The war on studying inequality
A state strikes sociology from the college core. The federal science agency cancels a billion dollars in research. An op-ed in the country's biggest business paper asks whether to “liquidate” the field. Different hands — same target: the disciplines that measure who has power and who does not.
Each move is real and documented. In 2024 Florida removed introductory sociology from the courses that satisfy its general-education core, with the state's education chief calling the field “hijacked by left-wing activists.” In 2025 the National Science Foundation terminated more than 1,500 grants worth about $1.1 billion, the overwhelming majority tagged as diversity-related. In 2026 the Wall Street Journal's opinion page ran a column asking whether it is time to “liquidate” sociology altogether. We grade each of those as fact. What we pose — rather than assert — is the throughline: that together they amount to a campaign against the study of inequality itself. And we are careful about what we do not say: this is not evidence that the Journal's newsroom is “compromised,” and the critique of the discipline is not baseless.
What this page is about
Three separate moves, one target. In January 2024, Florida's Board of Governors and State Board of Education removed introductory sociology from the list of courses that satisfy the general-education core, with Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. saying the field had been “hijacked by left-wing activists” — an extension of 2023's Senate Bill 266, which barred general-education courses from teaching that “systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege” are inherent in American institutions. In 2025, the National Science Foundation terminated more than 1,500 research grants worth roughly $1.1 billion — about 4% of its active portfolio, and by the Urban Institute's count nearly 90% of them diversity-related — following a January executive order ending federal DEI programs. And in July 2026, the Wall Street Journal's opinion page published a column asking whether it is time to “liquidate” the study of sociology.
Sociology is the discipline most associated with measuring inequality, mobility, discrimination, and power. Strip it from the core, defund the research, and argue in elite media that it should not exist, and you make it harder for the public to know how unequal the country is — which is why this belongs in a file about who controls what you get to know. We grade each act as fact, pose the campaign as a question, and keep two honest fences: the critique of the discipline's politics is not without merit, and one opinion column does not make a newsroom corrupt.
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The War on Studying Inequality
A state strikes sociology from the college core. The federal science agency cancels ~$1.1B in research. An op-ed in the country's biggest business paper asks whether to 'liquidate' the field. Different hands, same target: the disciplines that measure who has power.
The claim this page defends
State curriculum rules, federal research cuts, and elite opinion are separately and demonstrably narrowing the study of inequality and power — and while each act is a fact and each has its own stated rationale, together they function as a campaign that makes it harder for the public to measure how unequal the country is. You cannot fix what you are not allowed to count.
The squeeze, step by step: 2023 – 2026
- 2023. Florida's Senate Bill 266 bars general-education courses from teaching that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in U.S. institutions, and restricts DEI spending.
- January 2024. Florida removes introductory sociology from the general-education core; Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. says the field has been “hijacked by left-wing activists.”
- January 21, 2025. A federal executive order directs agencies to end DEI programs and preferences.
- April–June 2025. The NSF begins terminating grants; by mid-year it has canceled ~1,574 projects worth ~$1.1 billion, nearly 90% diversity-related. Litigation forces some reinstatements.
- July 2026. The Wall Street Journal's opinion page runs “Is It Time to ‘Liquidate’ the Study of Sociology?” by Wayne State sociologist Jukka Savolainen.
- March 2026. Florida moves again on sociology; lawmakers push to give boards more power over general-education content.
The record, claim by claim
Florida removed introductory sociology from its general-education core, calling the field 'hijacked by left-wing activists.'
FACTIn January 2024 Florida's Board of Governors and State Board of Education voted to drop Principles of Sociology as an option for satisfying the state's general-education social-science requirement. Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. said the discipline 'has been hijacked by left-wing activists and no longer serves its intended purpose as a general knowledge course.' The move followed 2023's Senate Bill 266, which prohibits general-education courses from teaching that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in U.S. institutions. Honest fence: sociology was not banned — universities may still offer it, and it remains available at the institutional level; what changed is that it no longer counts toward the mandatory core, which shapes what most students are steered to take.
- CBS Miami — 'Florida removes sociology as a core subject in public universities as part of a push against DEI'
- Florida Department of Education — 'State Board of Education Removes Sociology from General Education in the Florida College System'
- Fortune — Florida removes sociology from the core amid the 'war on woke' (Jan 26, 2024)
The National Science Foundation terminated more than 1,500 research grants worth about $1.1 billion in 2025 — nearly 90% diversity-related.
FACTFollowing a January 21, 2025 executive order ending federal DEI programs, the NSF began canceling grants in April. By the end of June it had terminated about 1,574 projects worth roughly $1.1 billion — around 4% of its active portfolio — and by the Urban Institute's analysis nearly 90% of the canceled awards were diversity-related, with concentrations in research on inequality, environmental justice, and misinformation. The Department of Government Efficiency claimed an early tranche of 402 grants worth $233 million. Litigation forced partial reversals: NSF reinstated 114 awards to University of California researchers by June 30. The cuts are documented; whether they were lawful is being fought in court.
The Wall Street Journal's opinion page ran a column asking whether it is time to 'liquidate' the study of sociology.
