Radical Compassion

Abstract

Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve on Radical Compassion in Sociology.

None of us were trained for this moment; if we are honest with ourselves, we were not even trained to teach. Our graduate training (at best) prepared us to lecture at students—to be sages on stages.

No, we were trained as researchers to be objective, measured, and even clinical.

And yet, here we are, educating during a global pandemic that feels like an Orwellian-nightmare. Our lecture halls are empty, and our students are now presented as tiny squares on a computer. Our “wish” for “quiet” office hours came true. However, we never imagined that it would look like this.

In 2016, Michael Burawoy asked, “What does it mean to live for sociology, today?” In these times, I find myself revisiting this question: what does it mean to live for sociology amidst a twin pandemic of systemic racism and COVID-19? What is the vocation of our discipline?

As the pandemic lock-down began, I wrote a letter to my students in my Ph.D. seminar. I reassured them that this was the time to use their love of sociology as a means to a new end—a way to connect and find a sense of calm during a global crisis. Rather than earning a grade, I called upon them to do sociology for its own sake—for its capacity to bring them joy and hope to envision a better post-pandemic future. Shockingly, this letter would be one of my most widely read written-pieces—shared globally, thousands of times on Facebook, Twitter and email.

A student from NYU-Shanghai sent my letter back to their friend in the United States who, then shared the letter with their former adviser, Professor Courtney Patterson-Faye. The letter reminded him of Patterson-Faye’s generosity, and he thanked her for encouraging him to put his well-being before anything else. He ended by saying, “Whoever you are teaching now, I am grateful that they have a professor as deeply compassionate as you.”

Professor Patterson-Faye sent this message to me with a note of thanks for a letter that traveled around the world and back again. A letter of compassion spread exponentially—as though it was an anti-virus. As sociologists, we know this is data—evidence that a type of radical compassion can bond us during a time of collective uncertainty, physical isolation, and fear. It is “radical” compassion because it is a value that our institutions rarely reward.

As I have written, our “pursuit of objectivity” in our research scares us into incorporating considerations of compassion, dignity, and grace into sociology despite the overwhelming evidence that it may be an antidote for the loss that we are experiencing in this moment. And yet, if we let ourselves feel— sorrow, indignation, and even anger—it may be self-evident that a radical compassion is the only way that we can move forward with our teaching, research, and advocacy. These are unprecedented times, and unprecedented times change institutions and sociology is not immune.

This pandemic has a way of opening up people’s eyes to many terrible injustices and inequalities that too often go unnoticed. However, we, sociologists, have noticed, studied and written. It seems unimaginable that we would be silent about this work. If something could be called “sociological malpractice,” it would be bearing witness to social injustice and inequality and not doing anything to try to expose it or change it. If we are a discipline of radical compassion, then that orientation must be part of our disciplinary commitment; Not part of the margins of our profession, but part of the very definition of what it means to be a sociologist.

Sociology may be a vocation according to Michael Burawoy—a type of “commitment without guarantees”—but it is one that must be revitalized for new eras. Max Weber likely knew this as well. He lived through World War I and the 1918 Flu Pandemic. By 1920, a late resurgence of the virus took his life. A year before his death, he warned: “not summer’s bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness.” Certainly, we are living through darkness. However, for the long term we must be the light, the hope, and the way forward. That hope forward is through a radical compassion born of shared suffering and empathy. Perhaps, this is a Du Boisian vision, a type of sociology born of our experience and motivated by an urgency to be responsive to this moment for our students, for ourselves, and for our global community.