Link to Homepage
Back to Index

Neil Gross

Title

Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology; Chair of Social Sciences Division

Department

Sociology

Information

Office Hours

M: 2:15 p.m. - 4:15 p.m.

Current Courses

CRS Title Sec
SO131 Introduction to Sociology A
SO131 Introduction to Sociology B
SO215 Classical Sociological Theory A
SO297 Sociology of Hate A
SO364 Policing the American City A

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2002
  • B.A., University of California-Berkeley, 1992

Areas of Expertise

  • Sociological theory
  • Sociology of intellectuals
  • Sociology of higher education
  • Politics
  • Police

Personal Information

Neil Gross joined the Colby faculty in 2015. He taught previously at Princeton, the University of British Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Southern California.

Gross works primarily on policing, politics, sociological theory, and the sociology of intellectual life. He is the author of Walk the Walk: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture (Metropolitan/Holt, 2023), Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? (Harvard University Press, 2013) and Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher (University of Chicago Press, 2008). He co-edited The New Pragmatist Sociology: Inquiry, Agency, and Democracy (with Isaac Reed and Chris Winship, Columbia University Press, 2022), Professors and Their Politics (with Solon Simmons, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), Social Knowledge in the Making (with Charles Camic and Michele Lamont, University of Chicago Press, 2011), and Durkheim’s Philosophy Lectures: Notes from the Lycée de Sens Course, 1883-4 (with Robert Alun Jones, Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Gross’s articles have been published in the American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Sociological Theory, Theory and Society, and elsewhere. From 2009 to 2015 he edited Sociological Theory, and he is currently a senior editor at Theory and Society.

In the New York Times:

Other Non-Academic Writing: