general readership about the social, legal and historical context of white power violence and racial inequality. They edited A Field Guide to White Supremacy in part to help start a conversation about how to frame and tackle these issues constructively.

In the following Q&A, Belew explains the rationale behind the book and her hopes for its impact, as well as her thoughts on the future of American democracy.

Why did you decide to call the book a ‘field guide’?

“Field guide” here means resources and tools for seeing and identifying white supremacy. It refers not only to the individual beliefs that some people hold, but the broader systems, histories and mechanisms by which racial inequality continues in the U.S. in 2021.

The beliefs and actions of individual people collide with broader systems that shape the way our society functions. Even when racist belief may not be present on a case-by-case basis—for example, in property ownership or maternal mortality—legal and social collusion have been involved in shaping those conditions in an unjust way.

“It refers not only to the individual beliefs that some people hold, but the broader systems, histories and mechanisms by which racial inequality continues.”

—Asst. Prof. Kathleen Belew, on identifying white supremacy

So, this volume is really trying to get at those intersections. We’re not trying to use the same brush to paint people who are openly racist and people who benefit from racial disparity and systems of inequality, but to articulate that these are related issues. There’s no way to confront one without thinking about the other.

The Jan. 6 insurrection happened while you were compiling this book. What was your reaction?

For me, Jan. 6 represented a collision of three different currents. One of those is organized white power activism, which I wrote about in my earlier book, Bring the War Home. Another current is QAnon, which is new and which has achieved deep radicalization at a speed and by mechanisms that we have not seen before, so I’m reluctant as a historian to say much more about it. The third current is the Trump base, the “Stop the Steal” rally-goers.

That third current is what this book can really help people understand. It’s not that they are all white power activists, but we have to be attuned to the way that extremist ideas are coming into the mainstream—and sometimes, even into our halls of governance. Our elected officials are now, in some cases, affiliated with some of these ideas. So, we have to be thinking about the people who came into politics through Jan. 6, and what the next steps might be for a movement that condones an act like that.

How did you go about choosing the essays that would be featured in the book?

We wanted to feature both academic scholarship and journalism that would be accessible to people outside academia. A number of these pieces came out of a conference that Ramón and I held at the University of Chicago in 2019.

Prof. Emeritus Ramón A. Gutiérrez

After that, we thought about what was missing from the book. I reached out to Rebecca Solnit—who I’m a huge fan of—to see if we could get permission to reprint an essay of hers that articulates the way that patriarchal violence underwrites white supremacy. Jamelle Bouie’s piece ran in Slate before he was a New York Times columnist, but I remember reading it at the time and being blown away by his account of the opening of the National Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.

Overall, we wanted to present a panorama of the different places in American life where people are exposed to systemic inequality, violence, exclusion and partial citizenship. We wanted to bring all those together in order to confront this as a set of problems, instead of treating them each as one-offs.

The book is broadly about white supremacy, but it delves into other forms of systemic inequality. Why did you adopt that approach?

The title came from the essays and not the other way around. If you dig deeper into many of these issues—for example, violence against LGBT+ people, like the Pulse nightclub shooting which is the subject of an essay in the book—it becomes clear that violence against people who are not straight or cis-presenting rests inside the broader white, patriarchal power structure. That power structure is attached to all these other histories, which is why we are trying to bring them into conversation.

“We have to be attuned to the way that extremist ideas are coming into the mainstream—and sometimes, even into our halls of governance.”

—Asst. Prof. Kathleen Belew

The book includes both your writing and that of many contributors. What did you write about?

I’m a scholar of white power violence, so my contribution to this volume is an essay that dispels the myth of “lone wolf attacks.” When we read about antisemitic violence at the Tree of Life Synagogue for example, or anti-Black violence in Charleston, we don’t think about the fact that those gunmen were united behind a white power ideology.

They had the same set of social convictions, and the same phrases in their manifestos. But when communities of survivors hear the story framed in the context of white power ideology, they might recognize that they have something in common, and they have a way to think about a coalition. So I think that there’s something really politically hopeful in bringing these stories—although they’re difficult—together into the same volume.

