COMING FALL 2020: This course will examine the historic moment in which we are living in order to introduce students to the concept of race and discipline of sociology.

In many parts of the country, black and white Americans continue to live in very different worlds. This distinctive feature of American inequality is not an accidental development but rather a result of policy choices.

In this contribution to the “Covid-19 and the Social Sciences” series, Patricia Fernández-Kelly connects the killing of George Floyd, and the powerful public responses to it, to both the current social conditions of the pandemic and the broader historical structural dimensions of racism in US society. Fernández-Kelly draws on a range of sociological perspectives to shed light on what she calls the “proximate and deep-seated causes” of both violence directed at African Americans and the wave of protests of recent weeks. by Patricia Fernández-Kelly

Given the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, schools across the country have canceled their in-person commencement exercises. To celebrate the graduates whose final years of school have been upended, former first lady Michelle Obama and former president Barack Obama are taking part in a YouTube special. This is Mrs. Obama’s address to the Class of 2020.