Steven Barkan, textbook author and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Maine, has been awarded a 2025 TAA Social Justice Award from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA).

TAA’s Social Justice Award recognizes individuals that make a significant contribution to authoring or educating academic authors in social justice, human rights, and/or diversity, equity, and inclusion. Strong nominees have the following characteristics: have authored a work or works that address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in a meaningful way or have provided trainings or other efforts to improve how academic authors address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in their writing.

On behalf of the association and its Awards Committee, TAA Board President Paul Krieger, said: “Your decades-long career exemplifies a rare and profound commitment to social justice through academic authorship. Through your groundbreaking and widely cited scholarship on racial prejudice in criminal justice and your pioneering work on the dynamics of political justice and social movements, you have brought critical social issues to the forefront of sociological and criminological discourse. Your extensive body of work not only advances academic knowledge but also challenges systems of inequality, inspires social change, and gives voice to the marginalized. TAA is honored to recognize your lifelong dedication to justice, equity, and truth through the written word. You represent the very essence of what this award seeks to celebrate.”

Much of Barkan’s scholarship as a sociologist and criminologist has highlighted racial issues. These issues are examined in virtually every chapter of the many textbooks heI has written in my fields, and they are the central focus of one of his textbooks and several of his articles in top journals in their areas.

In his nomination letter, he wrote: “Beginning with my doctoral dissertation and first book on the criminal justice experiences of Southern civil rights and Vietnam antiwar protesters, much of my scholarship has also focused on the strategies and dynamics of movements for social change and justice and the efforts of legal officials to thwart those movements. A major thrust of this scholarship has concerned political justice, or the use of the criminal justice process by and against social movements. I was the first sociologist to study political justice and remain one of the few social scientists to do so. My scholarship in this area led to two invited publications: a 2006 article in the leading social movements journal, and a forthcoming article in an international handbook on political control, both listed below. My articles on political justice and other aspects of social movements have appeared in top journals in their fields, have collectively earned more than 1,300 citations in Google Scholar, and have deepened scholarly understanding of the efforts by social movements to bring about social change and justice.” Read his full nomination letter.

Congratulations, Steven!