From PK to Scholar-Activist: Continuing the Fight for Social Justice in a Dystopian Context

The theme for the 2025 annual conference for the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology (AACS) was “Scholar-Activism: All Around Us and Within.” This is a written version of the Presidential Address that then AACS President, Dr. Lindy Hern, delivered at the conference. In it, Hern discusses her own pathway to scholar activism through a reflection on her own herstory, her own research, and her own work with activists. The analysis presented in this essay connects to larger ongoing societal issues such as the rising authoritarianism in the United States and what scholar-activists can do about this problematic development.