FACTIn July 2026 the Journal's opinion section published 'Is It Time to ‘Liquidate’ the Study of Sociology?' by Jukka Savolainen, a sociologist and criminologist at Wayne State University, written in response to Florida's curriculum change. The column argues the discipline has drifted from social science into left-wing advocacy and points to the American Sociological Association's activist conference themes. Two precisions that matter: this is an opinion column, not a news article, and its author is an academic in the field, not a corporate executive — so it is best read as elite media amplifying and legitimizing the state and federal moves, not as a billionaire's decree. We grade the fact of the column and its argument; we do not adopt its conclusion, and we do not treat it as evidence about the Journal's newsroom.
The critique the campaign leans on — that academic sociology has become ideologically homogeneous — is not baseless.
PROBABLY TRUEWe include this because ignoring it would be a strawman. The charge that sociology skews heavily to the left and sometimes blends scholarship with activism is made not only by conservatives but by people inside the field: the WSJ op-ed's own author is a working sociologist, and disciplinary surveys and defenders alike acknowledge the field is politically lopsided and has, at times, let advocacy color its framing. We grade this PROBABLY TRUE — it is a real and widely conceded pattern, though 'homogeneous' is a matter of degree. The point for this page is not that the critique is wholly wrong; it is that a genuine debate about a discipline's culture is being used to justify removing it from the core and defunding the research — a remedy wildly out of proportion to, and aimed past, the stated problem.
Taken together, these moves function as a campaign against the measurement of inequality — but they are separate actors, not one control room.
SOME SMOKELine them up — a state stripping sociology from the core, a federal agency cutting ~$1.1B in mostly diversity-tagged research, elite opinion calling for the field's end — and the pattern is hard to miss: the disciplines and datasets that document inequality and power are being narrowed from several directions at once. We grade the throughline SOME SMOKE and pose it, because the honest reading is convergence, not conspiracy: different actors (a red-state board, a federal executive order, an opinion columnist) with overlapping but distinct motives, no evidence of a single coordinating hand. What is not in dispute is the cumulative effect — less sociology taught, less inequality research funded, more public argument that the whole enterprise is illegitimate. A reader is entitled to ask who benefits when the country gets harder to measure.
Where the evidence is strong, and where it stops
- The three acts are documented. Florida's curriculum vote, the NSF's grant terminations, and the WSJ op-ed are all on the public record with named sources. This is not inference.
- The campaign is posed, not proven. We call the throughline SOME SMOKE deliberately: convergence of separate actors is real and worth naming, but we have no evidence of a single coordinating hand, and we don't pretend to.
- The critique isn't a strawman. Sociology's ideological lopsidedness is conceded even inside the field. We say so — and then note the remedy (cut it from the core, defund the research) is far out of proportion to the complaint.
- The WSJ newsroom is not the story. The op-ed is opinion, by an academic, not the reporting desk. We refuse the “the whole paper is compromised” leap because the news/opinion firewall is real — and because our own work depends on that distinction holding.
You can't fix what you're not allowed to count
This page sits in Who Controls What You Get to Know because the most durable way to protect an unequal order is not to argue that inequality is fine — it is to make inequality harder to see. Curricula decide what the next generation is taught to notice; research funding decides what gets measured at all; and elite opinion decides which questions are respectable to ask. When the same subject — the study of who has power and who does not — is squeezed at all three points at once, the effect is a quieter public, working with less evidence, less able to say how unequal things have become. That is the same machine as book bans and buried records, run on the academy instead of the library. See the broader pattern in “The Enclosure of Knowledge” and the Texas prison book ban.
Questions worth taking seriously
Doesn't the WSJ op-ed prove the paper is pushing an agenda?
It shows the Journal's opinion page — long conservative and Murdoch-owned — will platform an argument for ending a discipline. That's worth noting. But it says nothing about the paper's news desk, a separate, firewalled operation that has broken major stories against powerful interests. We won't tell you “the whole paper is compromised,” because that conflates opinion with news — the exact error this site exists to fight.
Isn't sociology actually pretty ideological?
There's a real basis to that critique, and we say so — it's made by people inside the field, including the op-ed's own author. Sociology does skew left and has at times mixed scholarship with activism. But “the field leans left” is an argument for reform or intellectual competition, not for striking it from the core and defunding the research. The remedy is aimed past the stated problem — at the measurement of inequality itself.
Is this a coordinated conspiracy?
We don't claim that, and we grade the throughline SOME SMOKE for exactly that reason. A red-state board, a federal executive order, and an opinion columnist are different actors with overlapping but distinct motives. What we can show is convergence — several independent pressures narrowing the same field at once — and the cumulative effect: less inequality taught, funded, and treated as legitimate. Convergence is enough to raise the question; it isn't proof of a control room, and we don't pretend it is.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- Florida Department of Education — State Board removes sociology from general education (Jan 2024)
- CBS Miami — Florida removes sociology as a core subject amid the push against DEI
- Fortune — Florida drops sociology from the core in the “war on woke”
- Urban Institute — NSF canceled 1,500+ grants, nearly 90% DEI-related
- Inside Higher Ed — NSF terminates grants focused on DEI or misinformation (Apr 2025)
- The Wall Street Journal (Opinion) — Jukka Savolainen on “liquidating” sociology
- Temple of Sociology (Fabio Rojas) — a sociologist's response conceding the field's politicization while criticizing the WSJ framing
- Black Book Audit — “The Enclosure of Knowledge”