What impact do you hope the book will have?

'A Field Guide to White Supremacy', edited by Kathleen Belew and Ramón A. Gutiérrez

One of the book’s concrete takeaways is an understanding that many kinds of inequality are intertwined; and the fact that the founding idea of the United States as a collection of radical promises—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—was never intrinsically meant for everyone. At first, it was only white, free, property-owning men.

Over time, we have included more and more people in that project, but if we want to be serious about extending full citizenship to everyone, there’s work left to do. Because those categories have never expanded on their own, or through magnanimity: They’ve been extended through organization and connection between people.

What is your outlook on American democracy, given your familiarity with this country’s long history of political violence?

I think we’re at a perilous moment for American democracy, and one that is really “off the map” in terms of historical context. Historians like me often get asked: “Is this moment like the 1918 flu pandemic? Or Watergate?” History can illuminate different parts of the context that we face today, but this moment is also new and unique, so there are limits to what historians can say.

I tend to be a hopeful and optimistic person. There are reasons—in the case of curbing the white power movement, specifically—to be cautiously optimistic. For example, the FBI and DHS have now said that white power terrorism represents the most urgent terrorist threat to the homeland. That’s never happened before, and turning those resources toward this problem is a huge step in the right direction.

I don’t think it’s enough, and I think all of us at every level of American society have a lot of work to do. That’s what this volume lays out.

Faculty History Show

2 SSD PhD Students Recognized for Efforts to Drive Change

achristofersen — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 21:47:34 +0000

2 SSD PhD Students Recognized for Efforts to Drive Change achristofersen Thu, 09/30/2021 - 16:47

Diversity Advisory Board Awards honor 12 inaugural winners for efforts to drive change

This is an excerpt of a story published by UChicago News. Read the rest of the article here.

This year, the first-ever UChicagoGRAD Diversity Advisory Board (DAB) Awards were granted to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to diversity and inclusion efforts at the University of Chicago.

Sponsored by Graduate Council, the DAB Awards are designed to recognize a student from each academic unit. Conferring these accolades, said Diversity Advisory Board member Victoria Okuneye, is especially important as a matter of fairness.

“These awards honor students for work that doesn’t normally have a clear reward or recognition, or that is not recognized through the regular channels,” said Okuneye, a medical and doctoral student who joined DAB in 2018. “[This] work is not always equally distributed. We wanted to honor individuals who have been exemplary in their academic units, and to hopefully inspire others to follow suit.”

DAB selected 12 winners from over 70 nominations. While graduate students were nominated for a variety of activities and efforts, Okuneye noted some common themes: “Many winners are doing community education, organizing working with younger people, and working within departments.”

“We wanted to honor individuals who have been exemplary in their academic units, and to hopefully inspire others to follow suit.”

—Diversity Advisory Board member Victoria Okuneye

The DAB Awards reflect the University’s efforts to foster a more diverse and inclusive environment and build on the Diversity Leadership Awards, which this year began recognizing students in addition to faculty, staff, and alumni.

Dana Bozeman, who directs GRAD Diversity & Inclusion and advises DAB, credited the board’s two-year effort to push for funding and recognition for graduate students. Bozeman highlighted the work of Derek Nettingham, former communications chair for DAB, and Nova Smith, former programming chair, who together co-chaired DAB’s executive board during the selection process. “Tireless work of the DAB board made this happen,” Bozeman said of the awards.

“Recognizing the impactful efforts of students, who are making vital contributions in this area, is an important way we can acknowledge and reward those who are central in helping the University become and remain the welcoming, diverse, and inclusive institution that we aspire to be,” said Vice Provost Jason Merchant, who oversees graduate education.

In addition to celebrating the work of individuals across academic units, the DAB Awards program provides a community for underrepresented student leaders to learn from each other, share challenging issues facing their respective units, and work toward solutions.

Okuneye hopes the awards can also function as a recruitment tool. “The awards are a way of telling prospective graduate students that diverse graduate students are here,” she said. “Look for them, read about their works, and join our graduate community.”

