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victorerikray.bsky.social
Victor Ray
@victorerikray.bsky.social
23K followers 1.6K following 3.1K posts
Sociologist, UIowa Associate Professor and author of On Critical Race Theory. Vice-President American Sociological Association. Former BIGS Racial Equity Fellow at Harvard Business School.
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victorerikray.bsky.social
This is an important new working paper from Kwan Woo Kim and Laura Hamilton at Merced’s Higher Education, Race, & The Economy lab showing that states that introduced anti-DEI legislation hired fewer faculty from marginalized groups.

They are segregationists.

osf.io/preprints/so...
Anti-DEI Legislation and Anticipatory Compliance in Faculty Hiring at Public Colleges and Universities Abstract. State-level anti-DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) bills, which have been introduced in 32 states, aim to close off avenues through which many underrepresented scholars have been hired. These bills signal a shift in the local political climate, pressuring public colleges and universities to realign their priorities in anticipation of future legal changes. Using federal data on new postsecondary hires, we find that the introduction of early anti-DEI legislation was followed by a substantial decline in the share of faculty hires from marginalized groups and an increase in the share of White men, even before bills were signed into law. This shift was most pronounced at schools highly dependent on state funding and at teaching-oriented schools. Our findings suggest that “anticipatory compliance” with political intervention varies depending on organizational revenue streams and the local regulatory environment.
October 30, 2025 at 1:25 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
Training to ensure I can outrun ICE
Screenshot from Nike Run Club app showing 2.83 miles run at an average pace of 8'49"
October 23, 2025 at 9:27 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
I read this in Parenti's Lockdown America decades ago as an undergrad, and...it stayed with me.
In 1965 only four states mandated police training; more than twenty states did not even have minimum educational and literacy requirements for their recruits. A Department of Justice study noted with concern that both barbers and beauticians, on average, were required to train more than three times as long as the average American cop. In Detroit most officers came from the bottom 25 percent of their high school class, and this was not a unique situation. One regional LEAA administrator relayed the story of a sheriff in Missouri who was totally illiterate and signed his grant applications with an X.
October 23, 2025 at 2:56 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
Iowa City
Photo of the No Kings protest in Iowa City
October 18, 2025 at 4:34 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
The racist GOP group chats and the Supreme Court threatening the Voting Rights Act are two strands of one story—the right’s revival of Jim Crow style racism as both white prerogative and policy platform.
Screenshot from the New York Times reading: Racist and Homophobic Texts From Young Republican Officials Prompt Backlash Some local G.O.P. officials who participated in the text exchanges are losing their jobs or being pressured to resign. But top Republicans have been dismissive. Screenshot from the New York Times reading: The Supreme Court Case That Could Hand the House to Republicans Democrats would be in danger of losing around a dozen majority-minority districts across the South if the court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act.
October 17, 2025 at 1:56 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
yeah Mike that was terrible
photo of the Capital building swarmed by mobs on January 6th
October 15, 2025 at 2:19 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
I fear that schools being willing to drop diversity programs without a fight shows how flimsy their commitment to inclusion was in the first place. People fight for things they truly believe in.
Victor Ray, a sociology professor at the University of Iowa who studies race, said in an email that OSU’s decision to interpret federal guidance in this way “reflects the real pressure universities face as the Trump administration and Republican legislators attack higher education.” But, Ray added, it may also be exposing the true colors of many universities that were broadcasting their commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion when it was politically expedient to do so just a few years ago. “The swiftness with which these organizations have complied with legally dubious orders shows that their commitments to diversity were often paper-thin before this administration’s pressure,” he said. “In many cases, administrators with existing qualms about diversity, perhaps going too far, now have political cover to take anti-equitable actions.”
October 15, 2025 at 1:03 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
There are too many quotable in this piece from Lyz. It's hilarious.
Putting your faith in Bari Weiss to uphold journalistic integrity is like hoping Kristi Noem will lose her injectionist’s number, or that the three ghosts of conspiracies past will visit Marjorie Taylor Greene and she will stop believing in Jewish space lasers, or the alien that is using Mitch McConnell’s body as its host will finally go back to the planet from whence it came, or that the Republicans will stop doing a Weekend at Bernies with Chuck Grassley, or that if we ask pretty pretty please Donald Trump will stop using the Constitution as toilet paper, or that RFK Jr. will just leave all that road kill alone. Basically, it’s like hoping that shit will fix the diaper.
October 10, 2025 at 3:21 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
Photo of Kendrick Lamar during the superbowl halftime show.
October 10, 2025 at 1:20 AM
victorerikray.bsky.social
Next up, proof that I don't know what’s good for me.
Photo of the summer of our discontent by Thomas Chatterton Williams
October 7, 2025 at 1:15 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
Screenshot reading: “Professor, thank you so much for doing this.” “Great, thanks. If we go light on the Kissinger part, I wouldn’t complain, because it could dwarf everything else.”
September 23, 2025 at 7:37 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
I'm so happy the Double Tax arrived. Thank you for your brilliance @itsafronomics.bsky.social. I can't wait to read this. (Also, who gets Chelsea Clinton to write their forward?)
Photo of the book, The Double Tax, by Anna Gifty.
September 17, 2025 at 2:56 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
When I worked at UT, the campus hosted Nazi speakers (twice, I think), and a professor called for cars to "run down" protestors.

