My wife and I are preparing to depart for San Francisco to attend the annual convention/conference/meeting of our national professional organization (the American Sociological Assn.). The theme of this year’s conference is “Public Sociologies.” What exactly does that mean, you ask. Good question.

Sociology was invented as an academic discipline about 150 years ago with the explicit purpose of developing rigorous academic knowledge about society in order to apply them back into society and to make a difference in improving people’s lives. Since then, sociology as a discipline has struggled over the question of whether to, on the one hand, focus on gaining legitimization as a true “scientific” discipline (and therefore, staying out of politics and remaining “unbiased” and “objective") and on the other hand, living up to its original goals of applying research to real world issues and even engaging in social activism, armed with our in-depth knowledge of a particular issue.

The current ASA President, Michael Buroway, is squarely in the latter camp. He is passionate about applying our knowledge to make a real difference in our social environment. He recently wrote:

In a provocative opinion piece in The New York Times this past spring, Stanley Fish, just stepping down as a dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago, offered a “three-part piece of wisdom for those who work in higher education: Do your job; don’t try to do someone else’s job, as you are unlikely to be qualified; and don’t let anyone else do your job.” Fish told us not to cross the boundary between academic work and partisan activity, not to engage in the business of forming character or fashioning citizens. We should just stick to the “search for truth and the dissemination of it through teaching.” We should dabble only in the mundane politics of academic life: curricula, department leadership, the direction of research, the content and manner of teaching, and so on. Real politics should be left to the professional politicians, those who know what they are doing.

Academics are living in a fool’s paradise if they think they can hold on to their ivory tower, fashioned for another era, another world. For too long too many of us have been hiding behind academic freedom and university autonomy --all in the name of truth. But the chickens are coming home to roost as the public is no longer interested in our truth, no longer prepared to subsidize our academic pursuits. So our budgets fall, and we increase fees, commodify learning, turn admissions into marketing ventures, contract out research to corporations, and search out donors. With that kind of privatization of higher education there will be no search for truth, no fidelity to its sacred values, except, of course, for the cream who rise to the top of our elite universities. Fish would have us draw the curtains, close our eyes, and either accede to privatization or hope that the passion for the market will evaporate. It won’t. We have to demonstrate our public worth.

Where do I stand on this issue? Simply stated, I feel that sociology is indeed worthless if it cannot be applied to the real world and used to achieve real social change and justice. San Francisco, here we come!