Can Millennials Afford a House without Family Help? Professor Yuval Elmelech on Marketplace
Yuval Elmelech, an associate professor of sociology at Bard College and author of the book Wealth, spoke with Marketplace about the difficulty millennials face in buying a house, especially in cities such as San Francisco and New York where they are being priced out and even forced to relocate. For many who live there, parental wealth has made a big difference. “If parents can help their children buy a home, this means that these children will need to rely less on loans and mortgages,” he said. “Whereas other young couples, individuals who cannot rely on parental resources—and this is the majority of the population—will have to take out higher loans.”
Can Millennials Afford a House without Family Help? Professor Yuval Elmelech on Marketplace
Yuval Elmelech, an associate professor of sociology at Bard College and author of the book Wealth, spoke with Marketplace about the difficulty millennials face in buying a house, especially in cities such as San Francisco and New York where they are being priced out and even forced to relocate. For many who live there, parental wealth has made a big difference. “If parents can help their children buy a home, this means that these children will need to rely less on loans and mortgages,” he said. “Whereas other young couples, individuals who cannot rely on parental resources—and this is the majority of the population—will have to take out higher loans.”
Jennifer H. Madans ’73, former National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) associate director for science and acting director, cowrote an op-ed for The Hill about how the lack of investment in maintaining and modernizing national health data infrastructure was a weak link in the administration’s data-driven COVID-19 response. “Just as the timeliness and granularity of employment data, with information by state, if not county, and by sector or product category, help bolster our economy and job growth, more timely and granular health statistics would improve public health.”
Opinion: Alumna Jennifer H. Madans ’73 Identifies “Weak Link in the Administration’s Data-Driven COVID-19 Response”
Jennifer H. Madans ’73, former National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) associate director for science and acting director, cowrites an op-ed for The Hill about how a lack of government funding for the NCHS was a “weak link in the administration’s data-driven COVID-19 response.” The NCHS is the Department of Health and Human Services’ equivalent of the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. It collects and disseminates core public health information on births, deaths, chronic and acute disease, disability and health care access and utilization. “Just as the timeliness and granularity of employment data, with information by state, if not county, and by sector or product category, help bolster our economy and job growth, more timely and granular health statistics would improve public health.”
Madans asserts: “Had investments been made in maintaining and modernizing the health data infrastructure we would have had information on COVID-related deaths, hospitalizations, ambulatory care visits and symptoms along with information on the impacts of the pandemic on wellbeing. This would have allowed for immediate tracking of the pandemic at its earliest stages and the continuing monitoring of response capabilities as it changed course. Without this investment, the data that were produced were delayed and in many cases they were of limited quality, which hampered our ability to control the pandemic and meet the health and health care needs of the population.”
Currently completing her doctoral work in sociology at Rutgers University, Jomaira Salas Pujols will join the faculty of the Sociology Program at Bard College in fall 2022. Her work focuses on race, place, education, and Black girlhood, with her doctoral dissertation examining the consequences of movement on Black girls’ perceptions of self, their identities, and their worlds.
Jomaira Salas Pujols, Alumna of the Posse Foundation, to Join Bard Faculty in Fall 2022
Currently completing her doctoral work in sociology at Rutgers University, Jomaira Salas Pujols will join the faculty of the Sociology Program at Bard College in fall 2022. Her work focuses on race, place, education, and Black girlhood, with her doctoral dissertation examining the consequences of movement on Black girls’ perceptions of self, their identities, and their worlds. “I look forward to supporting Posse Scholars as a faculty member at Bard,” Jomaira says, “and to joining an institution that is so deeply committed to the public good.”
How Campus Activist Madeline Firkser ’19 Channeled Her Passions Into a Career
Madeline Firkser’s advice for activists and young job seekers is the same: Participate. Firkser spoke with the Wall Street Journal about how she pivoted after realizing her first job wasn’t a good fit. Firkser is the special projects associate at JustLeadershipUSA, a New York City–based criminal justice reform organization.
Two Bard College Students Win Highly Competitive Gilman Study Abroad Scholarships
Bard College students Jourdan Perez ’23 and Tallulah Woitach’23 have been awarded highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships from the U.S. Department of State to study abroad. Perez was awarded $4,500 toward his studies at Bard College Berlin in fall 2021, and Woitach was awarded $4,000 toward her studies at the University of Sydney in Spring 2022.
“It is an unbelievable honor to be selected for such a prestigious award,” said Woitach, a written arts major. “I am so beyond excited to go to Australia to study indigenous culture, with a focus on oral tradition. All too often in western culture, the written word becomes distanced from the deeper ancient energy language is borne out of. I want to learn from those who know how to make words come alive, by connecting to something much greater than ourselves.”
“I'm very excited to explore Berlin and continue studying German language and culture,” said Perez, a sociology major with a concentration in gender and sexuality studies. “I would like to thank Trish Fleming (Bard’s Study Abroad Adviser) for informing me about the Gilman Scholarship, as well as reviewing my application one last time before I submitted.”
