"My earliest memory of SSSP is as a graduate student. It was an inviting and exciting place to be. It was a place where ideas based on scholarship were at the center of all discussions but most striking was that all the conversations included how to use our findings to make the world better. To this awe-struck graduate student, it was the most exciting thing ever – research findings were going to make the world more just and fairer.  

Fast forward to 2021, after a stint working on Chicago’s west side, North Lawndale to be exact, 20 years as a faculty member, and now as Director of Research for The Latino Policy Forum in Chicago, I find myself not only using research to influence policy, but I am also honored to be the President of the organization that first showed me that research, activism, and change could and should be conjoined."

Noreen M. Sugrue
The Latino Policy Forum and The Council of International Neonatal Nurses

"I first came to SSSP in 1997, through the Association for Humanist Sociology [AHS]. AHS was the group Betty and Al Lee built after leaving SSSP for becoming too much like ASA—'enmeshed deeply in the bureaucratic, technocratic, plutocratic, and imperialistic structure of our society.' I felt then as I do now, that SSSP has the potential to be a radical professional base for people engaged in scholar activism. But we must support and challenge each other, work hard and reflect harder together, and stay committed, be vigilant and find joy with one another, if radical social change is our mission and sociology our method. I continue to ask the same question the Lees did back in 1954: can sociology 'be the brash, young, vital, productive, unsettling, even revolutionary pursuit it has been in its most valuable periods?'”

Corey Dolgon, Stonehill College

"SSSP is part of my core of who I am as a sociologist. I became a member as early graduate student and have found the mentorship, both peer and senior, and community ties to be invaluable as I continue on my own academic journey. I am thankful, especially now, to be part of an organization striving for social justice. My career path has not been traditional and have always felt welcomed by the SSSP community and I look forward to continuing to learn from colleagues and to supporting new members of the society in the years to come!"

Alexis Anne Bender, Emory University

I first started coming to SSSP as a graduate student in the late 1980s because my mentor, Barbara Katz Rothman, was involved. Over time, it became my favorite sociological home. I found - and still find - the world of mainstream sociology pretty inhospitable and anomic. SSSP was - and is - far more welcoming. In SSSP, I’ve found brilliant comrades who agree that sociologists should work toward social change, and who combine activism with scholarship. I’ve also made wonderful friends, too, through my involvement in the organization. I am proud to have successfully encouraged many graduate students to attend SSSP, and delighted they have made it their sociological home also.”

   
Wendy Simonds, Georgia State University

"SSSP was founded some 70 years ago to help achieve social justice, and that remains its mission today. Its annual meetings are simply wonderful and provide a warm and friendly venue for faculty, students, and practitioners from sociology and other social sciences.”

Steven E. Barkan, University of Maine

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