Editing Todd Gitlin

{{Short description|American sociologist (1943–2022)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| name        = Todd Gitlin
| image       = Todd Gitlin by David Shankbone crop.jpg
| alt         = 
| birth_name  = Todd Alan Gitlin
| birth_date  = {{Birth date|1943|01|06}}
| birth_place = New York City, U.S.
| death_date  = {{death date and age|2022|02|05|1943|01|06}}
| death_place = [[Pittsfield, Massachusetts]], U.S.
| other_names = 
| known_for   = [[Students for a Democratic Society]]
| occupation  = Sociologist, author, professor
| education = [[Harvard College]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|AB]])<br>[[University of Michigan]] ([[Master of Arts|MA]])<br>[[University of California, Berkeley]] ([[Doctor of Philosophy|PhD]])
| awards      = Bosch Berlin Prize in Public Policy<br>Fellow at the [[American Academy in Berlin]]
| website     = {{URL|toddgitlin.net}}
| spouse      = {{plainlist|
* {{marriage|[[Nancy Hollander]]|1964|end = divorced}}
* {{marriage|Carol Wolman|1976|end = divorced}}
* {{marriage|Laurel Ann Cook|November 3, 1995}}
}}
}}

'''Todd Alan Gitlin''' (January 6, 1943 – February 5, 2022) was an American [[sociology|sociologist]], political activist and writer, novelist, and cultural commentator. He wrote about the mass media, politics, intellectual life, and the arts for both popular and [[academia|scholarly]] publications.

== Background ==
Todd Alan Gitlin was born on January 6, 1943,<ref name=Britannica>{{citation|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Todd-Gitlin|title=Todd Gitlin|last=Miller|first=Steven P.|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia Britannica|accessdate=July 3, 2018}}</ref> in Manhattan and raised in [[the Bronx]], the son of Dorothy (Siegel), who taught typing and stenography, and Max Gitlin, who taught high school history. His family was Jewish. He graduated as valedictorian from the [[Bronx High School of Science]] at the age of 16.<ref name = Seelye>{{cite news|url = https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/us/todd-gitlin-dead.html|title = Todd Gitlin, a Voice and Critic of the New Left, Dies at 79|work = The New York Times|date = February 5, 2022|accessdate = February 5, 2022|last = Seelye|first = Katharine Q.|url-access = limited}}</ref> Enrolling at Harvard College, he graduated in 1963 with an [[A.B.]] ''[[cum laude]]'' in mathematics and was elected to [[Phi Beta Kappa]]. After his leadership in [[Students for a Democratic Society]], he earned an M.A. in [[political science]] from the [[University of Michigan]] and a Ph.D. in sociology from the [[University of California, Berkeley]].<ref name="UMA2021">{{cite web |title=Social change colloquia past – Special Collections & University Archives |url=http://scua.library.umass.edu/outreach/events-calendar/social-change-colloquium/social-change-colloquia-past/ |website=scua.library.umass.edu |publisher=University of Massachusetts Amherst |year=2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211022072156/http://scua.library.umass.edu/outreach/events-calendar/social-change-colloquium/social-change-colloquia-past/ |archive-date=22 October 2021 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="NYHumanities Profile">{{Cite web|url=http://nyihumanities.org/todd-gitlin|title=Todd Gitlin|website=New York Institute for the Humanities|access-date=October 5, 2020|archive-date=October 13, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201013001733/http://nyihumanities.org/todd-gitlin|url-status=dead}}</ref>

===Personal life and death===
Gitlin lived in Manhattan and [[Hillsdale, New York]]. He was married three times: his first two marriages, to activist and lawyer [[Nancy Hollander]] and to Carol Wolman, ended in divorce, and his third, to Laurel Ann Cook, lasted from 1995 until his death.<ref name = Seelye />

On December 31, 2021, Gitlin went into cardiac arrest at his home in Hillsdale<ref>{{Cite news|last=Smith|first=Harrison|date=February 9, 2022|title=Scholar, Activist Chronicled and shaped the New Left for Decades|volume=145|page=B6|newspaper=Washington Post|issue=66|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/02/07/todd-gitlin-new-left-dead/|access-date=February 9, 2022}}</ref> and was hospitalized in nearby [[Pittsfield, Massachusetts]], where he contracted [[COVID-19]].<ref>[https://newrepublic.com/article/165299/todd-gitlin-dies-obituary-work-against-dark Todd Gitlin’s Work Against the Dark]</ref> He died on February 5, 2022, at the age of 79.<ref name = Seelye />

