In 1981, in my first week in Berkeley’s graduate program, Michael Burawoy asked me why I had decided to come to Berkeley, and what I expected to do with my PhD? 

     As it happened, I knew I could be honest because I had met Michael in Lusaka, Zambia, in 1973, when I was still in high school. My father was then teaching at the University of Zambia; he had invited Michael (then a graduate student at Chicago) over for supper, and he suggested that my twin sister and I read Michael’s report on the labor process in the copper mines before he came over. As Michael himself acknowledged repeatedly, that project shaped his view of what shapes labor processes, from labor exploitation and racial hierarchies, to state intervention and union pressures. 

      It also shaped how I understood the discipline: The Color of Class on Zambia’s Copper Mines was the first sociological work I ever read, and I was excited that I was going to be able to work with him. So when I arrived in Berkeley, I figured I needed to tell him the truth, even though I knew Michael wasn’t expecting my answer: I had absolutely no intention of becoming an academic. I saw graduate school as a temporary haven, which would give me funding while I figured out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.  

      But Michael’s response was perhaps more surprising: he cheered me on, telling me that he was relieved to hear this, because the academic job market was so bad at that point that there were no guarantees that people of my cohort could ever find a tenure-track position. 

     Which, as I have told every advisee I’ve had since then, was the best response a new graduate student could hope for. Michael opened the door to a world shaped by intellectual curiosity and interest, suggesting I could pursue whatever questions interested me. If the job market was that grim, why worry about what might impress a hiring committee? As Michael himself demonstrated throughout his remarkable career—a career shaped as much by his experiences in Southern Africa and Eastern Europe as by his observations in Britain, Chicago and California, and by his deep dives into a range of theoretical perspectives, from Marx to Polanyi to WEB DuBois—there is a world out there, waiting to be explored, and engaged.

     Of course, as I wandered through the tangled forest of dissertation writing, I got more and more engaged and ended up staying in academia for the rest of my career. Michael’s answer that day opened the door for me—but more importantly, I think it reflected a crucial element of his approach to advising graduate students: he treated all of us as autonomous intellectuals, letting us shape our own intellectual agendas. His role, as he saw it, was never to tell students what to do; instead, he supported students as they wrestled with what questions they chose, and helped them collect empirical material that might help their analyses. 

      Michael’s own intellectual priorities may have influenced the suggestions he offered, but he rarely insisted that his students had to follow his advice. In fact, I initially rejected his suggestion that I compare South Africa and Brazil, and he was fine with that. It was only after Michael went off to the University of Wisconsin because it granted him tenure before Berkeley did that I gave in, promising that if he came back to Berkeley, I would learn Portuguese and attempt to compare what another of his colleagues termed ‘apples and oranges.’ I’m pretty sure that my offer to comply played no role in Michael’s decision, but I will always be grateful to him because he did, in fact, return to Berkeley and serve as my advisor. Perhaps even more, I will always be grateful that I followed his brilliant advice, which completely upended my understanding of the histories of both countries and the dynamics of militant labor movements.

      But what I learned from Michael was never limited just to academic suggestions, however brilliant. As any of his advisees will tell you, Michael’s engagement with his students went well beyond comments on their papers and writing endless letters of recommendation—and I have to admit,  now that I realize how thankless those tasks can be, I appreciate even more how reliably and promptly he took care of them, especially given how many students he was advising, even early in his career. 

      Michael’s generosity, his humor, and his warmth are, of course, legendary; while he always respected students’ independence and privacy, he provided endless support for his students, in many different ways—including supporting students whose academic interests were linked to activism. Indeed, as he describes more explicitly in his intellectual autobiography, Public Sociology,  that concern for his students and junior colleagues’ careers was part of what prompted him to defend ‘the extended case method’ and ‘public sociology’—two concepts that he came up with as a way to justify his insistence that engagement with the real world often strengthens sociological research, rather than undermining objectivity.

     Long after I graduated from Berkeley, I continued to learn from Michael, always stunned by his insights, by his contributions to the university and academic organizations, and by his energetic efforts to expand sociology’s acceptance of public sociology and voices from outside the global north. 

     And, in the last decade or so, while working with him on Global Dialog and then co-editing a volume honoring our mutual friend and colleague Erik Olin Wright, I observed another side of Michael. To be honest, I never quite understood how someone who was so reserved about his private life, and so solitary, could be such a successful cat-herder. But as anyone who has worked with him could tell you, Michael could always pull people together into discussions and projects that were both challenging and constructive—an academic version of what Erik might have labelled a ‘real utopia’, marked by inclusion and social engagement, rather than by exclusion or hierarchy. 

      I know that many of Michael’s collaborators and friends around the world, like me, are also still trying to process what we have lost; almost every day since Michael died, I have thought of asking him about something, and then been forced once again to reckon with reality. But as I read the dozens of comments from his former students, his colleagues, and his old friends, sharing countless stories of what they learned from Michael or how he affected their lives, I am constantly reminded of his impact and his lasting legacy. I am glad that his contributions were so widely recognized while he was still with us; he knew that his work mattered, and I hope he knew that he was beloved, as well as respected. Since his death, I have thought over and over of the old saying—one that I had often heard, but never understood as clearly as I do now: May his memory be a blessing. I feel so lucky that he was part of my life for so long, and I will always carry his memory with me, always.