Perez and Woitach were among more than 1,500 U.S. undergraduate students selected to receive Gilman scholarship awards from the March 2021 application deadline. The recipients of this prestigious scholarship are American undergraduate students attending 467 U.S. colleges and represent all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. These Gilman Scholars will study or intern in 96 countries through the end of 2022.
The U.S. Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program enables students of limited financial means to study or intern abroad, providing them with skills critical to our national security and economic prosperity. Gilman Scholars receive up to $5,000, or up to $8,000 if also a recipient of the Gilman Critical Need Language Award, to apply toward their study abroad or internship program costs. Since the program’s establishment in 2001, over 1,300 U.S. institutions have sent over 33,000 Gilman Scholars of diverse backgrounds to 151 countries around the globe. The program has successfully broadened U.S. participation in study abroad, while emphasizing countries and regions where fewer Americans traditionally study. As Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, “People-to-people exchanges bring our world closer together and convey the best of America to the world, especially to its young people.” The late Congressman Gilman, for whom the scholarship is named, served in the House of Representatives for 30 years and chaired the House Foreign Relations Committee. When honored with the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2002, he said, “Living and learning in a vastly different environment of another nation not only exposes our students to alternate views but adds an enriching social and cultural experience. It also provides our students with the opportunity to return home with a deeper understanding of their place in the world, encouraging them to be a contributor, rather than a spectator in the international community.”
The Gilman Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and is supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education (IIE). For more information, visit gilmanscholarship.org.
About Bard College Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
Sociologist Karen Barkey Joins Bard Faculty as Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Kellogg Chair of Sociology and Religion
Bard College announces the appointment of Sociologist Karen Barkey to the College faculty as Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Kellogg Chair of Sociology and Religion for the five-year period 2021-2026, beginning fall 2021. Barkey’s research explores the fields of comparative, historical and political sociology and the sociology of religion. Her research areas span from the rise of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires to the end of these empires in the late 19th and 20th centuries, and nation building in their aftermath. She is the Haas Distinguished Chair of Religious Diversity at the Othering & Belonging Institute, the director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion, the co-director of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion and professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.
“We are honored to welcome distinguished scholar Karen Barkey to the Bard faculty as well as the Open Society University Network at a moment when renewed efforts to understand cooperation, coexistence, and inclusion as well as conflict across difference have become increasingly critical,” said Bard’s Dean of the College, Deirdre d’Albertis.
Karen Barkey has been engaged in the comparative and historical study of the state, with special focus on its transformation over time. She has focused on state society relations, peasant movements, banditry, opposition and dissent organized around the state. Her main empirical site has been the Ottoman Empire, in comparison with France, the Habsburg, and the Russian Empires. She also pays attention to the Roman and Byzantine worlds as important predecessors of the Ottomans.
Her work Empire of Difference (Cambridge UP, 2008) is a comparative study of the flexibility and longevity of imperial systems. In different chapters, the book explores the key organizational and state society related dynamics of imperial longevity. This book demonstrates that the flexible techniques by which the Ottomans maintained their legitimacy, the cooperation of their diverse elites both at the center and in the provinces, as well as the control over the economic and human resources were responsible for the longevity of this particular “negotiated empire.” In the process, it explores important issues such as diversity, the role of religion in politics, Islam and the state as well as the manner in which the Sunni-Shi’a divide operated during the tenure of the Ottoman Empire. Such topics are relevant to the contemporary setting and the conflicts we endure today.
Barkey is now pursing different projects on religion and toleration. She has written on the early centuries of Ottoman state toleration and is now exploring different ways of understanding how religious coexistence, toleration and sharing occurred in different historical sacred sites under Ottoman rule. She published an edited book, Choreography of Sacred Spaces: State, Religion and Conflict Resolution (with Elazar Barkan) (Columbia UP, 2014) that explores the history of shared religious spaces in the Balkans, Anatolia and Palestine/Israel, all three regions once under Ottoman rule. The book explores the politics and culture of conflict and cooperation over religious sites. It also provides the historical antecedents to help us understand the accommodation and contention around specific sites in the modern period, tracing comparatively areas and regime changes over time. In many places the long history of sharing sacred sites serves as an indicator of the possibilities for pluralism in the context of empire.
Barkey is one of the curators of the traveling Shared Sacred Sites exhibition. She has worked on the exhibition in the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Museum of Photography and the Yeni Cami in Thessaloniki (2017) and the New York exhibition at the NYPL, Morgan Library and Museum and CUNY Graduate Center (2018). She also runs a website on this topic which brings international participants and expertise on many shared sites around the world. She started this project to promote awareness and understanding of coexistence among religions. You can see more on the site: sharedsacredsites.net.
Barkey was awarded the Germaine Tillion Chair of Mediterranean Studies at IMéRA, for 2021-2022. IMéRA is the Institute for Advanced Studyof Aix-Marseille University, and a member of the French Network of Institutes for Advanced Study. Barkey was born in Istanbul, Turkey. After she graduated from the Lycée Notre Dame de Sion, in Istanbul, she moved to the United States for her college education. She got her BA degree from Bryn Mawr College, an MA degree from The University of Washington, and a PhD from the University of Chicago.