Four graduate students received specialty awards honoring their efforts, and eight other winners represented their schools and divisions. Read below for information on the winners. For anyone interested in becoming a part of DAB or wishing to offer suggestions for future DAB awards, please contact Dana Bozeman.

Georgiana Simpson Research Award

The Georgiana Simpson Research Award is named after the University of Chicago alum who was the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in the United States. The award highlights scholarly work which critically looks at the current status of diversity in their given context. This year’s winner is Margaret Teresa Brower of the Department of Political Science.

Brower’s doctoral research investigates the experiences of people of color, especially women of color, to identify lawmaking and policies that better serve and represent their interests. Her scholarship with Cornell University’s Jamila Michener on the pandemic’s disproportionate negative impact on economic conditions for Black and Latina women in the workforce was featured in the Washington Post, MSNBC Live and NPR. She is currently researching how policymaking can better adapt to the intersectional experiences of women of color. She received grant awards from the Center for American Women and Politics, the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, and the Women in Politics Centennial Center for Political Science.

Social Sciences Division

Jharnae Love is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Mind and Biology, where she is one of the only BIPOC scientists in 10 research labs and willingly takes an active role in educating her peers through conversation and disseminating materials on how to build an “anti-racist lab.”

Love is one of the only BIPOC students in her program and hopes that changes prior to her graduation. To help drive this change, she took on a role as prospective student weekend coordinator and engaged with other opportunities focused on recruiting prospective students to the university. She is also involved with organizations including Black in Academia and Black Grad Coalition.

Read the rest of the awards here.

Psychology Political Science Show

Collaborating with Kenyan government on development innovations is key to fighting poverty, says Nobel laureate

achristofersen — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 16:11:06 +0000

Collaborating with Kenyan government on development innovations is key to fighting poverty, says Nobel laureate achristofersen Tue, 08/31/2021 - 11:11

This story was originally published by UChicago News. Read the story on their site here.

Economist Michael Kremer emphasizes the power of partnerships to identify scalable solutions to development challenges

For Prof. Michael Kremer, innovation goes hand-in-hand with in-country partnerships that can save lives and improve livelihoods.

A Nobel-winning development economist who joined the University of Chicago in 2020, Kremer has already worked on interventions that have benefitted millions of people through better health, education and improved water quality.

Prof. Michael Kremer

Recently, he traveled to Kenya—where he has worked for decades—to meet with government officials and build some of those partnerships as he works toward the launch of new initiatives through UChicago’s Development Innovation Lab.

His current work in the country focuses on simple innovations that can yield significant benefits. One example is text messages offering advice for farmers: A recent study published in Science, which Kremer co-authored with Raissa Fabregas at UT Austin and Frank Schilbach at MIT, suggests that this increases the number of farmers adopting advice by a fifth, and increases agricultural yields by 4% at a very low cost.

“Since I taught in Kenya before graduate school, the partnerships we’ve made here have led to so much rewarding work on a range of issues, including deworming and public health. I look forward to working with my colleagues to address new challenges, from vaccinations to education,” said Kremer, the University Professor in Economics, the College and the Harris School of Public Policy.

In 2019, Kremer won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with MIT’s Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo for work using field experiments to test interventions that reduce global poverty. He now serves as the faculty director for the Development Innovation Lab (DIL), which he started last fall to work with partners and use the tools of economics to identify, test, refine and scale development innovations.

Arthur Baker, the DIL’s associate director for research and planning, said collaborating with governments and other practitioners is one of the keys to creating successful solutions.

“Having close relationships with implementers and governments enables researchers to really understand the issues at hand, and how solutions might play out in practice” said Baker. “That partnership enables us to generate better solutions which can then be tested and refined.”

During his most recent trip to Kenya in July, Kremer met with a number of senior public officials in the Kenyan government, including Dr. Rashid Aman, the Chief Administrative Secretary of Kenya’s Ministry of Health, and Dr. Sara Ruto, the Chief Administrative Secretary of the Ministry of Education.

