UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Thursday, 8 September 2016 at 2.30 pm
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR DIANE PAYNE, UCD School of Sociology on 8 September 2016, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa on MICHAEL HOUT.
President, Distinguished Guests, Colleagues and UCD Graduates
It is a great honour and indeed a pleasure to present Professor Mike Hout to you.
Today, we honour the outstanding contributions which Mike Hout has made to the disciplines of Sociology and Demography over the course of his distinguished academic career.
Mike Hout is an internationally acclaimed scholar. His exemplary research leads the field in the study of social change in inequality, religion, and politics and over the course of his career he has produced a number of seminal academic publications. Reflecting the acclaim for his research contributions, he is regularly cited by his peers across a wide range of excellent international peer reviewed journals and in various research monographs.
In 1976, Mike received his PhD in Sociology from Indiana University and early on in his academic career worked at the University of Arizona. For most of Mike’s career he has been most closely associated with the University of California in Berkeley, where he has held several Professorships of Sociology. More recently, in 2013 he moved to take up his current position of Professor of Sociology at New York University.
It is wonderful and indeed a great source of pride for UCD to also acknowledge that Mike Hout’s academic background is also integrally linked to Ireland and in particular UCD Sociology. Mike has had a long-standing relationship with UCD and with Ireland since the 1980s. He has visited and spent time at UCD on a number of different occasions from the eighties through to the nineties. In particular he was a Visiting Professor of Sociology in UCD from 1983 to 1984 and again in 1991. During this time, he also worked in UCD as part of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship where the focus of the research was ‘Occupational Mobility in Ireland’. UCD was in many ways a second academic home for Mike at that time. Strong, professional and friendship ties were formed then with various academics working in Ireland and in particular UCD colleagues in Sociology, ties which were to last for many years to come.
During this period Mike Hout produced a series of important academic works associated with his research visits to UCD. These include research work co-authored with John Goldstein entitled "How 4 Million Irish Immigrants Came to be 40 Million Irish Americans" which was published in the American Sociological Review.
He also wrote the excellent and illuminating research monograph entitled “Following in Father's Footsteps: Social Mobility in Ireland” which was subsequently published by Harvard University Press. This book was one of the first in-depth and systematic studies of inequality in Ireland, where Mike Hout made a significant challenge to the widely accepted thesis at the time that modernisation alone will reduce class barriers. This book also provides an international and comparative context within which to understand a rapidly changing and developing Ireland over time. Mike Hout has maintained strong links with UCD Sociology over three decades – acting as a mentor in research funding and facilitating research visits to UC Berkeley. He has also has been an invited speaker in UCD on several occasions and has contributed to collections on educational inequality in Ireland.
While UCD and the School of Sociology are delighted to recognise the ongoing and important contribution which Mike Hout makes to Irish Sociology, Mike’s central and most important focus is the study of change in inequality, religion, and politics in the US. Over the course of his inspiring career he has demonstrated his skill and innovation in the use of large scale datasets to map these social changes.
More recently he has used these skills to great effect and carefully examined Americans' changing perceptions of class, religion, and their place in society. Two publications illustrate the expanse of his scholarly endeavour. In 2006 he published with Claude Fischer the book “Century of Difference: How America Changed in the Last One Hundred Years”. This important work examines twentieth-century social and cultural trends in the United States. Drawing on rich census data, this book delves into, illuminates and challenges the concepts and meanings over time of what it is to be an American. His book “The Truth about Conservative Christians” also published in 2006 with Andrew Greeley, explores the social and political context of the religious right. This seminal work remains relevant and important for understanding America today.
His work on social class patterns are contained in another major book entitled “Inequality by Design” which was published by Princeton University Press in 1996. He has also written a series of important academic papers including "How Class Works: Subjective Aspects of Class and his religious focus in "The Demographic Imperative in Religious Change" published in the American Journal of Sociology. In each of these areas Mike Hout ranks as a key international contributor.
In recognition of his achievements Prof. Mike Hout has received many honours, among which are his election to American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1997), to the National Academy of Sciences (2003) and to the American Philosophical Society (2006). He has also received awards for his research and publications, such as Gustavus Myers Center: “Outstanding book” on Human Rights, for his book Inequality by Design, and the Population Association of America: Clifford C. Clogg Memorial Award “In recognition of distinguished contributions to the collection, modeling, and analysis of census and survey data.”
His work occupies a key place in the disciplines of Sociology and Demography. It is an honour today to recognise his commitment to excellence, by conferring on him the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature honoris causa
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad Gradum Doctoratus in Litteris; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.