== Career ==

=== Activism ===
Gitlin became a political activist in 1960, when he joined a Harvard undergraduate group called Tocsin, against nuclear weapons.<ref name="CrimsonInterview">{{cite news |title='I Thought the Movement Was Going to Be My Life.' |url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1988/6/9/i-thought-the-movement-was-going/ |work=The Harvard Crimson |date=June 9, 1988}}</ref> He went on to become vice-chairman and then chairman of the group.<ref name="Crimson1">{{cite news |title=Tocsin Leaders Say Cuban Situation Encouraged Changes in Orientation |url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1962/12/3/tocsin-leaders-say-cuban-situation-encouraged/ |work=The Harvard Crimson |date=December 3, 1962}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Russin |first1=Joseph M. |title=Tocsin Expects More Than 300 From University to Join March |url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1962/2/7/tocsin-expects-more-than-300-from/ |work=The Harvard Crimson |date=February 7, 1962}}</ref> He helped organize a national demonstration in Washington, February 16–17, 1962, against the arms race and nuclear testing.<ref name="Crimson1" /> In 1963 and 1964, Gitlin was president of [[Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)|Students for a Democratic Society]].<ref name="Smithsonian">{{cite web |last1=Gitlin |first1=Todd |title=What Was the Protest Group Students for a Democratic Society? Five Questions Answered |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-was-protest-group-students-democratic-society-five-questions-answered-180963138/ |publisher=Smithsonian Magazine |date=May 4, 2017}}</ref> He helped organize the first national [[Opposition to the Vietnam War|demonstration against]] the [[Vietnam War]], held in Washington, D.C., April 17, 1965, with 25,000 participants, as well as the first civil disobedience directed against American corporate support for the [[apartheid]] regime in South Africa—a sit-in at the Manhattan headquarters of [[Chase Manhattan Bank]] on March 19, 1965.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Miller |first1=Bettye |title=Sixties Activist, Writer Todd Gitlin to Lecture Dec. 3 |url=https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/25960 |publisher=University of California, Riverside |date=November 21, 2014}}</ref><ref>[[Kirkpatrick Sale|Sale, Kirkpatrick]], ''SDS'' (New York: Random House, 1973), pp.&nbsp;153–54.</ref> In 1968 and 1969, he was an editor at and a contributor to the ''[[San Francisco Express Times]]'', an underground newspaper, and wrote regularly for underground papers via [[Liberation News Service]]. {{citation needed|date=May 2025}}

In the mid-1980s, he was a leader of Berkeley's Faculty for Full [[Disinvestment from South Africa|Divestment]] and president of Harvard-Radcliffe Alumni/-ae Against Apartheid. He actively opposed both the [[Gulf War]] of 1991<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Beamish |first1=Thomas D. |last2=Molotch |first2=Harvey |last3=Flacks |first3=Richard |title=Who Supports the Troops? Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the Making of Collective Memory |journal=Social Problems |date=August 3, 1995 |volume=42 |issue=3 |page=345|doi=10.2307/3096852 |jstor=3096852 |doi-access=free }}</ref> and the [[Iraq War]] of 2003.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Postel |first1=Danny |title=It Wasn't About Oil, and It Wasn't About the Free Market: Why We Invaded Iraq |url=https://inthesetimes.com/article/what-the-iraq-war-teaches-us |publisher=In These Times |date=February 11, 2015}}</ref> He vocally supported both the [[Kosovo War|bombing of Yugoslavia]] in 1999 and the [[War in Afghanistan (2001–present)|occupation of Afghanistan]] in 2002.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kellner|first=Douglas|date=September 26, 2006|title=Education and the Academic Left: Critical Reflections on Todd Gitlin|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/203613|journal=College Literature|language=en|volume=33|issue=4|pages=137–154|doi=10.1353/lit.2006.0056|s2cid=144315828 |issn=1542-4286|url-access=subscription}}</ref> In 2013, he became involved in the alumni wing of the Divest Harvard<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.divestharvard.com/|title=Divest Harvard|website=Divest Harvard}}</ref> movement, seeking the university's [[Fossil fuel divestment|exit from fossil fuel corporations]]. He was also active in a Columbia faculty group supporting such divestment. He actively opposed the [[Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions]] movement targeted at Israel. {{citation needed|date=May 2025}}

=== Academics ===
After teaching part-time 1970–77 at the New College of [[San Jose State University]] and the Community Studies program at the [[University of California, Santa Cruz]], he worked for 16 years as professor of sociology and director of the mass communications program at UC Berkeley, then for seven years as a professor of culture, journalism and sociology at [[New York University]].

