ABSTRACT
Starting in May 2019, the Committee to Save the Antioch Lambs called on Antioch College to focus on educating students in the production of plant-based food and to stop the use and oppression of animals on the school’s farm, including nine lambs destined for the slaughterhouse. How the campaign became public sociology is described using Herbert Gans’ model, including his nine standards for doing public sociology and the three mechanisms he described as at play when sociology becomes public (i.e., it is pertinent to publics, sociologists embrace non-specialized vocabulary and presenters propose that sociology is worthy of becoming public). The American Sociology Association’s (ASA) refusal to release a statement in support of public sociology in the midst of the campaign, when its leader, Dr. David Nibert, was under siege from local presenters and their acolytes, is also examined. Drawing principally on Gans’ model, with some attention to Ben Agger’s public sociology, it is argued that the ASA is duty bound to support public sociologists.
