Authorities confirmed Tuesday that a retired professor from the University of California, Berkeley was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Oakland on Monday.
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Coroner Bureau identified Michael Burawoy as the collision victim on Tuesday. In addition to being a sociology professor at UC Berkeley for almost 50 years, the 77-year-old Oakland native was president of the American Sociological Association and the International Sociological Association.
Public sociology, a branch of sociology that aims to discuss topics like social movements, political action, and public policy with non-academic audiences, was first studied by Burawoy.
Officers were called to the scene of a car striking a person at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Park View Terrace, close to Lake Merritt, just before 7:15 p.m. on Monday, according to Oakland police. Officers discovered the guy wounded after being hit by a car. The man was taken to a hospital by the arriving medics, who declared him dead.
According to police, the investigation found that the pedestrian was in a designated crosswalk when a car approached Park View Terrace on Grand Avenue while driving west, striking the pedestrian in the crossing. After the crash, the car drove off the site.
Whether drugs or alcohol contributed to this crash was unknown. No suspect or suspect car has been recognized by the police.
Burawoy, who worked within Marxist social theory and wrote 12 books and more than 120 periodicals, is credited with having a revolutionary influence on sociology. Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism is one of his most well-known books; it has been translated into a number of languages, according to WorldCat.org.
Following Burawoy’s retirement in 2023, UC Berkeley created the Burawoy Chair’s Endowment for Sociology as a tribute to the professor emeritus.
“Michael Burawoy had a huge influence on sociology. “When many people around the world think of Berkeley Sociology, they think of Burawoy,” stated Kim Voss, a professor at UC Berkeley and a former chair of the sociology department, in 2023. “His national and international presence, alongside his tireless dedication to Berkeley, makes him a pillar of our community.”
Anyone with information regarding the crash is encouraged to call Oakland police’s Traffic Investigation Unit at (510) 777-8570. It was requested that anyone with images or videos that could help with the investigation send them to [email protected].
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