Seymour Martin Lipset, acclaimed political scientist, is dead at 84 (NYTimes, WaPo).

I was introduced to Lipset in my first semester as an undergraduate, studying his work on the relationship between democracy and economic development in multiple classes. I used his pamphlet “The Socialism of Fools—The Left, the Jews and Israel” in a few papers I wrote as an undergrad on the strange Antisemitism and authoritarianism of the radical left (most cite it for his anecdote about Martin Luther King refuting anti-Zionism as Antisemitism). My interests often coincided with his, and I kept re-discovering his works (which, I admit, I’ve only read a small fraction of). I admired Lipset’s political independence (nobody could pin him down), and his continued affiliation to the Jewish community. He continued to research and publish well into old age, and he will certainly be missed.
When I first started this blog, I didn’t want to pass along the obits, because I felt most of the other blogs I read could do a better job, but I didn’t see this on any of them.

Categories: America, Ephemera, Politics, The Academy