Like others, I was introduced to SSSP as a graduate student by mentors that I hold in very high esteem. In my case it was Woody Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Both knew I was looking for something more than superficial mainstream professional organizations. Sure, SSSP has its shortcomings. However, I truly believe it to be capable of so much more. At a time when social science research, higher education, and sociology itself face unprecedented political, economic, and cultural pressures, we need spaces that sustain both rigorous scholarship and collective courage.

This moment also calls for honesty. Perhaps sociology, at least as we have come to practice and imagine it, is not enough. Rather than asking how we might reform sociology, we should be willing to rethink it altogether. What assumptions have we inherited? Whose knowledge have we centered? What possibilities have we overlooked? SSSP can be the space that creates the conditions for asking these difficult questions while embracing diverse ways of knowing, researching, and engaging with communities beyond the academy.

Some folx have called us (SSSP) radical scholars or dismissed challenges to existing systems of oppression as too radical. Radical is nothing more than an unimaginative label applied by defenders of the status quo to folx who refuse to accept unnecessary inequality and injustice. There is nothing radical about believing that another world is possible, or about working to make that world more just, inclusive, and humane. In this critical moment, SSSP reminds us that scholarship is strongest when it is rooted in community, open to transformation, and committed to building a future where everyone belongs.

David G. Embrick, University of Connecticut, SSSP President, 2026-2027