Starting in 2002, he was a professor of journalism and sociology, and starting in 2006 he was also chair of the Ph.D. program in communications at [[Columbia University]], where he also taught the [[Core Curriculum (Columbia College)|Core]] course Contemporary Western Civilization as well as an American studies course on the 1960s.<ref>{{Cite web|title = CULPA - Todd Gitlin|url = http://culpa.info/professors/1934|website = culpa.info|access-date = January 20, 2016|archive-date = June 5, 2016|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160605143321/http://culpa.info/professors/1934|url-status = dead}}</ref>

During 1994–1995, he held the chair in American Civilization at the [[School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences|École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales]] in Paris. He has been a resident at the [[Rockefeller Foundation#Bellagio Center|Bellagio Study Center]] in Italy and the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, California, a fellow at the Media Studies Center, and a visiting professor at [[Yale University]], the [[University of Oslo]], and the [[University of Toronto]]. During April and May 2011, Gitlin was the recipient of the Bosch Berlin Prize in Public Policy and Fellow at the [[American Academy in Berlin]].<ref name="CenterAmericanStudies">{{cite web |title=Todd Gitlin |url=https://americanstudies.columbia.edu/people/todd-gitlin |publisher=Center for American Studies |access-date=October 5, 2020 |archive-date=February 6, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220206090614/https://americanstudies.columbia.edu/people/todd-gitlin |url-status=dead }}</ref>

=== Public works ===
{{sources|section|date = February 2022}}
Gitlin wrote 16 books and hundreds of articles in dozens of publications, including ''[[The New York Times]]'', ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', ''[[The Washington Post]]'', ''[[The Boston Globe]]'', ''[[Haaretz]]'', ''[[Columbia Journalism Review]]'', ''[[Tablet (magazine)|Tablet]]'', ''[[The New Republic]]'', ''[[Mother Jones (magazine)|Mother Jones]],'' [[Salon (website)|''Salon'']], and many more. He was a columnist for ''[[The San Francisco Examiner]]'' and the ''[[New York Observer]]'', and a frequent contributor to TPMcafe and ''[[The New Republic]]'' online as well as the ''Chronicle of Higher Education''. In 2016, he wrote regularly on media and the political campaign for BillMoyers.com. He was on the editorial board of ''[[Dissent (American magazine)|Dissent]]''. He was co-chair of the San Francisco branch of PEN American Center, a member of the board of directors of [[Greenpeace]], and an early editor of [[openDemocracy]]. He gave hundreds of lectures at public occasions and universities in many countries.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Dreyer |first1=Thorne |title=An Interview With Todd Gitlin |url=https://truthout.org/audio/an-interview-with-todd-gitlin/ |website=truthout.org |date=July 22, 2013}}</ref>
{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?169317-1/media-unlimited Presentation by Gitlin on ''Media Unlimited'', March 25, 2002], [[C-SPAN]]| video2 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?306665-6/occupy-nation Interview with Gitlin on ''Occupy Nation'', June 4, 2012], [[C-SPAN]]}} 
In his early writings on media, especially ''The Whole World Is Watching'', he called attention to the ideological framing of the [[New Left]] and other social movements, the vexed relations of leadership and celebrity, and the impact of coverage on the movements themselves. He was the first sociologist to apply [[Erving Goffman]]'s concept of "frame" to news analysis, and to show [[Antonio Gramsci]]'s "[[hegemony]]" at work in a detailed analysis of intellectual production. In ''Inside Prime Time'', he analyzes the workings of the television entertainment industry of the early 1980s, discerning the implicit procedures that guide network executives and other television "players" to make their decisions. In ''[[The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage]]'', a memoir and analysis combined, he develops a sense of the tensions between expressive and strategic politics. In ''The Twilight of Common Dreams'', he asks why the groups that constitute the American left so often turn to infighting, rather than solidarity. In ''Media Unlimited'', he turns to the unceasing flow of the media torrent, the problems of attention and distraction, and the emotional payoffs of media experience (which he called "disposable emotions") in our time. In ''Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street'', he distinguishes between "inner" and "outer" movements and analyzes their respective strengths and weaknesses.
{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?176505-1/letters-young-activist Presentation by Gitlin on ''Letters to a Young Activist'', May 6, 2003], [[C-SPAN]]| video2 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?191823-1/the-intellectuals-flag Presentation by Gitlin on ''The Intellectuals and the Flag'', March 13, 2006], [[C-SPAN]]}} 
In ''The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left'', ''The Sixties'', The ''Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked with Culture Wars'', ''Letters to a Young Activist'', and ''The Intellectuals and the Flag'', Gitlin became a prominent critic of the tactics and rhetoric of both the left and the right. Supporting active, strategically focused nonviolent movements, he emphasizes what he sees as the need in American politics to form coalitions between disparate movements, which must compromise ideological purity to gain and sustain power. During the [[George W. Bush administration]], he argued that the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]] managed to accomplish that with a coalition of what he called two "major components—the low-tax, love-business, hate-government enthusiasts and the God-save-us moral crusaders" but that the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] has often been unable to accomplish a pragmatic coalition between its "roughly eight" constituencies, which he identifies as "labor, African Americans, Hispanics, feminists, gays, environmentalists, members of the helping professions (teachers, social workers, nurses), and the militantly liberal, especially antiwar denizens of avant-garde cultural zones such as university towns, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and so on." (from ''The Bulldozer and the Big Tent'', pp.&nbsp;18–19).