In both high-level meetings, Kremer shared research results and discussed future areas of partnership, noting that Kenya has been a torchbearer for evidence-based policy solutions. The government officials shared the policy and research priorities in the health and education sectors, and agreed to pursue opportunities of mutual interest that would build on identifying, testing, and scaling innovative solutions that would have a positive impact on the lives of Kenyans.

“The partnerships we’ve made here have led to so much rewarding work ... I look forward to working with my colleagues to address new challenges, from vaccinations to education.”

—Prof. Michael Kremer

—Prof. Michael Kremer —Prof. Michael Kremer

Kremer’s previous work in Kenya includes successful efforts to improve student health and educational outcomes by providing medicine that reduces infection by parasitic worms (“deworming”), and improving rural water quality through chlorination. Decades later, Kremer and his colleagues followed up with students who received deworming medicine and found positive impacts on their incomes as adults.

Now, he is examining new interventions that also have the potential to transform livelihoods—work that, as in his previous studies, relies in large part on partnerships with those on the ground who have knowledge of local issues.

In a recent episode of UChicago’s Big Brains podcast, Kremer said the prevalence of mobile phones in the developing world is creating new opportunities for innovative communication strategies.

“It’s possible to deliver information to farmers that is based on their location; tied to a particular time in the agricultural season; or timed around outbreaks of new pests,” he said. “So we did some trials of the impact of providing information to farmers, and found that it really did affect farmers’ behavior.”

Kremer notes that such solutions are not “magical” fixes to problems, but they can deliver real results: It’s cheap to send text messages, and if a few farmers use the information they contain to their advantage—for example, by applying lime to restore soil pH balance—the financial benefit can be ten times bigger than the cost of sending the texts in the first place.

This work is just one example of Kremer’s unique approach to innovation, which encompasses any change that can improve a system—including policy adjustments, communication strategies and technological advances. With Kenyan partners, Kremer is looking forward to developing and testing new innovations in agriculture, health and education through DIL.

“The combination of personal engagement on the ground with the intellectual rigor of research is producing very exciting work, both in terms of understanding the global landscape and in helping to provide practical solutions to problems facing people,” said Kremer.

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NYT: Did New Yorkers Who Fled to Second Homes Bring the Virus?

t-9kergo — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 15:56:46 +0000

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NYT: U.S. Is Nowhere Close to Reopening the Economy, Experts Say

achristofersen — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 15:05:55 +0000

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USA TODAY - Constitutional questions and hush money: Donald Trump's strange split screen court moments; Prof. Will Howell comments on Trump court proceedings

achristofersen — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 14:35:16 +0000

USA TODAY - Constitutional questions and hush money: Donald Trump's strange split screen court moments; Prof. Will Howell comments on Trump court proceedings achristofersen Fri, 04/26/2024 - 09:35 In the News Faculty Political Science https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/04/25/donald-trump-… Show Landscape

The Chronicle of Higher Education - Why Students Must Shout to Be Heard; In op-ed, Asst. Prof. Gabriel Winant addresses recent protests and free speech discussions in context of recent higher education history

achristofersen — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:52:07 +0000

The Chronicle of Higher Education - Why Students Must Shout to Be Heard; In op-ed, Asst. Prof. Gabriel Winant addresses recent protests and free speech discussions in context of recent higher education history achristofersen Thu, 04/25/2024 - 23:52 In the News Faculty History https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-students-must-shout-to-be-heard Show Landscape

The Wire China - Dali Yang on the Mistakes Made In Covid's Early Days

achristofersen — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:52:04 +0000

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Scientific American - Time Slows Down When We See Something Memorable; Asst. Prof. Wilma Bainbridge comments on new study into memorability out of GMU

achristofersen — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:52:03 +0000

Scientific American - Time Slows Down When We See Something Memorable; Asst. Prof. Wilma Bainbridge comments on new study into memorability out of GMU achristofersen Thu, 04/25/2024 - 23:52 In the News Faculty Psychology https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-slows-down-when-we-see-somethin… Show Landscape