Jeff Goodwin

Jeffrey Roger Goodwin (born January 28, 1958) is a professor of sociology at New York University. He holds a BA, MA (Sociology) and PhD (Sociology) from Harvard University.

His research interests include social movements, revolutions, political violence, and terrorism. He is a past chair of the Comparative and Historical Sociology Section and the Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

The underlying argument of his best known book, No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945-1991, is that revolutionary movements are not only a response to economic inequality or exploitation, but are also a response to political repression and violence.

Goodwin has written and edited a number of works with his friend and former NYU colleague James M. Jasper. They wrote a famous critique of the political-opportunity theory developed by Charles Tilly and Doug McAdam, republished in Rethinking Social Movements, which Goodwin and Jasper edited. They also edited The Contexts Reader (New York: W. W. Norton), Social Movements (Routledge), The Social Movements Reader (Wiley-Blackwell), and (with Francesca Polletta) Passionate Politics (University of Chicago Press), a leading work in the sociology of emotions.

In October 2011, Goodwin was one of 132 New York University (NYU) faculty and staff members who signed a statement calling for disinvestment in several American companies that do business in Israel. In response to sharp criticism from Congressman Gary Ackerman, Goodwin accused Ackerman of moral blindness and stated that "Ackerman's apparent denial that Israel is occupying Palestinian territories and systematically violating basic Palestinian rights is simply shocking."[1]