Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
The Dean of ‘Ism’ Studies: Walter Laqueur, 1921-2018
Walter Laquer, who fled the Holocaust, experienced the birth of Israel, founded the ‘Journal of Contemporary History,’ and was an unflinching sentinel against terrorism and an authoritarian Russia, died on September 30. He was 97.
Washington and Social Science: Rare Accord Seen in Appropriations
For the first time in more than 20 years, Congress enacted into law the annual Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Act prior to the end of the fiscal year and for the first time in more than 10 years it did the same for the Defense Appropriations Act. What it didn’t do is approve the bill that funds the National Science Foundation.
Archived Webinar: Voicing Movements in the Face of Censorship
Each year since 1982 the American Library Association has spearheaded a celebration of books that have been suppressed or banned. Two authors of banned books, a sociologist and the deputy editor of ‘Index on Censorship’ discusses banned books in this archived webinar.
Geographer Gardner to Head Academy of Social Sciences
The longtime director of the Royal Geographical Society, Rita Gardner CBE, will be the new chief executive of the United Kingdom’s Academy of Social Sciences. She fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Stephen Anderson after more than 10 years.
Collaboration Imbues SSRC’s ‘To Secure Knowledge’ Report
In launching its first-ever task force report on Monday, the 95-year-old Social Science Research Council made clear it gets by with a little help from its friends. Collaboration, said sociologist Alondra Nelson Nelson, the president of the SSRC, is the byword of the report, To Secure Knowledge: Social Science Partnerships for the Common Good.
Golden Goose Award Recognizes Implicit Bias Work
U.S. government-funded research that on its face looked only at fame, names and gender turned out to be pioneering work into implicit bias. This year a Golden Goose Award went to three researchers who developed the concept of implicit bias and then made a huge impact on popular culture by giving the world a test to measure it.
Washington and Social Science: NSF Funding Not Part of Fast-Tracked Bills
The US Senate approved a “minibus” appropriations bill that combined the FY19 Defense and Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations Acts. The Senate also cleared for the president’s signature the FY19 Defense Authorization Act, and the measure was signed into law on August 13. But the bill that includes NSF funding has gone nowhere.
Washington and Social Science: Will a Wall Derail Budget Train?
The U.S. Congress is focused on passing its suite of appropriations bills — including funding for NSF and the Census — before the end of the current fiscal year, and is further along on that path that has been common in recent years. But a presidential threat to shut down government may upset that plan.
