iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

If I were to say something like “I looked into a scholar’s work at another university because I assumed he is a DEI hire,” I’m pretty sure my university would at least be having a conversation about that. That’s basically what Cofnas did

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

…I think it’s at least reasonable to say this bleeds into personal conduct

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Part of the issue with the Cofnas situation seems to be academic freedom vs personal conduct. The video seems to have been taken down, but Cofnas basically said he targeted Arday because he assumed he was a DEI hire, which is effectively saying he targeted him because he’s Black..,

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

It could be of course that ChatGPT is missing people, but 1 found out of over 500 seems notable

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Some of this could be because many of the signatories of the Cofnas letter are based outside of the US, but 150 are US-based, and by that logic only 7 on the letter are based in Belgium

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

For transparency, I asked ChatGPT to search for public statements and public signatures related to Ozturk for those who signed the Cofnas letter. It only found 1 (Michael Glennon).

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Of the over 500 signatories on this list, it seems, based on my brief investigation, that a very small number said or signed anything publicly in defense of Rumeysa Ozturk. I’m sure this was just an oversight

johnarmstrongmaths.com

As academics, we are concerned that Ghent University's disciplinary proceedings against Dr Cofnas appear to constitute retaliation, at least in part, for publicizing academic misconduct that occurred in British universities.

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Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

It remains very funny that there's an entire ecosystem of radical revolutionary left-wing populists who all have the exact same same social views as David Brooks.

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

If “value neutrality” means they can’t put a pride flag up at my kid’s school then count me the fuck out

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Yes but unfortunately I’ve seen a lot of people reading as a serious indictment of the discipline

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Critics of the AAUP endorsement can’t decide if endorsements are bad because of political neutrality or if this endorsement is bad because they don’t like the candidate, just like they can’t decide whether academia should be apolitical or should actively bring in conservatives

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

This feeds into another point that I think is lost in this conversation, which is that political beliefs are not inherent characteristics, but particularly in the case of academics, often positions that emerge from evidence

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Kwame Anthony Appiah, who is an author on the Vanderbilt Report, wrote thoughtfully about cosmopolitanism, but to say he’s not politically biased in favor of cosmopolitanism is preposterous

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

One thing I don’t understand is the heavy involvement of philosophers in these claims of bias. Am I really to understand that, in making their various arguments that rely invariably on subjective interpretation, these philosophers are exhibiting no political bias?

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Has anyone laid out a good case for 1) what is the actual problem with academia we are trying to solve regarding viewpoint diversity, 2) why it is important to solve this problem, and 3) how we should solve it, providing evidence to support all 3?

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Not the first of this type of study these authors have put out btw

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

New meta-analytic study looking at 114 field experiments on hiring discrimination, probably the majority of which have sociologist authors. Completely flies in the face of this claim from the WSJ article academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...

academic.oup.com

The racialized penalties of immigrant origin: meta-analytic evidence on hiring discrimination in twelve countries

Abstract. The role of discrimination in shaping the life chances of immigrants and their descendants is central to debates in the sociology of immigration.

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Pat McGovern @patmcgovern.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

A provocation from behind a paywall but Chris gives a flavour. #Sociology certainly has problems but this seems so badly researched and so inaccurate that it’s really just another anti-woke hit job.

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Eric Umansky @ericumansky.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

This is a masked ICE agent in upper Manhattan today. He walked up to a woman simply recording and pepper-sprayed her in the face. Watch the video. 👇

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Chloe N East (she/her) @chloeneast.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

My paper is out today in PNAS documenting how ICE activity in Trump 2.0 compares to the last 10 years and the mismatch between the action and the rhetoric. Joint with the fabulous @caitlinpatler.bsky.social and @elizabethacox.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Have any of the people supposedly defending objectivity in academia spoken out against this fallacious article? So far I’ve only seen them wholeheartedly or tacitly supporting it

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

One thing the viewpoint diversity people seem to be getting mixed up is whether they want a completely objective, apolitical academia, or they expressly want more conservatives in academia

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

According to this analysis the retraction rate of computer science articles stands out against all other fields. The authors point out there could be a variety of reasons for that, but interestingly I’ve seen no calls to liquidate computer science

arxiv.org

The Retraction Epidemic in Science Across Publishers, Fields, and Countries

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

One reason I don’t really care if academics represent the views of the public is that students are already exposed to the views of the public- college is a place where they can learn to question those views, whether they end up changing their mind or not

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

The people uncritically promoting this article seem pretty comfortable pushing a bunch of inaccurate claims because they support their political agenda- sounds awfully familiar

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

If you block me on social media for respectfully challenging your claims you don’t get to talk about viewpoint diversity ever again

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Someone allegedly promoting diversity of thought on X and who I have had many pleasant interactions with has blocked me because I politely disagreed with him. Hope he at least sees the irony

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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

In the past two weeks, Trump has recorded his lowest-ever approval ratings from whites without college degrees, across either term as president. yougov.com/en-us/articl...

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

This, of course, also assumes that quantitative methodology is inherently superior. I use these methods in almost all of my work but the idea that we can have a more complete understanding of the social world without qualitative methods is ridiculous

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

The people promoting “viewpoint diversity” are saying we should liquidate an entire discipline because they don’t like its viewpoint

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Tom Pepinsky @tompepinsky.com · 26/07/2026

Americans have more confidence in higher education than in big tech companies, and the gap is growing rather than shrinking. The higher ed-doomsday pundits need to get on board with the real vibe shift in public trust that is happening right now.

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I look forward to all the reports & coverage about all of the internal problems & mistakes of all of these other institutions, in the same way that universities are constantly blamed (& blaming themselves) for “declining trust.” “Compared to what?” news.gallup.com/poll/712436/...

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Trump looked at Venezuela, where a regime figure conducted an internal coup with US assistance, thought “actually, I did that” and decided he could easily conduct regime change anywhere on earth. A war caused by him being a blithering idiot.

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

This is a great point. If anyone wants to do a serious inquiry into this there is literally nothing stopping you

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I would add that this characterizes a lot of the critics in this space- “I’m doing things right and no one else is” animates so much of the discourse

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

The idea that you are among small number of serious thinkers in an entire field is so narcissistic and anti-social it really makes you wonder what the purpose of all this is

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I normally spend more time critiquing sociology than defending it but this is just a parade of bs that does not get at any of the actual issues in the discipline

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I beg you to read a major criminology journal or attend a major criminology conference and try to tell me this is a remotely accurate characterization

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

What if sociologists thought deeply and just landed on emancipation and social justice as important? Why would this be difficult to believe, unless you are so arrogant that you think you are one of the only “deep thinkers” in the field

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Overall, so many falsehoods, misrepresentations, and faulty assumptions in this article made by people who claim to be white knighting for “truth.” Embarrassing

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I beg you to read a major criminology journal or attend a major criminology conference and try to tell me this is a remotely accurate characterization

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Why would this be bad? Inequality covers an immense amount of topics and is a normal thing for sociology to focus on, especially if other disciplines are not

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

This is false. There is a huge amount of scholarship using experimental methods to study discrimination in sociology, and I would even argue that that type of methodology has become *more* favored in the field in the past 10 years

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Chris Maggio @chrisjmaggio.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

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