Seymour Martin Lipset

Seymour Martin Lipset (March 18, 1922 - December 31, 2006) was a leading American political scientist and sociologist.

Lipset received a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University in 1949. He was the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford University (1975–1990) and the George D. Markham Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. He also taught at Columbia University, the University of California, Berkeley, and George Mason University, and had an appointment at the Hoover Institution.

His major work was in the fields of comparative politics, Canadian studies, political sociology, trade union organization, social stratification, public opinion, and the sociology of intellectual life. He also wrote extensively about the conditions for democracy in comparative perspective.

Early life

Lipset was born in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. His father, Max Lipset, was a typographer and had been one in Russia; as a member of the Kiev typographer's union, who once met Stalin. "I remember that he was different from the other Bolsheviks," said Max. "The others would come and talk about Marxist theory and the revolution. Stalin spoke about organization, efficiency and money." He grew up in the Bronx among Irish, Italian and Jewish youth. "I was in that atmosphere where there was a lot of political talk," Lipset recalled, "but you never heard of Democrats or Republicans; the question was communists, socialists, Trotskyists, or anarchists. It was all sorts of different left wing groups." Seymour was active in the Young People's Socialist League, an organization of young Trotskyists.

He graduated from City College of New York, where he was an anti-Stalinist leftist and later became national chairman of the Young People's Socialist League. He left the Socialist Party in 1960 and described himself as a centrist.

Lipset received the MacIver Prize for Political Man and the Gunnar Myrdal Prize for The Politics of Unreason. His book The First New Nation was a finalist for the National Book Award. He was also awarded the Townsend Harris and Margaret Byrd Dawson Medals for significant achievement, the Northern Telecom-International Council for Canadian Studies Gold Medal, and the Leon Epstein Prize in Comparative Politics by the American Political Science Association. He has received the Marshall Sklare Award for distinction in Jewish studies. In 1997, he was awarded the Helen Dinnerman Prize by the World Association for Public Opinion Research.

Lipset was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was the only person to have been president of both the American Sociological Association (1992–93) and the American Political Science Association (1979–80). He also served as the president of the International Society of Political Psychology, the Sociological Research Association, the World Association for Public Opinion Research, and the Society for Comparative Research. He was also the president of the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Society in Vienna.

Lipset was active in public affairs on a national non-partisan level. He was a director of the United States Institute of Peace. He has been a board member of the Albert Shanker Institute, a member of the U.S. Board of Foreign Scholarships, co-chair of the Committee for Labor Law Reform, co-chair of the Committee for an Effective UNESCO, and consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the American Jewish Committee.

He was president of the American Professors for Peace in the Middle East, chair of the National B'nai B'rith Hillel Commission and the Faculty Advisory Cabinet of the United Jewish Appeal, and cochair of the Executive Committee of the International Center for Peace in the Middle East. He worked for years on seeking solution for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. This was part of his larger project of researching what factor allow societies to sustain stable and peaceful democracies. His work focused on the preconditions to democracy -- especially high socioeconomic development and the consequences of democracy for peace.

Lipset's first wife, Elsie, died in 1987. With her, he had three children: David, Daniel, and Cici. He is survived by his second wife, Sydnee, whom he married in 1990.

Works

• Agrarian Socialism: The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan, a Study in Political Sociology (1950), ISBN 0520020561 (1972 printing). online edition
• We'll Go Down to Washington (1951).
• Union Democracy with Martin Trow and James S. Coleman.
• Social Mobility in Industrial Society with Reinhard Bendix (1959), ISBN 0887387608 online edition
• Social Structure and Mobility in Economic Development with Neil J. Smelser (1966), ISBN 0829009108 online edition
• Economic Development and Political Legitimacy (1959).
• Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (1960), ISBN 0385066503. online edition
• The First New Nation (1963), online edition
• Student Politics (1967), online edition
• Revolution and Counterrevolution: Change and Persistence in Social Structures, (1968) online version

+ editor, Politics and the Social Sciences (1969)

• Prejudice and Society with Earl Raab.
• The Politics of Unreason: Right Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970 with Earl Raab (1970), online edition
• The Divided Academy: Professors and Politics with Carl Everett Ladd (1975), online edition
• The Confidence Gap: Business, Labor, and Government in the Public Mind (1987).
• Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (1989).
• "Liberalism, Conservatism, and Americanism", Ethics & International Affairs (1989).
• Jews and the New American Scene with Earl Raab (1995).
• American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (1996).
• It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (2001),
• "Steady Work: An Academic Memoir", in Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 22, 1996. online version

About Lipset

• Marks, Gary and Larry J. Diamond (eds) Reexamining Democracy: Essays in Honor of Seymour Martin Lipset, Sage Publications 1992
• Velasco, Jesus G. "Seymour Martin Lipset: Life and Work." Canadian Journal of Sociology. 29#4 (2004) pp 583+. online edition

External links

• Biography at the Hoover Institution.
• Obituary in the Washington Post.
• Obituary in the Jerusalem Post.

[1]"Metta Spencer, "Lipset's Gift to Peace Workers: On Getting and Keeping Democracy." Peace Magazine, April 2007