Alice Goffman

Alice Goffman (born 1982) is an American sociologist, urban ethnographer, and author.

She was assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and visiting assistant professor of sociology at Pomona College.

Goffman wrote On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, a book about over-policing, poverty, and incarceration experienced by young black men and their families in Philadelphia.

It was a best-selling book for which she received widespread praise before it later came under scrutiny and criticism.

In 2010, she was awarded a two-year fellowship at the University of Michigan as a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar.

Beginning in the fall of 2012, Goffman taught both undergraduate and graduate level courses as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

At UW Madison, she established the Wisconsin Collective for Ethnographic Research with a colleague and served on several committees.

She has served as a reviewer and board member for several different sociological publications.

In 2014, Goffman published On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, an ethnographic account of her fieldwork on the impact of policing on the lives of young black men in Northeast Philadelphia.

Since the publication of On the Run, Goffman has delivered talks at dozens of colleges, universities, and conferences.

Her 2014 book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City published by University of Chicago Press, began as a research project Goffman started as a second-year undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, when she immersed herself in a disadvantaged neighborhood of Philadelphia with African-American young men who were subject to a high level of surveillance and police activity.

Goffman continued working on this project as a graduate student at Princeton, eventually turning it into her doctoral thesis and book.

The book was named by The New York Times as one of "100 notable books of 2014."

The New York Times Book Review also named it as its weekly "Editor's Choice" selection on July 6, 2014.

In The New York Times, Alex Kotlowitz called it "a remarkable feat of reporting."

Writing in The New York Review of Books, Christopher Jencks predicted that the work would become "an ethnographic classic."

The book continued to gain popularity following Goffman’s TED Talk, which has over 2 million views and has been widely circulated online.

Her TED Talk describes the consequences of incarceration and policing for marginalized young people, calling for an end to mass incarceration and highlighting the need for criminal justice reform in America.

Goffman’s argument that "tough on crime" policing has done more harm than good has resounded with many advocates for reform on social media.

Conservative law professor Amy Wax of the University of Pennsylvania Law School wrote that, "[Goffman] puts her finger on the wrong button. The force field that deforms 6th Street is not society’s effort to eradicate crime, but crime itself."

On the left, Dwayne Betts in Slate criticized Goffman for ignoring the lives of quiet achievement lived by most young men in the neighborhood she studied in favor of an "unrelenting focus on criminality."

Christina Sharpe in The New Inquiry criticized Goffman for failing to fully understand and acknowledge the power structures at work during her fieldwork, and criticised the positive critical reception of the book for elevating the work of a white scholar over important contributions by black scholars.

In addition, some reviewers have accused Goffman, as a white upper-class woman, of writing "jungle book" tropes about the lives of poor African-American young men.

Some parties have criticized On the Run for alleged factual inaccuracy and Goffman's alleged felonious conduct.

Legal ethicist Steven Lubet, reviewing On the Run in The New Rambler, claimed that Goffman had admitted to committing conspiracy to commit murder and "involved her[self] as an accomplice in the evident commission of a major felony" in a passage describing the aftermath of the murder of one of her sources.

In March 2015, she gave a TED Talk titled "How we’re priming some kids for college– and others for prison."

In 2015, she was accepted to the one-year fellowship program at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.

Issued in paperback in April 2015, the book uses the experience of Goffman's subjects to illustrate how young, black men are treated and mistreated by police within the framework of the American criminal justice system, and how this reshapes the lives of families in America's poor, black neighborhoods.

In the book’s introduction, Goffman highlights her central argument: "The sheer scope of policing and imprisonment in poor Black neighborhoods is transforming community life in ways that are deep and enduring, not only for the young men who are their targets but for their family members, partners, and neighbors."

Several sociologists, including Howard Becker, Elijah Anderson, and Carol Stack, reviewed the book positively.

Cornel West wrote, "Alice Goffman's "On the Run" is the best treatment I know of the wretched underside of neo-liberal capitalist America. Despite the social misery and fragmented relations, she gives us a subtle analysis and poignant portrait of our fellow citizens who struggle to preserve their sanity and dignity."

On the Run was also positively received outside of academia.

In April 2017, after being offered a position as a visiting professor at Pomona College, an anonymously-authored open letter was written calling for Goffman's appointment to be rescinded due to allegations of racism in her work and research methods.

The offer was not rescinded.

In 2019, the University of Wisconsin denied her tenure.

Goffman attended The Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

She earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD at Princeton University, both in sociology.

Her doctoral dissertation committee was chaired by Mitchell Duneier and included Paul DiMaggio, Devah Pager, Cornel West, and Viviana Zelizer.

While earning her PhD at Princeton, Goffman co-taught undergraduate courses with Mitch Duneier as a Lloyd Cotsen Graduate Teaching Fellow.

In 2019, she was denied tenure at University of Wisconsin-Madison.