“Is it the responsibility of those who study a community to reinforce the choices of others to join that community?”

I remain fascinated by and ambivalent of the ways in which American Jewish sociology – the study of the structure and functioning of Jewish society – is so often and explicitly tied into advocacy of certain types of functioning over others. … Is it the responsibility of those who study a community to reinforce the choices of others to join that community? In what ways does this become a “thumb on the scale” in doing the research, consciously or unconsciously?

Yehuda Kurtzer, Facebook post (5 February 2018) [https://www.facebook.com/yehuda.kurtzer/posts/10156237644402174]