In January, New York Times columnist David Brooks tackled the topic of income inequality in America. The piece was, at heart, a tribute to one of America’s foremost sociologists. “Nobody,” Brooks wrote, “was smarter on this subject than Seymour Martin Lipset.”
At the same time, Lipset’s son David was crafting a eulogy that focused less on his father’s achievements in the study of democracy and culture, and more on the antics he was known for among his family and friends. “He had a wit to him,” daughter Cici Lipset says. “He was very silly when he was not wearing his academic hat.”
Lipset, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and former political science professor, died December 31 at a hospital near his home in Virginia. He was 84.
Born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents in New York in 1922, Lipset attended City College of New York, where he became involved in leftist and socialist politics. He earned his doctorate at Columbia University in 1949 and taught there and at Harvard University and UC-Berkeley.
Lipset arrived at Stanford in the mid-1970s—perhaps a surprising addition to the stable of conservatives at the Hoover Institution. (He quit the Socialist Party in 1960 and considered himself a centrist.) But Cici Lipset, ’80, says he relished the independent research the post allowed. He moved back east in 1987, after the death of his wife Elsie. He held posts at George Mason University and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars until his death.
He was best known for explaining how America was unique—especially for not adopting socialism as most of Europe did. This country’s embrace of individualism prevented it, Lipset argued in such books as American Exceptionalism.
His wife Sydnee says his most significant personal quality was extraordinary kindness. When they were dating, she frequently had friends and colleagues pull her aside and tell her that because of Lipset they had gotten a job, had their book published or won an appointment to a think tank. “Academia is not noted for that,” she says. “It really is exemplary. Marty never felt diminished by the success of others.”
Lipset is survived by his wife, his daughter, sons David and Daniel, and six grandchildren.