In the 2010 book ''The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election'', he and Liel Leibovitz traced parallel themes in the history of the Jews and the Americans through history down to the present.<ref>[http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Chosen-Peoples/Todd-Gitlin/9781439132364 "The Chosen Peoples"]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20110202115731/http://thechosenpeoples.com/ "America, Israel and the Ordeals of Divine Election"].</ref>

=== Novelist ===
Gitlin published three novels: ''The Murder of Albert Einstein'' (1992), ''Sacrifice'' (1999), and ''Undying'' (2011).<ref name="CenterAmericanStudies" /> ''Sacrifice'' won the [[Ribalow Prize|Harold U. Ribalow Award]] for the best fiction on Jewish themes.<ref>{{cite web |title=Todd Gitlin |url=https://www.thecommongoodus.org/past-speakers/todd-gitlin |website=thecommongoodus.org |date=June 18, 2012}}</ref> His novel ''The Opposition'' is forthcoming and it follows a group of 1960s activists through the decade.{{Update needed |date=March 2025}}

== Quotes ==
{{quote|My generation of the [[New Left]] — a generation that grew as the [Vietnam] war went on — relinquished any title to patriotism without much sense of loss. All that was left to the Left was to unearth righteous traditions and cultivate them in universities. The much-mocked political correctness of the next academic generations was a consolation prize. We lost — we squandered the politics — but won the textbooks.|''Varieties of Patriotic Experience''}}
{{quote|[T]hose who still cling to gauzy dreams about untainted militancy need to remember all the murders committed in the name of various radical ideologies that accomplished exactly nothing for the victims of racism.|"Paraphrasing the '60s" ''Los Angeles Times'', January 27, 2007}}

== Books ==
* ''Uptown: Poor Whites in Chicago'' (1970) {{ISBN|0-06-090235-3}} (with [[Nancy Hollander]])
* ''Campfires of the Resistance: Poetry from the Movement'', editor (1971)
* ''Busy Being Born'' (1974) {{ISBN|0-87932-073-7}}
* ''The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the Left'' (1980) {{ISBN|0-520-23932-6}}
* ''Inside Prime Time'' (1983) {{ISBN|0-520-21785-3}}
* ''[[The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage]]'' (1987) {{ISBN|0-553-37212-2}}
* ''Watching Television'', editor (1987) {{ISBN|0-394-54496-X}}
* ''The Murder of Albert Einstein'' (1992) {{ISBN|0-553-37366-8}}
* ''The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars'' (1995) {{ISBN|0-8050-4091-9}}.
* ''Sacrifice'' (1999) {{ISBN|0-8050-6032-4}}
* ''Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives'' (2002) {{ISBN|0-8050-7283-7}}
* ''Letters to a Young Activist'' (2003) {{ISBN|0-465-02738-5}}
* ''The Intellectuals and the Flag'' (2006) {{ISBN|0-231-12492-9}}
* ''The Bulldozer and the Big Tent'' (2007) {{ISBN|0-471-74853-6}}
* ''The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election'' (2010) {{ISBN|1-4391-3235-6}} (with Liel Leibovitz)
* ''Undying'' (2011) {{ISBN|978-1-58243-646-3}}
* ''Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street'' (2012) {{ISBN|0-553-37212-2}}

