by Jill Brantley 

The Stuart A. Rice Award for Career Achievement will be presented to Steven A. Tuch, Professor of Sociology, Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University, in recognition of his many contributions to scholarship and teaching. Professor Tuch also served as DCSS President (2000-2001) and maintained the DCSS e-mail news list for many years. His career has been focused on two issues: the place of quantitative methodology in the analysis of social science data and the study of inequality in the US and Europe, with a special emphasis on race relations in the US.

Steve has been an active scholar and collaborator, frequently co-authoring with current and past members of DCSS. In 2022, he published (with Paul M. Kellstedt and Guy D. Whitten) The Fundamentals of Social Research (Cambridge University Press). His 2013 book, Religion, Politics, and Polarization, co-authored with William V. D’Antonio and Josiah R. Baker, won the DCSS Rosenberg award in 2015. Other books include The Other African Americans: Contemporary African and Caribbean Immigrants in the United States (co-edited with Yoku Shaw-Taylor, 2007); Race and Policing in America: Conflict and Reform (co-authored with Ronald Weitzer, 2006); and Racial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change (co-edited with Jack K. Martin, 1997). Among many articles, he has recently returned to one of his central concerns in “Racial Attitudes in the Deep South: Persistence and change at the University of Alabama, 1963-2013” (with Michael Hughes et. al.), published in Sociological Inquiry in 2023.

Professor Tuch has also been active in building bridges between Polish and American sociology in works like “Urbanism and Tolerance Revisited: Racial Attitudes in the United States” with Michael Hughes in Marta Smagacz-Poziemska, Krzysztof Frysztacki, and Andrzej Bukowski (eds.), Re-Imagining the City: Municipality and Urbanity Today from a Sociological Perspective, 2017.

Steve has been a supportive and generous advisor to dozens of doctoral and MA students in the graduate program and served as Department Chair from 2007 to 2013.

We hope you will join us in honoring Professor Steven A. Tuch at the April 18 DCSS awards reception.

OMB Publishes Revisions to Statistical Policy Directive No. 15: Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity

On March 28, OMB published a set of revisions to Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 (Directive No. 15): Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity, the first since 1997. This process started in June 2022, with the first convening of the Interagency Technical Working Group of Federal Government career staff who represent programs that collect or use race and ethnicity data. Since that first convening, OMB has reviewed 20,000 comments and held almost 100 listening sessions to finalize the important standards they have announced.

See the complete announcement online.

OMB has extended the time to submit comments on these regulations to April 27. 

Solving Global Poverty

10th Annual Sociology of Development Conference
Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C. October 18-20, 2024

The Section invites abstracts for papers for a conference hosted by the American Sociological Association Sociology of Development Section and Johns Hopkins University.  While the theme is "Solving Global Poverty," they welcome submissions on any topic relevant to the sociology of development.

Deadline for Submissions: April 2, 2024 11:59 PM

See the complete call for papers online.

Across the nation, politicians are interfering in educational decisions that should appropriately be made by subject matter experts. In Florida, for example, sociology was removed from the general education core course options by the Board of Governors, despite the recommendation of an expert panel of faculty. Educational gag order laws have been passed in many states, and similar bills are currently under consideration. Several states have executive orders or other forms of policy restricting what can be taught in classrooms. At the heart of these gag orders is the subject matter sociologists teach, including inequality, race, gender, and sexuality. The current political movement against so-called “divisive concepts” is in fact an existential threat to our discipline. The best way to fight these attacks is to demonstrate to voters and policymakers the value of the work we do. That is the goal of the Value of Sociology Initiative.

Update for Students: The Value of Sociology TikTok/Instagram Contest. The deadline to enter is April 22, 2024.

Several DCSS members and friends attended the March 9 performance of Tempestuous Elements, a world premiere play that brought the life of Anna Julia Cooper to the Arena Stage. Tempestuous Elements deals with a moment in 1905 when Cooper, as Principal of the M Street School in DC, the most advanced secondary school for African Americans in the country, fought for the right of African American students to have the option of following either a vocational curriculum or the classical college-preparatory curriculum. In a scandal orchestrated by the government, her tenure as principal is sabotaged by her colleagues and neighbors leading Cooper's professional and personal relationships to become fodder for innuendo and social ostracization.

