Dr. Chad Alan Goldberg

Chad Alan Goldberg earned his doctoral degree at the New School for Social Research. He is currently a professor of sociology affiliated with the Center for German and European Studies, the George L. Mosse/Laurence A. Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, and the George L. Mosse Program in History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His areas of specialization include comparative, historical, and political sociology as well as social theory, with an emphasis on democratic citizenship and American political development.

Goldberg has previously had visiting appointments or research fellowships at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2008), the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study (2011–2012), the Advanced Research Collaborative at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (2013–2014), and the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (2015).

He is a member of the academic committee for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies; a member of the editorial boards for Sociological Theory, the Journal of Classical Sociology, and Civic Sociology; and an advisory editor for Sociological Quarterly. He is also a proud member of the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors.

Additional information may be found at his website  .

A century ago, as immigration to the United States rose and its sources changed, growing numbers of Americans began to call for the exclusion or coercive “Americanization” of new immigrants. In contrast, a small minority of dissenting intellectuals promoted the doctrine of cultural pluralism, a view with roots in the American school of philosophy known as pragmatism. These intellectuals included the literary critic and essayist Randolph Bourne (1886–1918); the social reformer John Collier (1884–1968), who served as Commissioner for the US Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945; the philosopher and educator John Dewey (1859–1952); the German-born Jewish philosopher Horace Kallen (1882–1974); and the African-American educator, writer, and philosopher Alain Locke (1886–1954), who led and interpreted the blossoming of African-American culture known as the Harlem Renaissance (c. 1918–37). Although their views were not identical, the cultural pluralists agreed that American identity should rest on an ideal of harmonious diversity rather than racial or cultural homogeneity.

Goldberg is currently working on a book about American democracy and cultural pluralism, which revisits the cultural pluralists’ contributions to democratic theory and reconsiders the relevance of their ideas for renewed controversies over immigration and cultural diversity today.

Books

•  (Ed.) Education for Democracy: Renewing the Wisconsin Idea (University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming).
• Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2017).
• Citizens and Paupers: Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen’s Bureau to Workfare (University of Chicago Press, 2007). Published in April 2008.

Journal articles and book chapters

• “The University’s Service to Democracy,” in Education for Democracy: Renewing the Wisconsin Idea (University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming).
• “The Jewish Stranger in Germany and America,” in Jews and Strangers, ed. Catherine Bartlett (Brill, forthcoming).
•  “The Polish Peasant as a Study of Civil Incorporation and Nation-Building,” Człowiek i Społeczeństwo, special issue on the centennial of The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (forthcoming).
• “Robert Park’s Marginal Man: The Career of a Concept in American Sociology,” in The Anthem Companion to Robert Park, ed. Peter Kivisto (New York: Anthem Press, 2017), 159–180.
• “The Two Marxes: From Jewish Domination to Supersession of the Jews,” Journal of Classical Sociology 15, no. 4 (Nov. 2015): 415–434.
• “The Jewish Question and the Civil Sphere,” in Solidarity, Justice, and Incorporation: Thinking through The Civil Sphere, ed. Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 119–141.