Date: Saturday, August 10

Time: 12:30 PM - 2:10 PM

SPECIAL

Session 021: CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Sociology on the Ropes: Recent Attacks on the Discipline
Room: Salon 1

Sponsor: Program Committee

Organizer &

Presider/Discussant: R.A. Dello Buono, Manhattan University

Description: 

The threat to sociology as a discipline is growing. Recent moves to dilute or remove course requirements for sociology seem intent on undoing the discipline’s capacity for encouraging critical thinking. Increasingly conservative-minded administrations in higher education are bending in the face of state and/or donor mandates to ideologically muzzle, downsize, merge or eliminate sociology departments and their faculty. The American Sociological Association (ASA) among other professional associations have cautiously weighed in on these attacks in various missives. What can associations like the SSSP do in the face of these attacks? How can scholar-activism be defended in the face of right-wing hostility? This dialogue seeks to explore these issues confronting sociology and other academic programs based in critical analysis and advocacy.

Papers:

“Same Old Song, Much Larger Band: The New White Nationalist Attacks on Higher Education,” Woody Doane, University of Hartford

“Fight the Power: Stopping State Attacks against Sociology,” Rose M. Brewer, University of Minnesota

“The Death of Sociology? Don’t Mourn, Organize!,” Corey Dolgon, Stonehill College

“‘It’s Trump’s Fault!,’ and Other Ways to Avoid Responsibility,” Louis Edgar Esparza, California State University, Los Angeles

“Our Fight for Sociology is Part of Today’s Revolutionary Struggle,” Walda Katz-Fishman, League of Revolutionaries for a New America and Howard University

“Countering Attacks on Sociology: The Precarious Nature of Building Scholar-Activists, Professional Associations and Universities Coalitions,” Mary Romero, Professor Emerita, Arizona State University

“Sociology as Complicit in Chronic Mediocrity: The Fight to Maintain the Status Quo,” David G. Embrick, University of Connecticut and Johnny Eric Williams, Trinity College

“What’s Old is New Again: Academia and the Postliberal State,” Nancy A. Naples, University of Connecticut

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