The Academic Trumpists: Radicals Against Liberal Diversity

Swartz, David L. 2025. The Academic Trumpists: Radicals Against Liberal Diversity. Routledge Press.

academic trumpsists

There has been an outpouring of research on populist conservatism since the advent of the Trump presidency and extreme right movements in Europe. Much less studied, however, is the growing political conservatism in the American academy and how it relates to populist sentiment. The Academic Trumpists addresses a gap in the research literature by looking at the impact of Trumpism on conservative faculty. It compares 109 professors who publicly support Trump to 89 conservative professors who oppose Trump. All 198 function as public intellectuals who advocated publicly their views.

Project Management for Researchers: A Practical, Stress-Free Guide to Getting Organized

Noy, Shiri 2024. Project Management for Researchers: A Practical, Stress-Free Guide to Getting OrganizedUniversity of Michigan Press.

project management for researchers

Learning how to organize and manage research is important for both the researcher and for advancing research. However, graduate students are often trained in theories, methods, and disciplines, but rarely in the organizational, administrative, and metacognitive skills required to manage research projects. Moreover, several disciplines are decrying a reproducibility crisis, with a concerted academic push toward open-access approaches. By clearly organizing research, graduate students and researchers can ensure that they are able to account for their methodological, theoretical,  and other research decisions: to reviewers, to funding agencies, and to support the development of new ideas and exciting offshoots of projects. 

Defenders of the Status Quo? Energy Protests and Policy (In)Action in Sweden

Uba, Katrin and Cassandra Engeman. 2024. Defenders of the Status Quo? Energy Protests and Policy (In)Action in Sweden. Social Forces, soae166. DOI:10.1093/sf/soae166

indicators of democracy

The spread of democracy across the Global South has taken many different forms, but certain features are consistent: implementing a system of elections and an overarching mission of serving the will and well-being of a country’s citizens. But how do we hold politicians accountable for such a mission? How are we to understand the efficacy of the policies they put forth? In Indicators of Democracy Diana Graizbord exposes the complex, often-hidden world of the institutions that are meant to ensure democratic accountability and transparency. Taking the case of Mexico’s National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), Graizbord provides a deep theory of what happens when democratic aspirations intersect with technocratic ambitions. Analyzing what it takes to establish and sustain monitoring and evaluation as a form of official state expertise, Graizbord is able to put forward the contours of technodemocracy—a democratic political project that hinges on the power of experts to shape politics in unexpected but profound ways.

Disciplinary Futures: Sociology in Conversation with American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies

Kim, Nadia Y. and Pawan Dhingra. 2023. Disciplinary Futures: Sociology in Conversation with American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies. NYU Press.

disciplinary futures

There is a growing consensus that the discipline of sociology and the social sciences broadly need to engage more thoroughly with the legacy and the present day of colonialism, Indigenous/settler colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism in the United States and globally. In Disciplinary Futures, a cross-section of scholars comes together to engage sociology and the social sciences by way of these paradigms, particularly from the influence of disciplines of American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies.

Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Fight Over the U.S. Labor Movement

Stepan-Norris, Judith and Jasmine Kerrisse. 2023. Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Fight Over the U.S. Labor Movement. Oxford University Press.

union booms and busts

The book is a comparative and historical analysis of the factors that helped or hindered workers in their attempts to build unions in the U.S.’s 11 basic industries, 1900-2015. For each industry, we analyze shifts in union power (union density), as affected by the state and macro context, replacement costs of workers, union and employer strategies, and the impact of employment, race, gender, and occupation.