Community News submitted by: Gregory Squires
The recipient of the 2025 American Sociological Association’s Public Understanding of Sociology Award is Dr. Gregory Squires, recognized by both his nominators and the selection committee for his involvement in policy research and a career as a public sociologist that have advanced the public understanding of sociology, sociological research, and scholarship among the general public. Squires is a professor emeritus and research professor in the department of sociology at George Washington University and has published or co-published more than 17 books and more than 36 reports for various audiences. He’s been an expert witness in six different cases and has consulted for a variety of public sector entities such as fair housing organizations in 10 cities, the Office of the New York State Attorney General, and more. According to one of his letters of recommendation, he served for seven years as a research/writer for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and as an Intergovernmental Personnel Act consultant to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.
While this award is often recognition for a long career of public service and sociology, Squires already has a plethora of awards, including the 2011 Robert and Helen Lynd Awards for Lifetime Achievement from the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. And one letter writer went further to say, “In my opinion, he has done more than anyone else in the field (me included) to document the persistence of racial discrimination in mortgage lending and to elaborate the consequences of this discrimination for African Americans and other minorities.”
Squires’s research focuses on insurance redlining, reverse redlining, the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the subprime mortgage crisis, and the causes and consequences of racial segregation. His two most recent books reflect his appeal and reach to the general public. He co-authored Meltdown: The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward (Bloomsbury Academic 2017), which includes an introduction by Elizabeth Warren, and edited The Fight for Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences, and Future Implications of the 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act (Routledge 2017), both of which were provided to attendees at events held at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Not many people can boast about these scholarly and public facing accomplishments.
One nominator also noted that “for most of his major scholarly contributions, Dr. Squires has written spin-off versions that appear as op-eds or in public testimony” for outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and American Banker. And for many of you searching for an opportunity to be publicly engaged in this challenging time, I encourage you to read a chapter from the Oxford Handbook of Sociology and Social Justice (Oxford Academic 2024) that was submitted as evidence of his approach titled “Wins, Losses, and Lessons of Engaged Social Justice Research: How Academic Institutions Nurture and Undermine Collaborative Community-Based Scholarship.”
In addition to all his academic accomplishments, Squires was tapped to support local government—joining the mayor-elect of Philadelphia’s transition team in 2022, serving on the Subcommittee on Housing, Planning, and Development and you can read more about that in the Philadelphia Inquirer. One nominator also noted that, “Dr. Squires is continuously asked to provide testimony and expertise on these issues for various organizations including the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the NAACP, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and many more.” Congratulations to Gregory D. Squires, recipient of the 2025 ASA Public Understanding of Sociology Award.