== Essays and journalism ==
* [http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/a-charter-for-the-99-percent "A Charter for the 99 Percent"]
* [https://newrepublic.com/article/114286/jeff-bezos-washington-post-needs-old-fashioned-mogul "The Washington Post Doesn't Need a New-Media Mogul—It Needs an Old-Fashioned One"]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131017202038/http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/10/15/why-wikileaks-won "How WikiLeaks Beat the Mainstream Media"]

== References ==
{{reflist}}

== External links ==
* {{official website|http://www.toddgitlin.net/}}{{deadlink|date=August 2022}}
* [https://journalism.columbia.edu/faculty/todd-gitlin Gitlin's page at Columbia University] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170621025532/https://journalism.columbia.edu/faculty/todd-gitlin |date=June 21, 2017 }}
* {{C-SPAN|19425}}
* Todd Gitlin, {{usurped|[https://web.archive.org/web/20080821035728/http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2008%20-%20Summer/full-Gitlin.html/ Do Less Harm: The Lesser Evil of Non-Intervention]}}, ''World Affairs''
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070502015149/http://www.dissentmagazine.org/search.php?searchType=author&subSearchText=Gitlin Todd Gitlin's essays] in ''Dissent''
* Gitlin [http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/1293 in discussion] with Mark Bauerlein
* [http://bloggingheads.tv/?s=gitlin Video of debate/discussion with Todd Gitlin] on [[Bloggingheads.tv]]
* Brooke Gladstone, [https://web.archive.org/web/20101223163635/http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/12/17/01 Interview on WikiLeaks], [[On the Media]]
* [http://7thavenueproject.com/post/2327691601/todd-gitlin-the-chosen-peoples Interview on The Chosen Peoples] with Robert Pollie, The 7th Avenue Project
* [http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201012011000 Interview on The Chosen Peoples] with Michael Krasny, KQED ''Forum''
* [http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/a-charter-for-the-99-percent "A Charter for the 99 Percent"]
* [https://newrepublic.com/article/114286/jeff-bezos-washington-post-needs-old-fashioned-mogul "The Washington Post Doesn't Need a New-Media Mogul—It Needs an Old-Fashioned One"]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131017202038/http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/10/15/why-wikileaks-won "How WikiLeaks Beat the Mainstream Media"]
* [https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1185 Interview with Todd Gitlin by Stephen McKiernan], from Binghamton University Libraries Centre for the Study of the 1960s.   
* [https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/archives/cul-11706244 Todd Gitlin papers, 1960-2020, bulk 1980-2005] at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, NY

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gitlin, Todd}}
[[Category:1943 births]]
[[Category:2022 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century American Jews]]
[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:21st-century American Jews]]
[[Category:21st-century American male writers]]
[[Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:Activists from New York (state)]]
[[Category:American anti–Vietnam War activists]]
[[Category:American male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:American sociologists]]
[[Category:American tax resisters]]
[[Category:The Bronx High School of Science alumni]]
[[Category:Columbia University faculty]]
[[Category:Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in Massachusetts]]
[[Category:Harvard College alumni]]
[[Category:Jewish American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:Members of Students for a Democratic Society]]
[[Category:New York University faculty]]
[[Category:People from Hillsdale, New York]]
[[Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty]]
[[Category:University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni]]
[[Category:Writers from the Bronx]]
[[Category:Writers from Manhattan]]
[[Category:Jewish American activists]]
[[Category:Jews from New York City]]
[[Category:American anti–nuclear weapons activists]]