Progressive Media Advocates
Claude Fischer is a professor of sociology at UC Berkeley. He is known for his work on urban and community studies, inequality (particularly his response to The Bell Curve, a 1994 book on IQ and class), social networks and personal relationships, and social change in American history. Fischer is best known outside academia for America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. His recent books include Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character, in 2010, and Still Connected: Family and Friends in America since 1970, in 2011.
Claude Fisher: Whatever position one has on the the current immigration debate, if we are going to invoke history in that debate, let’s invoke the real history: European immigrants a century ago did get help, distinctively high levels of help, on their way to assimilation and success in America.
Claude Fischer: Baby Boomers are committing suicide at alarming rates. Suicide rates generally rise and fall in response to several factors. Today, there appears to be a confluence of factors at play. One is simply how accurately we determine and count which deaths are suicides.
Claude Fischer: What we see is the development of a sexual code consistent with American “voluntarism”: An individual is free to pursue his or her personal desires against any group pressures except when that individual has entered into a voluntary compact.
Claude Fischer: Today, Americans are the least likely, among the citizens of affluent nations, to support price controls or generally any interference in the market.
Claude Fischer: Whereas Americans used to live longer and stronger lives than our European counterparts, we have been lapped by the Old World. Maybe we need to think again about our “complex of traditions, principles and institutions.”
Claude Fischer: To the extent that facts matter in such a politicized debate, it is becoming increasingly clear that equality rather than inequality is a better policy for economic growth.
Claude Fischer: Political scientists have long established that most Americans cannot reliably identify which specific policies each party supports, that people adopt party loyalties quite early in life, and that most stick to those loyalties whatever happens.
Claude Fischer: Whatever the facts may be, the charge that huge numbers of shiftless moochers live off hard-working taxpayers feels true to many Americans – and has felt true to many Americans for centuries.
Randy Shaw: Obama could regain young people’s support by lowering student loan rates, enacting immigration reform and rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, but time—and his political capital—is running out.
Steve Hochstadt: The women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s finally made an issue of fathering. If women were going to get out of the house and into the workplace, men had to change their roles, too.
The Frying Pan: A successful mayor and council cannot be satisfied with merely coping as issues arise, but must be able to anticipate and define the city´s needs for the next four years. As our newly elected leaders prepare for their roles, we´ve asked writers to share their thoughts about what lies ahead for Los Angeles.
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