Weekly Roundup
Jan 6 – 12, 2025
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
Intelligence, 2025
Abstract: The Advanced Placement (AP) program was originally designed to provide advanced coursework to intellectually able students while still in high school. Given the attention paid to AP participation and performance in college admission decisions, it is important to consider sex and race/ethnicity differences in those measures. Here, I report on participation and performance for 19 different AP exams for even-numbered years from 1996 to 2022. Females are consistently overrepresented among examinees in many and in the most common AP exams. At the same time, for many exams, females are overrepresented among those scoring at the lower tail and underrepresented at the upper tail. Since 1996, Whites have been consistently overrepresented in some exams (e.g., Psychology) and underrepresented in others (e.g., Spanish Language) relative to their representation among U.S. high school students; Asians have become increasingly overrepresented in most, but especially STEM, exams; Hispanics have been consistently underrepresented except in Spanish Language and Spanish Literature; and Blacks have continued to be substantially underrepresented in all exams. For most courses and most years, the majority of White and Asian students earned a qualifying score while the majority of Hispanic and Black students did not. In the context of previous research showing that group disparities in AP participation and performance are greatly diminished after accounting for group disparities in intelligence, I discuss the future of AP.
The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2022–23
American Association of University Professors, 2023
Facts About Criminal Justice in Western Australia
Institute of Public Affairs, 2023
Med journal publishes ‘non-binary’ professor’s poem about ‘gender-affirming’ hysterectomy
The College Fix, 2024
International Journal of Strength and Conditioning, 2024
Abstract: We read with great interest the article “Explosive is not a Term Defined in the International System of Units and Should not be Used to Describe Neuromuscular Performance”, which aims to discuss the potential misuse of the term “explosive” in the sports science literature to describe neuromuscular performance. We would like to thank the authors for initiating this important discussion on the appropriate use of terminologies to describe human movement, particularly in the field of strength and conditioning. In fact, disagreement and debate are common to all scientific disciplines, including sport and exercise science, and serve to improve our understanding. This debate also provides an opportunity to clarify and specify the use of the term “explosive” in the scientific literature.
HISTORICAL ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
Presidential promotion of health-related behaviors through words and example
Military Medicine, 2013
Abstract: This article addresses a topic that is part of the public consciousness yet is seldom explored in the public health literature: presidential promotion of health-related behaviors through words and example. The article explores the history of what some American presidents, as individuals, have conveyed to the population about health through their own actions (presidential modeling of health behavior) and words. The nature of such messages and how they are received has changed with advances in technology and will likely continue to evolve.
American Journal of Public Health, 2007
Abstract: Objectives: We sought to examine the prevalence of reciprocal (i.e., perpetrated by both partners) and nonreciprocal intimate partner violence and to determine whether reciprocity is related to violence frequency and injury. Methods: We analyzed data on young US adults aged 18 to 28 years from the 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which contained information about partner violence and injury reported by 11,370 respondents on 18761 heterosexual relationships. Results: Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases. Reciprocity was associated with more frequent violence among women (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]=2.3; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.9, 2.8), but not men (AOR=1.26; 95% CI=0.9, 1.7). Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women (AOR=1.3; 95% CI=1.1, 1.5), and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater injury than was nonreciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator (AOR=4.4; 95% CI=3.6, 5.5). Conclusions: The context of the violence (reciprocal vs nonreciprocal) is a strong predictor of reported injury. Prevention approaches that address the escalation of partner violence may be needed to address reciprocal violence.
Daycare attendance and respiratory tract infections: a prospective birth cohort study
BMJ Open, 2017
Abstract: Objective: We explored the burden of respiratory tract infections (RTIs) in young children with regard to day-care initiation. Design: Longitudinal prospective birth cohort study. Setting and methods: We recruited 1827 children for follow-up until the age of 24 months collecting diary data on RTIs and daycare. Children with continuous daycare type and complete data were divided into groups of centre-based daycare (n=299), family day care (FDC) (n=245) and home care (n=350). Using repeated measures variance analyses, we analysed days per month with symptoms of respiratory tract infection, antibiotic treatments and parental absence from work for a period of 6 months prior to and 9 months after the start of daycare. Results: We documented a significant effect of time and type of daycare, as well as a significant interaction between them for all outcome measures. There was a rise in mean days with symptoms from 3.79 (95% CI 3.04 to 4.53) during the month preceding centre-based daycare to 10.57 (95% CI 9.35 to 11.79) at 2 months after the start of centre-based daycare, with a subsequent decrease within the following 9 months. Similar patterns with a rise and decline were observed in the use of antibiotics and parental absences. The start of FDC had weaker effects. Our findings were not changed when taking into account confounding factors. Conclusions: Our study shows the rapid increase in respiratory infections after start of daycare and a relatively fast decline in the course of time with continued daycare. It is important to support families around the beginning of daycare.
