On August 9, some 150 sociologists demonstrated in the streets outside the New York Hilton during the main day of the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA), which they and thousands of others have boycotted this year. A large crowd in the streets was joined by scores more, who had walked out of the presidential address by Shelley Correll carrying a huge banner reading “Sociologists 4 Palestine.” (In a ludicrous “security” gesture apparently designed to make the banner invisible, the lights were reportedly extinguished in the auditorium during part of the walkout.) Last winter, Correll, acting without even consulting the ASA Council, had refused to allow a vote on a membership referendum that would have committed the ASA to a policy of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) against the State of Israel and its academic institutions, even though it had received way more than the requisite membership signatures.
In a delicious irony, Correll, a noted researcher on gender bias in the workplace, had selected “Disrupting the Status Quo” as the theme of the annual ASA meeting. The slogan appeared all over the ASA website and conference program, and even on the ‘free” tote bags that included the corporate logos of some to the world’s top price-gouging publishers of academic journals. (1)
Correll’s denial of democracy and inaction in the face of genocide inspired both anger and derision from the protestors, as seen in chants like “What’s out here – democracy” and “what in there – hypocrisy.” The youngish crowd expressed the feeling that time was on our side, with speakers often referencing the Michigan elections a week earlier, when progressives dealt another blow to the Israel lobby. Others referred to the rapid changes in the last two years in US public opinion vs. Israel, again and again noting just how out of touch the ASA leadership is with both the membership and the social world we study.
At the same time, we saluted the courage of those who’d participated in the encampments and other protests, with younger sociologists taking huge professional risks and sometimes suffering repression as a result. In a quintessentially New York development, hundreds of youths from the massive Dominican Republic national day celebrations that had just ended walked by with their colorful flags, almost always signaling support for us, and sometimes joining in our chants.
The fight within the ASA has been building for nearly three years, ever since the October 7, 2023 attacks and the beginnings of Israel’s new genocidal war in Gaza. In 2023-24, the ASA President and Council refused to enact a ceasefire resolution, leading to the gathering of signatures for a membership vote. That passed resoundingly in spring 2024. In 2025-26, ASA President Correll took a different tack in the face of the BDS resolution, cowering in the face of Trumpist attacks on our field, as have been seen in calls for its elimination in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and in the legislatures of fascist states like Texas. In response to a duly submitted membership resolution that would have committed the ASA to BDS, Correll announced peremptorily that after consulting ASA’s lawyers, the referendum could not appear on the ballot this spring because it violated ASA’s status as a non-political organization. No mention was made of the resolution condemning Russia’s 2022 imperialist invasion of Ukraine or other similar resolutions over the years. The Israel exception!
This resulted in the most massive boycott the ASA has ever experienced, with thousands refusing to attend the annual meeting. Hundreds are participating in person or virtually at an August 10-11 alternative conference at City University of New York Graduate Center, under the theme “Resisting Authoritarianism: Global Solidarity & Democratic Futures: A Conference for Sociologists.”
Clearly, these ASA protests are taking place in the context of a national and international movement of opposition to Israeli genocide and support for Palestine. But the historical context within the ASA itself is also interesting to consider. In the late 1960s, the Sociology Liberation Movement burst forth in response to a hidebound ASA leadership that refused to say anything about Vietnam and that practiced and justified intellectually the relegation of women to the home, as seen in the work of Talcott Parsons, the most important sociologist of the postwar era. In the 1970s, ferment surrounding these protests resulted in some changes, not least in the sociology of gender. (2) We also saw the election as ASA president of avowed socialist Alfred McClung Lee, who won on an insurgent, write-in vote in 1974.
What we are experiencing today is another deep division in US society and intellectual life, with a young generation again at the barricades. Despite the vicious repression and retrogression of Trumpism and the pusillanimous (or worse) response of liberal elites like university administrations, there is a feeling of change in the air in summer 2026. The Palestine protests within the ASA since 2023 are a small but illustrative part of these developments.
Footnotes
- Although this practice is not new, this only added to the irony, as one of those publishers, Springer Nature, had staged a corporate coup in 2024 against the respected critical theory journal Theory & Society, sacking its largely leftwing editors and appointing in their stead a group of positivists. This venerable journal was founded by the neo-Marxist Alvin Gouldner, a notable critic of Parsons, and was known for its discussions of Pierre Bourdieu and for the publication of early essays by Moishe Postone, among others.
- The life of ASA and IMHO member Sam Friedman spans these 2 struggles, having participated in the 1960s/1970s ASA insurgency and the 2026 boycott.