Conservatives Don’t Like Sociology. Some Sociologists Don’t Either. (Vimal Patel, Aug. 14, 2026, NY Times)
A report released over the weekend about the state of scholarly standards in the field said it had been compromised by politics that influenced the discipline’s values and priorities.
The report was produced by a commission led by Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis, where leaders have argued that higher education is in need of reforms. The commission found that scholarship in the humanities and social sciences was sometimes in the service of political goals.
“Some topics cannot be studied or cannot be studied in an honest way,” said Jukka Savolainen, a Wayne State University criminologist and sociologist who is not part of the commission.
For scholars studying incarceration, he said, “the only research that’s rewarded and allowed and encouraged is to find the umpteenth way in which incarceration is harmful.” […]
Student interest in sociology has dramatically dropped in recent decades. One analysis found that since 2013, completions of undergraduate sociology degrees fell by 25 percent.
Sociologists cite factors like a broader societal shift toward degrees that are perceived as prioritizing trade skills. […]
The overall numbers mask that sociology is thriving in some liberal places, especially California. An analysis by Michel Estefan, a sociologist at the University of California, San Diego, found that two out of every five sociology bachelor’s degrees were earned in California.
The majority of them are students of color.
…by steering students of color towards useless degrees?