About Bard College Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
Jomaira Salas Pujols Joins Bard College Sociology Program Faculty
Bard College announces the appointment of Jomaira Salas Pujols to its Sociology Program faculty. Pujols, a doctoral candidate in the department of sociology at Rutgers University, uses qualitative methods to study race, place, education, and Black girlhood. She will teach courses on the sociology of race and ethnicity; the sociology of youth; and race, space, and place starting in the fall 2021.
“Jomaira Salas Pujols's doctoral thesis, Black Girls’ Journeying: Identifying and Challenging (In)justice throughMovement,is interdisciplinary and path-breaking. Interfacing with history, anthropology, and Africana Studies, as well as sociology, her scholarship engages deeply with public-facing projects and civic engagement,” said Deirdre d’Albertis, Bard’s Dean of the College. “As a proud alumna of Bryn Mawr College, Professor Salas Pujols will bring her intellectual commitments and experience to Annandale with real understanding of the Bard's distinctive mission.”
“I am thrilled to be joining the Bard College community this fall,” said Pujols. “I first encountered sociology as an undergraduate, and it offered me a window for making sense of the world around me. In my courses, I plan to work together with students to think about society's most pressing problems and our shared responsibility to solve them. Knowing Bard students, I can't think of a better place to take on this work!”
Pujols’s dissertation examines the consequences of movement on Black girls' perceptions of self, their identities, and their worlds—a concept she defines as journeying. Jomaira is also a youth worker, community-based facilitator, and founding member of the Black Latinas Know Collective. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and published by the Youth & Society journal.
The Bard Sociology Program provides students with an understanding of the structures and processes of human society—from everyday interactions with friends, coworkers, and family members to macro-level processes of global magnitude. The sociology curriculum offers a theoretical and methodological foundation for examining social, cultural, and political forces and analyzing how they shape people’s behavior, interpretations, social status, and well-being. Through exposure to a wide array of quantitative, qualitative, and historical research, sociology students learn to study the social world in a way that is both rigorous and flexible. For more information, visit sociology.bard.edu.
About Bard College Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 160-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
Through Thrive On! Kingston, Aidan Galloway ’21 and Keyvious Avery ’21 Raise Money and Distribute Resource Kits to Support Kingston’s Homeless Community during COVID-19 Pandemic
Created as part of Professor Peter Klein’s Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences course Hudson Valley Cities / Environmental (In)Justice, Galloway and Avery’s project distributes resource kits to high-volume homeless shelters in Kingston, as well as the community organization Beyond the 4 Walls Outreach Program. Not limited to masks, wipes, and PPE equipment, Thrive On! Kingston kits include other essentials such as soap, shaving kits, body wash, shampoo, reusable bags, water bottles, notebooks, pens, and blankets, among other items.
Sociology major Bernadette Benjamin’s Senior Project focuses on understanding the experiences of black women in Japan and how women within the black diaspora navigate in that country. In her research, the Brooklyn, New York, native concentrates on how black women perceive their identity—whether racial, gender, national, or combined identity—in their interactions and encounters with others. Bernadette utilizes the idea of “controlling images” by Patricia Hill Collins and the book Stigma by Erving Goffman to evaluate the mechanisms black women use to analyze their experiences and sense of belonging in Japanese society. She also takes Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson to explain the citizen-versus-foreigner dichotomy in Japan and how that contrast, in turn, affects black women’s abilities to integrate into Japanese communities.
Bernadette will soon travel to Japan to begin the JET (Japanese Exchange and Teaching) program. She hopes to remain in Japan for two years before prepping to go to law school to study either educational or international law. While her current plans depend on the spread of COVID-19, she is optimistic about the plans she has in store.
Post Date: 07-28-2020
Sociology Events
4/07
Friday
Friday, April 7, 2023
Legacies of Russian Imperialism
Russian-Ukrainian war Olin, Room 20312:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 This event will uncover some histories of Russian oppression and colonial domination within the Ukrainian context and include a panel discussion where students from other post-soviet countries will share their experience with Russification and how it affects their lives. Then there will be a Q&A session.
Webinar talk by Danielle Purifoy Online Event12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5 This talk examines how the contemporary timber industry reproduces plantation power. It explores the “remote control” of land — such as absentee land ownership, Black family land grabs, new markets for energy, and legal regimes designed to “devalue” common property in favor of individual ownership and profit. Multi-generation Black homeplaces and communities, rooted in alternative modes of land relations, sustain themselves despite the friction between the economic interests of racial capitalism and the ecological interests of long-standing forest interdependence. With the further concentration of forestland ownership and local divestment throughout the Alabama Black Belt and the US South, the reciprocal traditions of Black forest ecologies represent modes of land relation and intervention that are necessary for livable futures.
The CHRA Talk & Book Series celebrates critical voices working at the intersection of Human Rights and the Arts. Each year, we invite inspiring artists and activists from around the globe to share their practice or discuss their research. Each public talk is followed by a moderated discussion, and both are subsequently edited and published in a collected volume.