Anna Julia Cooper’s contributions to social theory, education, and the long struggle for civil rights in Washington, DC, are described in “A Washington Life: the Sociology of Anna Julia Cooper” by Patricia Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge-Brantley (The Sociologist, May 2016). DCSS established the Anna Julia Cooper Award for Public Sociology by a Community Organization in 2019.

Tempestuous Elements references topics from the legacy of slavery through the unfinished work of Reconstruction to the troubled history of segregated education. It is no exaggeration to say that the issues confronting the characters on the stage in 1905 are all very much still part of our ongoing quest for democracy and justice. Numerous luminaries from the historical struggle for civil rights, including Mary Church Terrell and W. E. B. DuBois, join Cooper in advocating for educational equity for her students.

Read "Anna Julia Cooper’s Courageous Revolt: The History Behind ‘Tempestuous Elements’ at Arena Stage" by Emma O'Neill-Dietel on the WETA Boundary Stones website and "How the Black female head of a top D.C. school was ‘punished for leading’ " by Shirley Moody-Turner in The Washington Post opinion section.

Tempestuous Elements, written by Kia Corthron and directed by Psalmayene 24, would fit well in the syllabus of courses on the sociology of education or the history of civil rights or Washington, DC. Perhaps this new dramatization will generate interest in organizing an academic conference “in the spirit of Anna Julia Cooper.” If you would like to report on your teaching or scholarship on these topics or have thoughts about how we might present them to the DMV sociological community, please let us know at dcsociologicalsociety@gmail.com.

Image courtesy of Sally Hillsman

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is the host for the Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education. "Making higher education a more safe, inclusive, and respectful place where everyone can work and learn." The Action Collaborative brings together leaders from academic and research institutions and key stakeholders to move beyond basic legal compliance to evidence-based policies and practices for addressing and preventing all forms of sexual harassment and promoting a campus climate of civility and respect. 

Information about organizational membership, events, and resources is on the National Academies website.

Registration for the 2024 Annual Meeting is open. Visit registration information for details on rates and policies. All participants on the Annual Meeting program are required to register.

The Annual Meeting will be held August 9-13, 2024 in Montreal, Canada. ASA President Joya Misra has chosen the theme “Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy.”

The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) has released its annual College and University Rankings for Federal Social and Behavioral Science R&D, which highlight the top university recipients of research dollars in the social and behavioral sciences.

COSSA's website also features a rankings dashboard with an interactive map of recipients of social and behavioral science R&D funding so you can see how your university stacks up among U.S. institutions.

The University of Maryland ranked 4th, Johns Hopkins University 49th, George Washington University 52nd, and George Mason University 59th.

Join the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) on April 8-9, 2024 in Washington, DC. Advocacy Day brings together social and behavioral scientists and science advocates from across the country to engage with policymakers.

Note that this opportunity is available to individuals affiliated with a COSSA member organization. If you are a member of or employed by one of COSSA’s member organizations, you are eligible to participate. DCSS is not a COSSA member organization.

For complete information, see the registration page online.

The Sociologist is the public magazine of the District of Columbia Sociological Society (DCSS). The February 2024 issue is now available of the TS website; you can go directly to that issue or learn more about TS via its page on the DCSS website.

Issue Contents

• Interview With ASA Immediate Past President Prudence Carter
• Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy
• Remembering a Scholar, Mentor, Colleague, and Friend (Esther Chow)
  
• Remembering John P. Drysdale
• A Researcher’s Story on Uncovering the Truth Behind WIC
• Documentaries in Sociology
• Harold Cruse, Black Intellectuals, and Reconstructing Black America
• Revisiting Transracial vs. Transgender Identity
• Ask a Sociologist: Racism in the Courts
• Ask a Sociologist: Who Are You?