RUBBISH BIN
Making U.S. Fire Departments More Diverse and Inclusive
Harvard Business Review, 2018 (*Nuzzo note: Though several years old, I am sharing this article here because I learned of it this week, and because it is relevant to some of the news this week about the fires in California. On X, the Harvard Business Review advertised the article saying: “U.S. firefighters are overwhelmingly white and male. Here’s why that needs to change”)
Public Memory Generates Disinformation on 9/11 in Public Schools
Journal of Academic Freedom, 2022
Abstract: The public memory of September 11, 2001, remains contested in political and social discourse. Schools remain a prominent public institution for educators and students to come together to develop core competencies of citizenship and tolerance for others, but educators are not equipped with sufficient resources to effectively teach racial literacies. As a result, annual attempts to address 9/11 in classrooms generate anti-Muslim racism that marginalizes the experiences of Muslims in the public memory and reproduces bias and discrimination targeting Muslims and Arabs in schools. Institutions of higher education assume intellectual responsibilities in constructing the public memory of 9/11 but are limited in impact because of far-right political attacks questioning their allegiance to America. My attempt to intervene with culturally responsive teaching and learning resources about 9/11 was met with state-sanctioned censorship and an inadequate assurance of academic freedom. This essay represents a critical examination of 9/11 curriculum and pedagogy and reflects on the utility of academic freedom to protect the interests of public scholars.
Journal of Academic Freedom, 2023
Abstract: Politicians across every level of government have recently proposed and often passed legislation that prohibits the teaching of critical race theory and other “divisive topics” in K–20 classrooms. This article seeks to reframe mainstream scholarly narratives and suggests that a more precise term be developed to describe white violence toward nonwhite people. Using public assaults on critical race theory by conservative policymakers as evidence, I argue that these assaults represent examples of white power killing Black academic freedom. I analyze these assaults through Derrick Bell’s articulation of the permanence of racism and Amos Wilson’s typology of power used in the subordination of Black people.
Rethinking ‘Healthy Masculinity’ Training From a Queer Boys+ Perspective
Australian Feminist Studies, 2024
Abstract: Contemporary discourses on feminism’s role in Australian boys’ lives focus on how feminism might guide strategies that train boys to resist negative or ‘toxic’ performances of masculinity and instead encourage them to strive for a ‘healthy’ or ‘positive’ masculinity. In this article, I question whether training young people to attach themselves to a particular masculinity is aligned with a commitment to queer politics or serves the interests of boys, particularly queer boys or gender-diverse young people. I begin by tracing unsettled contests over masculinity's ontological foundations, including the roles of biology, identification, ‘gendered’ traits, and affective attachments. Through the method of autoethnography, I then explore issues that arise in the logic and implementation of common desires to train boys into ‘healthy’ men. I argue that, drawing on a queer liberation tradition, feminism can be an invitation to solidarity and freedom as well as a ‘way out’ or ‘refuge’ from the regulatory policing of gender norms associated with boyhood. I suggest a detachment or disaffection with masculinity does not have to lead to an identity crisis and can instead be part of a feminist killjoy survival kit [Ahmed, Sara. 2017. Living a Feminist Life. Durham: Duke University Press].
Feminist Media Studies, 2025
Abstract: The term “woke” is increasingly used by right-wing political actors to designate left-liberal political positions that they oppose. In this article, I examine how three prominent reactionary influencers on YouTube—Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Dave Rubin—construct wokeness as a figure of hate, ridicule, and fear, a gendered and sexualised other against which they produce a sense of community for their viewers. Where these YouTubers previously framed the left through the distinct figures of the “social justice warrior” and the “cultural Marxist,” wokeness collapses the two together, combining the former’s irrational ridiculousness and the latter’s conspiratorial subversiveness into a singular, all-encompassing enemy. In doing so, the YouTubers construct an affectively charged crisis narrative—wokeness threatens social stability so must be expelled, a call for not only the elimination of woke ideas but also the trans and gender nonconforming people whom they position as wokeness’s embodiment.
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Ok, girls are over-represented in the lower tails and under-represented in the upper tails....so can someone explain to me why there are so many more girls in AP classes? Thanks Jim.