On May 8, 2025, the Sociology department lost a treasured colleague and friend. Ali Chaudhary suffered a fatal heart attack while out running on the towpath by the Delaware & Raritan Canal in central New Jersey. He was only 48 years old, and he leaves behind two young children whom he doted upon.
Ali was an expert in global migration and developed a popular new course for us on the Sociology of Immigration. He also taught the well-subscribed undergraduate Social Problems course multiple times, and our required graduate course on Contemporary Theorizing in Sociology. His research was published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Migration Review, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, The Sociological Quarterly, and the Annual Review of Sociology, among other venues. For the last few years, he served as an officer for the International Migration section of the American Sociological Association. In the last few years, he pivoted to work in the sociology of music, and in particular to cross-cultural influences in contemporary music, to racial boundary-drawing in the construction of musical genres and representation of musical instruments, and the precarity of work in the contemporary jazz music scene. He was planning to write a book on the latter topic, based on a survey he had distributed to professional musicians, interviews he had conducted with many of them, and dozens of hours of ethnographic observation. The topic was close to Ali’s heart, as he himself was an accomplished jazz guitarist who played regularly with many friends in Highland Park and beyond. He was always keen to play and hone his craft. He was a very talented man, whose many talents we will miss!
