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In January 2024, Florida’s Board of Education eliminated the sociology course, ‘Principles of Sociology’ as one of its core requirements for obtaining a general social science education in its college and university system. Florida’s Commissioner of Education, Manny Diaz, led the charge, claiming that sociology has been ‘hijacked by left wing activists’ and is a purveyor of ‘woke ideology’. Some within the profession would agree with Diaz, and certainly, many university administrators would as well. Of course, there are varying representations of sociology, and what Diaz and others are targeting is critical sociology and its commitment to the interrogation of power. However, these political dynamics are not new. The history of critical sociology has reflected a similar pattern that it is being played out currently. The ebbs and flows of critical sociology’s place within the discipline, the state and profession’s suppression of it, its resurgence linked to external social and political forces, and its precarious existence within the university have been true of critical sociology since its origins. This paper offers a historical context for better understanding the current attack on the field of sociology and raises the question, what should critical sociologists do about it?
Timothy Black (Mon,) studied this question.