This episode features sociologist Dr. Agata Zysiak talking about her recent work  "Limiting Privilege: Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland" (2023), which examines first-generation students' struggles with reluctant academia in a developing socialist world that was looking for equality.

We talk about the successes and failures of this ambitious socialist program, its similarities and differences to race based affirmative action in North America, and what this tells us about social reproduction and the zombie impact of social systems even in the face of dramatic social revolution.

Agata Zysiak, PhD, is a historical sociologist working at Vienna University in Austria and the University of Łódź in Poland. You can get 30% off Limiting Privilege: Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland and any other Purdue University Press book by ordering from their website and using the code PURDUE30 at checkout.