The Trump Administration censors sociological knowledge
In 2025, the Trump Administration banned words that sociologists regularly use from appearing on government websites and publicly-funded school curricula materials, according to a report from The New York Times.
In the banned word list: activism, inequality, intersectionality, gender, historically, political, underrepresentation, socioeconomic, and systemic, all of which — full disclosure — constitutes a significant portion of my research.
The Trump administration has banned other words: climate crisis, clean energy, equality, feminism, identity, inclusion, indigenous community, race and ethnicity, racism, transgender, women, and vulnerable populations, to name a few. There are 200 words on that list that sociologists regularly study and educate the public about.
But Trump and the new right’s war against words and ideas that emotionally trigger them have gone well beyond their previous attack on intersectionality, critical race theory, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). They have attacked sociology and interdisciplinary connections, as the NIH is considering defunding whole areas of science projects that relate to DEI. The US Department of Defense abruptly ended all funding for social science research programs.
Government has long partnered with academia to understand society better. A breach in this relationship would lead to less and lesser knowledge about human social behavior. Indeed, the NIH funds many projects in universities; students benefit from the funding and expertise they gain from conducting the NIH-funded research.
The Trump Administration also rescinded 400 million USD in funding to Columbia University and threatened other federal fund cuts to universities over “illegal protests,” a blatant attack on free speech. In response, Columbia capitulated, agreeing to place some of its area studies departments under academic receivership which, in any definition of it, severely limits the autonomy of the departments. Overall, it sets a bad precedent of publicly-funded universities bowing to ideological pressure and whims of the government.
This is not the first recent attack on sociology in the USA or abroad. DeSantis, Florida’s Governor, banned a course on the principles of sociology in their core curriculum. Victor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary and chief architect of its authoritarian turn, forced George Soros-backed Central European University — a social science-focused university with a strong political science department that had openly criticized Orban’s government — out of Hungary.
The US and Hungary follow the old Communist Party playbook
By attacking sociological concepts and academic freedom, and by attacking and defunding universities, authoritarians in the USA and Hungary are following an old playbook. When the Communist Party took over the countries of Eastern Europe, as they rebuilt the infrastructure devastated by World War II, they also moved to silence their potential critics. And one of their first moves was to shut down sociology and political science institutes.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Communist Party forcibly merged philosophy with sociology and strongly, strongly encouraged a strict Marxist perspective on the social sciences. Political science as a discipline suffered the same fate. In Poland, the University of Warsaw did not gain a specific sociology-only department until 1968, and political science was coupled with other social science departments for decades, including journalism. It takes a long time to shake off the legacies of the past. A specific faculty of political science and international studies was not created until 2016.
When the Polish government created the Polish Academy of Sciences as a research endeavor in 1951, sociology was not allowed to be on its own. Instead, they created the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology. It exists in this form today, but it is a rarity; when Communism fell in 1989, most of Eastern Europe’s academies of sciences broke philosophy from sociology into separate institutes. Eastern European countries, finally freed from Russia’s Soviet rule, created political science institutes. At the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where I work, we have freedom to pursue any line of sociological inquiry.
Why authoritarians hate sociology
Why do authoritarian governments and their right wing followers attack sociology and other social sciences?
Authoritarians hate sociology because sociology’s mandate is to dissect society and criticize systemic problems. Sociology challenges power by scientifically observing it and publicly reporting on how power works.
As Phillip Cohen put it, “Social science (often sociology specifically)… is an attractive target because our subjects are more readily intelligible and the political implications of our work are more apparent.”
All aspects of society are within sociology’s mandate to research and critique. Authoritarian governments require an acquiescent populace who will not question what authorities tell them. Sociology, the scientific study of human social life in all its aspects, is beneficial for free thought and democracy because it launches an unrelenting attack on darkness and quiet.
For authoritarians, sociology is dangerous.
Joshua K. Dubrow is a PhD from The Ohio State University and a Professor of Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
cover photo by Samuel Scrimshaw on Unsplash
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