Politicising the Humanities: Sociology as Case Study

Jonathan Kay speaks with University of Hawaii professor Ashley Rubin, co-author of the recently published Special Commission Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences.

00:00 Introduction: the Vanderbilt report

02:30 Do professional associations speak for the field?

05:35 What gets on the conference programme—and what doesn't

06:10 Why everyone picks on sociologists

08:05 The variables you're not allowed to test

11:15 "Prisoner resistance": how a concept got out of hand

14:00 A Marxist editor and the fear of seeming conservative

17:25 What the report does and doesn't claim

18:50 The Yale trust report and grade inflation

22:40 Activists, ringleaders and the silent majority

25:50 Inside the ASA boycott

28:45 Should sociology split into parties?

31:50 Durkheim on why disciplines need shared rules

34:30 Authoritarianism from your own side

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices