Florida’s Board of Governors’ decision to remove the Introduction to Sociology course from the state university core is being sold as a blow against “woke indoctrination,” but the move reveals a misunderstanding of what sociology actually is. As someone who has taught the introductory course in sociology for more than 30 years, I have appreciated sociology as a field built on empirical inquiry, methodological rigor, and the study of real social patterns—patterns that matter whether one is conservative, liberal, or politically indifferent. But Florida’s Board is correct that the discipline has allowed—even encouraged—leftist politics to eclipse foundational scholarship, creating the very distortions that critics now seize upon.

Conceding that missteps exist is very different from pretending the discipline no longer serves a vital public purpose. By reducing sociology to an elective, the Board of Governors has inadvertently signaled to students that understanding social behavior, demographic change, family structure, labor markets, religion, crime, and institutions is somehow optional in an educated society. These are the competencies employers consistently demand and the very lens through which citizens make sense of a complex world. Ironically, the loudest critics of sociology often rely on sociological insights without realizing it. When they talk about declining marriage rates, the birth dearth, the opioid crisis, the effects of fatherlessness, or the cultural fragmentation of American life, they are drawing on the very sociological tools the state of Florida now dismisses as ideological excess.

Still, it is difficult to deny that several segments of the discipline have been overtaken by a narrow band of leftist politics, with real consequences in the classroom. I have watched introductory courses at some institutions drift away from teaching foundational concepts like socialization, institutions, deviance, demography, family structure, and instead, move toward a kind of political activism that treats contested ideological claims as settled truth. Marxist views and skepticism of the free market have too often dominated the discipline and shaped what students encounter in the classroom. Too often, students encountered a curriculum that privileged advocacy over analysis.

This shift has frustrated many of us who entered sociology because we believed in empirical inquiry, not ideological conformity. Like many of my conservative colleagues, I have found that it is nearly impossible for a conservative sociologist to be hired on many college campuses. But the existence of excesses within the field is not an argument for eliminating sociology from the core; it is an argument for strengthening it, diversifying its intellectual voices, and ensuring that students encounter the full range of sociological perspectives, not just the loudest faction.

As a sociologist, I find the Florida Board’s decision especially frustrating. My own career—spanning more than three decades of teaching, research, and public scholarship—has been devoted to examining social life without surrendering to ideological fashion. None of my work has required me to abandon empirical rigor or adopt the “woke” orthodoxies that critics now claim define the field. And I am hardly alone. There are many conservative sociologists—some of them are currently teaching sociology in Florida—and they will be punished by this decision. 

Yet it is likely that they, too, would have to acknowledge that they have already been marginalized within the discipline itself and have found themselves unemployable on many campuses. Still, there is a long tradition of classically liberal sociologists who have contributed meaningfully to the discipline and have brought needed intellectual diversity to their campuses. That tradition continues today. To erase sociology from the core curriculum because some practitioners embrace an aggressively left‑wing worldview is to ignore the breadth of the field—and to silence the many conservative sociological voices that contradict the stereotype.

A far better remedy would be to restore genuine intellectual diversity within sociology rather than abandoning the field altogether. Universities—including those in Florida—should begin to recruit and retain scholars who represent a broad spectrum of sociological perspectives—conservative, classical liberal, religious, empirical—so that students encounter debate rather than dogma. At the same time, institutions must be willing to confront the small but vocal minority of progressive faculty who use the classroom as a platform for political advocacy rather than disciplined inquiry. The problem of politicization of the classroom is hardly unique to sociology; it appears in history, political science, and even some literature programs. The solution is not to eliminate entire disciplines but to insist on professional standards that separate scholarship from activism and ensure that students are taught how to think, not what to think.

Florida’s decision does nothing to correct the ideological excesses that have crept into the discipline of sociology. Rather, it abandons the field altogether and leaves students less prepared to understand the social forces shaping their lives. Eliminating sociology from the core curriculum is not a reform—it is a retreat. It removes the opportunity for the very intellectual diversity that critics claim to want and hands the discipline over entirely to the activists they oppose. A wiser approach would strengthen methodological rigor, broaden the range of perspectives represented in introductory courses, and ensure that students encounter sociology as a science rather than an ideological script.

By pushing sociology to the margins rather than strengthening it, Florida has opted to deprive its students of one of the most valuable tools for making sense of the world they are about to enter. By marginalizing sociology, Florida has not protected students from ideology—it has simply left them less equipped to recognize it.