He wasn't disciplined.
No UT penalty for Tenn. prof who tweeted 'Run 'em down' Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel Sept. 27, 2016, 4:26 p.m. ET KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - The University of Tennessee will take no disciplinary action against one of its law professors who urged motorists to run over demonstrators blocking traffic in Charlotte, N.C., a dean said Tuesday. Glenn Reynolds is also a USA TODAY and Knoxville News Sentinel columnist.
September 15, 2025 at 6:43 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
It is great to hear that @democracyforward.org and @asanews.bsky.social won their lawsuit against the Trump administration.
Dear Members of the American Sociological Association: We are delighted to share the ruling made today in ASA's case against the Department of Education. The case was filed in February 2025 in collaboration with a coalition of nationwide associations of educators and a public school district. Today, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland ruled in favor of the coalition, declaring that the Trump-Vance administration's attempt to require school districts throughout the nation to censor lessons, abandon student support programs, and certify their compliance with the administration's unlawful interpretation of civil rights is unconstitutional. ASA President Adia Harvey Wingfield says: "The American Sociological Association is delighted with this ruling. It affirms that we sociologists can still do the challenging yet rewarding work of asking and answering hard questions-about race, inequality, society, and more. Furthermore, it confirms that teachers across the nation can continue to support students, enrich academic institutions, and maybe most importantly, do the essential work of providing a nuanced, thoughtful education! ASA will always stand with and for sociologists, and we are proud to stand up for students, for free speech, and for all Americans' right to an education that isn't marred by censorship, threats, and scare tactics." This coalition is represented by Democracy Forward. You can read the full press release about this ruling here. In solidarity,
August 15, 2025 at 1:00 AM
victorerikray.bsky.social
This is great from @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com

www.liberalcurrents.com/we-have-no-s...
“Originalism is not a bad legal doctrine. It is an incoherent one, a tissue of nothing. As with any incoherent doctrine, it allows you to prove anything. Thus in practice what it amounts to is a ritual invocation of the Founders, gesturing at this or that piece of text from a few centuries back, before delivering whatever conclusion was approved on Fox News the night before.”
June 25, 2025 at 10:54 AM
victorerikray.bsky.social
Screenshot of the weather app that reads: Somerville 99 degrees.
June 24, 2025 at 7:36 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
My gaping bullet wound has stirred fears, but according to The Times stylesheet—not definitively proven—that I have been shot.
A raid in Montebello, Calif., has stirred fears that federal agents are detaining and racially profiling U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent.
June 19, 2025 at 9:05 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
May 21, 2025 at 6:06 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
May 18, 2025 at 12:54 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
I picked up @karidabrown.bsky.social’s new book at @harvardbookstore.bsky.social (where is was prominently displayed).

I can’t wait to read what is sure to be (another) game-changer.
Karida Brown’s book The Battle for the Black Mind.
May 15, 2025 at 3:14 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
a search bar reading “eugenics” with returning zero answers
April 26, 2025 at 9:47 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
Reading Jason Stanley’s Erasing History and he outlines these pillars of Nazi education and boy do these seem familiar.
to die for the fatherland. What we can see from this example of Nazi Germany, and from studying other instances of fascist movement around the world, is that there are fue major themes of fascit education: 1. National greatness 2. National purity 3. National innocence 4. Strict gender roles 5. Vilification of the left
April 19, 2025 at 1:36 PM
victorerikray.bsky.social
I found it. www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm...
Brooke Gladstone: During the first Trump administration, you came on the show and argued against those who were invoking the word fascism. You know, douse your hair doesn't need to be on fire. Corey Robin: I was afraid you were going to ask me about this. I was skeptical in the first Trump administration that they had the kind of power and the kind of authority that many of their critics feared that they had. Brooke Gladstone: Which they didn't have in the first administration. Corey Robin: Right. I was skeptical coming into this second administration that they would be able to wield the kind of power that people feared they would wield. I have since turned out to be wrong. They have set off multiple conflagrations and I have been shaken out of my skepticism.
April 16, 2025 at 11:25 AM
victorerikray.bsky.social
Martin has previously floated the notion of cash reimbursements for Jan. 6 defendants, calling them “reparations” for what has described as abusive prosecutions against Trump supporters. “We should have reparations for them,” he said in a January 2024 podcast appearance. “They should get a big pot of money.”
April 9, 2025 at 12:54 AM
victorerikray.bsky.social
New York Times headline reading "why did so many people delude themselves about trump?" Scrrenshot of a search box sayding "not found" "White supremacy"
April 8, 2025 at 3:08 PM