As Raka Ray says in her remembrance, Michael Burawoy’s greatest legacy “was in the people whose lives he changed. He was an extraordinary teacher who mentored and inspired thousands of students, changing their lives with his fierce intellect and kindness.”

I was one of those students. 

I first encountered Michael roughly halfway through his time at Berkeley. He had come to the department of sociology in the mid-1970s, as part of a contentious battle to change the discipline. By the time I met him in the late 1990s, he was the department chair.

We shared an interest in the history of sociology at Berkeley, and Michael invited me to delve into that history with him. Together, we crafted an incomplete account of Berkeley Sociology’s past, present, and future—one of Burawoy’s first forays into framing a vision for public sociology—and compiled a collection intended to demonstrate how Berkeley Sociology faculty were already engaged in the work of producing public sociology.

When Michael became president of the American Sociological Association, making public sociology the annual meeting theme, I was off doing dissertation fieldwork in Cape Town, South Africa. Michael agreed to serve as my dissertation chair, and along the way, I would learn a few things about that “fierce intellect” Raka describes. 

Yet I also had the very good fortune, while at Berkeley, of being part of a team of teaching assistants for Michael’s legendary year-long undergraduate course on sociological theory. It was here, more than anywhere else, that I came to know and appreciate Michael’s warmth and humor, his generosity and care, his love of teaching and sociology, and his commitment to universities as spaces of intellectual curiosity, rigor, and learning.  

I am grateful for the opportunity to join a chorus of voices remembering Michael and his singular gifts. He will be missed.