- Eleanor Jonas | Senior Staff
- Feb 13, 2025 (DailyCal.org)
Michael Burawoy, world-renowned sociologist and professor emeritus at the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, died Feb. 3 at the age of 77.
His death, the result of a hit-and-run in Oakland where he lived, has shaken the world of sociology and the countless people Burawoy impacted through his lifetime, many of who have spent the last week reflecting on his legacy and character.
“Michael dedicated 47 years of his life to Berkeley, contributing immeasurably to the discipline, transforming the fields of labor, ethnography and theory,” said Raka Ray, professor of sociology and dean of UC Berkeley Social Sciences, in an email. “His greatest legacy, though, went far beyond the many books and articles he published or prestigious awards he received — it was in the people whose lives he changed.”
Burawoy, who was born in England and came to the United States in the 1960s, joined the campus sociology department in 1976, according to Ray. He served as the department chair for several years.
He served terms as the president of the International Sociological Association and the American Sociological Association. He published 12 books and more than 120 essays, papers and book chapters, according to an “In Memoriam” piece by the campus Sociology Department, and received numerous teaching and sociological awards.
During his lifetime and tenure, Burawoy promoted “public sociology,” insisting that sociologists have an obligation toward the world and communities, rather than simply an intellectual purpose, according to Ray and James Vernon, professor of history and a former colleague of Burawoy’s on the Berkeley Faculty Association.
“Michael showed people how they could carry moral and political commitments through their sociology,” said Thomas Gepts, a sixth-year doctoral candidate taught and mentored by Burawoy. “He himself was a very ardent and committed supporter of popular movements and of people’s liberation movements all around the world — everything from grad student union struggles at UC to post colonial struggles in South Africa to, more contemporaneously, the occupation of Palestine.”
Burawoy was deeply invested in labor study and advocacy. When protests appeared on campus, he brought his students outside to teach them by the picket line, and frequently participated in and spoke at demonstrations himself. As a teacher and leader in the Berkeley Faculty Association, he strove to advocate for faculty and change the conditions of labor on college campuses, according to Vernon.
“He held that vision of campus as a publicly funded institution, where everyone could have access to without the burden of debt, and where all could afford to work, so that together it is possible to imagine a better world,” Vernon said in an email.
For the past five years, Burawoy worked on the Extractive University Project, a research effort to study and reimagine labor dynamics at the university level from the worker perspective, according to Elizabeth Emmott-Torres, a sixth year-doctoral candidate, and Gepts, both members of the project. Emmott-Torres noted that the project began as a way for Burawoy to continue mentoring his graduate student instructors.
When Burawoy retired in 2023, he had graduated around 80 graduate students — a number practically unheard of for faculty in fields outside of the lab sciences, Ray said. He had a deep passion for teaching and an amazing ability to recognize what was unique and special about every person, according to several of his former students.
“Michael was incredible at making you feel as brilliant as he was,” Emmott-Torres said.
He went above and beyond for his graduate students, supporting them in their academic and professional lives, through their darkest moments, and even financially — Emily Ruppel, a seventh-year doctoral candidate, said that he donated significant amounts of his own salary to funds for students.
His impact on undergraduate students as well cannot be overstated — before his retirement, Burawoy taught the huge sociological theory courses 101 and 102, Ray said.
“He taught this class as if he was doing aerobics: he ran up and down those aisles, talking to individual students, thrusting his mic in their faces. When he got back on the stage, he was soaking wet,” Ray said. “He managed to be talking about Marx and Weber and all of these theorists and he kept those students mesmerized.”
The grief wrought by Burawoy’s death stretches across the globe, creating what Suava Zbierski-Salameh, president of the Haverford Institute and friend and mentee of Burawoy, called an “irreplaceable void.”
Those who knew him say that he lived by his principles and taught his students to do the same. Many describe their last conservations with him as ones where Burawoy sought to help others: checking in on a student’s well-being amid political turmoil, floating the idea of creating a gift for undergraduate students, reminding someone to extend a thanks to another.
“He is a brilliant sociologist that is internationally renowned and his scholarship is second to none, but his humanity is what I want to speak on,” Emmott-Torres said. “He was the most amazing human being.”
Eleanor Jonas is the lead student government beat reporter. Contact her at ejonas@dailycal.org.
