Give Criminology a Chance
Notes from a discipline on the brink
/ Eye on the News / Public Safety
May 12 2023
Every year, around mid-November, the American Society of Criminology hosts a conference to showcase the state of the discipline. The ASC is home to academic criminologists—professors and other scholars who conduct research and teach about crime and justice. I have attended these meetings since 1992, but my engagement with the organization has dissipated as the ASC has grown increasingly political.
In 2013, for example, white men were entirely excluded from organizing panel presentations for the annual meeting the following year. Not one of the 69 individuals responsible for creating sessions from all the submissions was a white man, and 90 percent were women. Men make up 45 percent of the organization’s membership, though, and the overwhelming majority (80 percent) are white. Clearly, this was not a coincidence.
The ASC leadership is responsible for the organization’s descent. The president at the time of the 2014 conference, Joanne Belknap, an activist scholar of radical feminist persuasion, delivered a presidential address back then that left no room for interpretation: “I was thrilled with the praxis aspect of Marxism, the call for scholars to do more than sit in ivory towers and the necessity of being part of making political and societal change. I still embrace most of the tenets of . . . Marxism.” A few years later, under the presidency of Meda Chesney-Lind, the agenda for the 2019 meeting was even more explicit in its political commitments. From her preview of that conference: “Progressive criminologists, particularly in the United States, face a daunting set of challenges. It is now clear that rightwing politics, particularly racism, sexism and nationalism, were central to Donald Trump’s surprising election.”
https://www.city-journal.org/article/give-criminology-a-chance
