The present clash between the United States and Islamic extremists has drawn unprecedented attention to the relationship between Islam and liberal democracy and to the experiences of Muslims in American society. In the hyper-charged post-9/11 political climate, does religious identification alienate American Muslims from the political system or heighten their motivation to participate?

Immigrants create and maintain links between their native countries and new homes. Yet researchers disagree about the structural consequences of transnational activities, and how these sorts of ties affect political integration in particular. On one side are those who say that multiculturalism prevents or interferes with assimilation, and on the other side are those who argue that transnational ties are the inevitable consequence of an increasingly global world.

In the spring of 2006, more than three million immigrants and their supporters marched not only through the streets of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, but also in non-traditional gateways, like Greensboro, Memphis, and Salt Lake City. What prompts immigrant groups to engage in collective protest despite the risk of retaliation? What is the impact of political climate, threats, and segregation on newcomers’ civic and political engagement?

Over the past three decades, there have been dramatic increases in socioeconomic inequalities of many kinds -- in education, health, family structure, political participation, and much else. How have these changes affected patterns of democratic participation and governance in the United States? In turn, how have government policies and programs influenced inequalities along various dimensions?

It is well known that socioeconomic background influences the success a child has in school. Having more resources at their disposal gives children from wealthy families advantages in school, where extra tutoring and material support can make a big difference in student performance. But we do not know whether the relationship between wealth and school performance has changed during the recent period of rising economic inequality. Do trends indicate that a child's educational attainment is more strongly determined by family income and education now than it was 30 years ago?

In 1991, the General Social Survey asked respondents 60 questions about everyday troubles, ranging across eight life domains: health, work, finance, housing, material hardship, family well-being, personal relationships, and criminal involvement and victimization. This group of questions, called the Study of Life Events (SLE) yielded a number of interesting results, most notably that poor inner-city single parents experienced far more troubles than did married, middle class suburbanites. Yet the SLE has not since been repeated.

For years, debates have raged over which social system does best for society’s least well-off. Liberals contend that free market systems leave many people behind, while conservatives argue that social democracies hurt the poor by creating adverse employment incentives and stifling growth. What does the evidence show?

Since its inception in 2000, the Social Inequality project at the Russell Sage Foundation has sought to determine whether and to what extent inequality in social domains has increased as economic inequality has risen over the last 30 years. The project has amassed an interesting dossier of findings and is beginning to integrate them and gain perspective on the larger picture of the recent upturn in American inequality.

Social scientists have long recognized that the family is an important source of political socialization. In the traditional framework, the older generation transmits a political orientation, specific policy attitudes, as well as a general propensity to be politically active to the younger generation. But how might this process differ for immigrant families, given that the older generation does not necessarily have a greater knowledge of the nation’s political system? When it comes to the immigrant experience, are the assumptions of the traditional model turned on their head?