Roger Lancaster

Professor of Anthropology and Cultural Studies. Author of The Struggle to be Gay—in Mexico, for Example (2024), and other books. Opinions are my own.

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

@samhaselby @IMurtazashvili Eugenics was everywhere and permeated thinking across the spectrum — perhaps especially among progressives. How could one miss this?

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

Let this be a lesson to you socialists, populists, and oligarchy-haters: If you insist on going this route, we'll throw everything we have at you -- and hold you below 80% support in your primaries. You are warned.

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

@g_shullenberger @rojasrjuand Ah, Miami: capital of Latin America's rightwing (in exile), of mafias and corrupt dealings, of CIA intrigue.

[Ro Khanna @RoKhanna]

I am supporting @grahamformaine today because of his passion for opposing war.

An honest conversation about the human toll and his journey.

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

@ZaidJilani Antidemocratic norms and feelings run deep among establishment liberals as well as among MAGA Republicans.

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

"Because the law is nothing less than the institutionalization of the general will of civil society, it belongs to all and regards all equally. This is the fundamental principle underlying every civilized legal system."

https://t.co/R4T3vdxkZr

[Bob Elder @southernphd]

I never met Gordon Wood, but I have a story about him.

In one of my grad school seminars, we read Wood’s Creation of the American Republic. The sheer erudition and evidentiary depth of the book bowled me over.

Back then, before kids and before life accelerated to warp speed, I used to call my mother every Sunday to catch up. Lots of times, we ended up talking about what I was reading that week in my grad seminars or for leisure. Mom had an omnivorous mind, and she was always looking for something else to read. She was a true intellectual—curious about almost everything, always eager to integrate new arguments or ideas into her existing schemas of how the world worked or to have those schemas challenged and changed.

When we talked that particular Sunday, I think I tried to describe to her part of Wood’s argument about the relationship between the state constitutions during the Articles of Confederation era and the federal Constitution. Maybe I was tired, maybe I didn’t completely understand her questions, but the end result of the conversation was that Mom had questions about Wood’s argument that I didn’t answer satisfactorily. I told her that she should probably just read the book, and we said goodbye.

She did eventually read the book, but the next Sunday, Mom started our conversation by saying, “Well, I had a lovely conversation with Gordon Wood this week.” For a split second, I thought she was joking, but then I remembered who I was dealing with. I started to sweat. “How?” I asked. A whole variety of unlikely scenarios in which the foremost historian of the American Revolution and my mother, who lived in Wichita, Kansas, might have met ran through my mind. “Oh, I just looked up his office phone number on Brown’s website and called, and he picked up!” Mom said. I decided I would have to find another profession.

As it ended up, Gordon Wood spent about an hour on the phone with my mother answering her questions about the Constitution. Ever since, I’ve had a soft spot for the man when I imagine him picking up the phone in Providence and finding Becky Elder from Wichita on the other end of the line. His generosity in that moment spoke very well of him.

Rest in peace, professor.

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

@JeffreyASachs Agree but isn’t this (supposedly) to inform the thinking of chancellors and presidents? (To give them a firmer hand in shutting down units or curbing dissent?)

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

@CLiuAnon @walterbenn @Tyler_A_Harper No, it was commissioned by the chancellors at Vanderbilt and U Wash, who had read Boghossian and liked his curmudgeonly arguments. Boghossian then put together a committee of reasonably likeminded people (40% at NYU) to produce a "study."

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

@eroerny @nelsonaldape Excellent collection!

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

@ZaidJilani Christian religions. Catholicism is a Christian religion. Protestantism is, too, with many denominations. Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses are not denominations but Christian religions. I suppose 7th Dayers may be a Christian religion and not a denomination.

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

@JacobAShell “May be unsettlable,” partly because social and political positions are not always informed by empirical research or objective facts. We know a lot about gender variation across cultures, and about biological variation. What we make of this knowledge is up for grabs.

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

@CLiuAnon @walterbenn @Tyler_A_Harper https://t.co/He99GOb8w8

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

@daniel_dsj2110 the authors reveal their hand when the suggest that evolutionary psychology is serious science and that skepticism of its just-so stories is politicized relativism.

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

This needed to be said and Platner says it well. Masculinity is not intrinsically "toxic," and there are many ways to be a man.

[Graham Platner for Senate @grahamformaine]

You can be a tattooed, deep-voiced, "manly" combat veteran who also goes to therapy and shows up for his neighbors. Those two things go completely hand-in-hand.

And I think it's important to have people who can show that, instead of a vision of masculinity that's hardened, shut off, and angry.

[Graham Platner for Senate @grahamformaine]

You can be a tattooed, deep-voiced, "manly" combat veteran who also goes to therapy and shows up for his neighbors. Those two things go completely hand-in-hand.

And I think it's important to have people who can show that, instead of a vision of masculinity that's hardened, shut off, and angry.

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

My arguments were not especially well received in certain branches of critical science studies. "Aren't you saying that there's such thing as good science and bad science?" Yes! That's exactly what I was saying, and I'm sticking with it. I've never had to walk any of it back. /3

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

"You don’t like a thesis that evolutionary psychology is building a case for? You may ignore the whole field, dismissing it as deriving from misguided political values." (Vanderbilt Report) /1

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

Actually, I wrote a long book dissecting key arguments promoted by evpsych. Marshaling an appalling quantity of cross-cultural & historical evidence, I showed that evpsych's appeal is ideological, not scientific. It simply doesn't describe anything resembling universals. /2

[Roger Lancaster @RogerLancaster]

@walterbenn @Tyler_A_Harper they seem to be fighting the theory wars from 40 years ago rather than putting their finger on the problem