In the Fall of 2008, I inadvertently set out to answer this question by enrolling in Michael’s Public Ethnography graduate seminar, which met on a twice-weekly basis for two hours, on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, while simultaneously serving as Michael’s TA for his justly-famous social theory course. The latter met on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. The Thursday afternoon lecture was followed up with a two-plus hour theory-filled meeting in Michael’s office where he and all of us TAs (or GSIs as it were) discussed the weekly readings and a host of issues related to them. And that, of course, was not all, with Michael then taking us all out to sumptuous feasts at wonderful restaurants across the East Bay, with adventurous bike rides to and fro adding to the fun. In short, I spent a good chunk of four weekdays with Michael nearly every week in the fall. (And in the Spring I did the same, with the modest change that the still-going Public Ethnography class now meant less frequently, just once every week or two).

The answer to the question of whether one could get too much Burawoy was a resounding no, with this year, Fall 2008 and Spring 2009—easily being my favorite time in graduate school and amongst my favorite times in my entire life.

Being Michael’s TA for theory was life-affirming and life-altering. What a treat to hear Michael’s brilliant expositions of Marxist, classical sociological, feminist, postcolonial, and post-modernist theory expounded on a twice-weekly basis. The rigor and clarity of Michael’s lectures will never cease to amaze me, and I have gone back and listened to them many times as I prepare for classes on social theory that I am teaching and have taught well over a decade since. Michael’s ability to draw connections between the different theorists we read—Marx and Engels, Lenin, Gramsci, and Fanon in Fall 2008, and Durkheim, Foucault, Weber, and de Beauvoir in Spring 2009—was truly amazing and something I still feel so immensely privileged to have been able to participate in.

It was equally amazing to see Michael in action as a lecturer to over two hundred undergraduates, who were usually rapt with attention. He blew minds on a weekly basis, and he entertained effortlessly. How could anyone fail to be taken in by Michael’s brilliance, charisma, and profound warmth and humanity? Fall 2008 was a special time to be teaching the Marxist tradition, as the US and global economy were imploding and a historic election, which saw the election of the first-ever Black president, to boot. 

This setting fed our amazing GSI conversations each week, in which we went into the weeds regarding Lenin’s theory of the capitalist state, Gramsci’s thinking on hegemony, and the relevance of Fanon’s biting and brilliant analysis. Those conversations were amongst the deepest and richest I’ve ever had with any group. And of course, I am far from unique, as Michael did this every year or two for decades. So many Berkeley grads could recount stories similar to mine. What a treat to have experienced this. What a treat just to remember it today!

And then there was the Public Ethnography class, a small affair with just 5-6 students (if memory serves) sharing our ethnographic adventures on a weekly basis and getting the best advice. I was comparing the Green Party and the 2008 Obama campaign. To most, this would have seemed an absurd thing to do. To Michael, it was the most natural and logical thing in the world. Michael not only encouraged but also exhorted me to go further and further with my edgy ethnography, in which I repeatedly provoked real-world actors—specifically fellow volunteers in the Obama campaign—with absurd questions designed to elicit their deepest thoughts. Other professors might have said this was a crazy idea. Michael showed me how to do it better and better. And then he stuck with it as I figured out what I was comparing—the utopianism of the Greens and of Obama. And Michael stuck with me for nearly two decades, in which I repeatedly tried and failed to publish the results of my research, before finally succeeding in doing so last February in a prominent sociology journal. And of course, Michael gave the same energy and attention to each of the other students in the seminar, all of whom produced fascinating and important work on a wide range of issues, from hospices and the gig economy to Hindu nationalists in the East Bay.

This is but a snippet of what it was like for me to experience the joy of working with Michael. I was so privileged to be his PhD student and lifelong mentee. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss Michael’s profound wisdom and care. The world is forever less since his tragic passing. But along with thousands around the world, I am blessed by the memory of the joy and brilliance of Michael’s incredible life. Thank you, Michael. I hope you, Erik, and all those you loved who have passed are enjoying the adventures of being stardust once again.