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Seymour Lipset

Seymour Martin Lipset
LipsetImage.jpg
Born (1922-03-18)March 18, 1922
Harlem, New York City, New York, U.S.
Died December 31, 2006(2006-12-31) (aged 84)
Arlington, Virginia, U.S.
Occupation Political sociologist

Seymour Martin Lipset (March 18, 1922 – December 31, 2006) was an American sociologist. His major work was in the fields of 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. A Socialist in his early life; Lipset later moved to the right, and became one of the first neoconservatives.

At his death in 2006, The Guardian called him "the leading theorist of democracy and American exceptionalism"; The New York Times said he was "a pre-eminent sociologist, political scientist and incisive theorist of American uniqueness"; and the Washington Post said he was "one of the most influential social scientists of the past half century."

Lipset was born in Harlem, New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. His family urged him to become a dentist.

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 received a PhD in sociology from Columbia University in 1949. Before that he taught at the University of Toronto.

Lipset was the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science and Sociology and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and then became the George D. Markham Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. He also taught at Columbia University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Toronto, and George Mason University where was the Hazel Professor of Public Policy.


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