Amitai Etzioni
Entering Cohort: 1957
Professor and Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, George Washington University
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When I arrived in the United States in January 1957 to study, I enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley. It was a renowned department of sociology, whose stars at the time included several sparkling senior scholars -- S.M. Lipset, Reinhard Bendix, Philip Selznick, Kingsley Davis, Nathan Glazer, and Leo Leventhal. Herbert Blumer was ending his teaching years. Even several of the young professors had already acquired a name for themselves (including Erving Goffman, William Kornhauser, and Martin Trow). Visiting scholars added to the department?s luster (especially a seminar by Talcott Parsons). Even the students were a choice lot, including Robert Blauner, Fred Goldner, Juan Linz, David Matza, Guenther Roth, and Arthur Stinchcombe.
My first challenge was managing with the $300 total I had to my name, the maximum loan a relative could afford. I also had a sealed note from a professor at the Hebrew University, S.N. Eisenstat, introducing me to Berkeley professor, S.M. Lipset. I prayed it would deliver me a part-time job. I dutifully handed the letter to Lipset, who read it, grunted something I could not understand, and invited the next student into his office. I was sure my days at Berkeley were numbered. To stretch their number, I joined a co-op, which in exchange for my attention to massive piles of dirty dishes and other equally unattractive kitchen chores, provided room and board.
A few days later, I attended Lipset?s first class. At the end of the class he handed me a huge manuscript, some eleven hundred pages. He invited me to examine the work and drop by to discuss it. After struggling through the magnum opus for two long days and much of one night, I knocked on his door. Mindful of what my Israeli friends had said about American manners, I allowed that the book was ?indeed a fine one, a masterful work of sociology, a tour de force of political theory.? Lipset grinned: ?Come on, what do you really think?? I let loose a small barrage, as maybe only a young Israeli, right off the boat, could: ?Although the book has immense potential it is much too long and incredibly repetitious; at the same time, in places it is crying out for more documentation. Above all, the arguments need straightening out.? When I left the office I had a part-time job as Lipset?s research assistant. I helped Lipset some as he re-worked his manuscript together with another assistant, Juan Linz. The book that grew out of this manuscript, The Political Man, was published to great success. Its acknowledgment notes my role such as it was, but it does not mention that without it, I would not have been able to pay my way at Berkeley. Nor does it note that I learned at least as much from the exercise as I contributed to it.
Another major hurdle I faced was my poor command of English. The first book I was assigned was Samuelson?s thick introduction to economics. It took me well over half an hour to struggle through the first page, constantly consulting a dictionary. I was sure that soon I would be found out, unable to follow, and be sent packing. It took all my willpower to learn the peculiarities of this foreign tongue. My American friends were surprised at the great difficulties I had in learning English, and a bit annoyed when I kept asking them why words were spelled in one way and pronounced in another, until they recalled their experiences in acquiring French or German, let alone Hebrew.
Having secured my livelihood and mastered some of the secrets of English, I worked long hours at the Berkeley library on my PhD. I paid little mind to the Berkeley around me. I never got to the top of the Campanile, the tower in the middle of the campus, a leading tourist attraction, from which you can admire the striking San Francisco bay. I missed practically all the rallies that harbingered the Free Speech movement. I earned my PhD in 18 months (three semesters and two back-to-back summer sessions, to make for the required two academic years). I was able to complete my degree in record time, in part because I had brought with me piles of data on the organizational structure of Kibbutzim and in part because I worked longer, and maybe a bit harder, than many graduate students.
While some of my fellow students were involved in various counterculture experimentations, my main diversion for that year and a half were items that cost nothing. These included occasionally playing chess with other research assistants, or watching the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights at the home of a fellow student, Fred Goldner. But I could negotiate the library?s stacks blindfolded.
Our first son, Ethan, was born shortly before I was awarded my PhD. Hava and I lived on the wrong side of the tracks in a small room, in which Ethan?s hand-me-down baby carriage doubled as his bed. I could not wait to hold a full-time job. Academic life was dandy, but I had been a student for too long.
As I was completing my dissertation in the first months of 1958, Lipset was placing phone calls to help me land my first academic job. Columbia University was one of the places that showed some interest. None of the others universities that responded came close to Columbia in terms of their sociological standing.
Professor William J. Goode (whom everyone called Si), a highly respected sociologist of the family and stratification, (he later developed a sociological theory of his own), was doing the recruiting for Columbia. He asked me to write him a several page letter laying out my plans for the future, above all ?revealing? myself, so that he could ?get a feel for what you are like.? This request stuck in my craw; he might as well have asked me to disrobe. Aside from feeling awkward and believing that the request was not legitimate, I had brought with me from Israel a bit of an ?in-your-face? attitude. ?Hell,? I said to myself ?I am not going to talk about my inner self; this is none of his God damn business.? I continued to fume. ?Goode wants a tell-all letter? Here is what he is going to get: a detailed description of my research ideas, the grand and not so grand subjects I plan to study in the coming years. Period.? I wrote a letter about my plans to develop organizational sociology, which I discovered while working on my PhD did not really exist. There was industrial sociology, I explained, and studies of governmental bureaucracies, but no attempt to pull together the features of all or even most organizations. I guess I was about to become a true academic: making distinctions where none previously existed, arguing that there are significant tools in bettering our understanding, and so on. With the letter off, I waited.
Nothing happened; weeks ticked by and turned into long months. In those days, appointments were usually not made after mid-May. April was grinding to an end, and still there was no word from Columbia, which continued to be by far the most coveted job of those open to me. Lipset called and Goode explained in his inimitable style: ?I asked the guy to write something about himself; he sent me this piece of shit.? Well, Lipset took me by my lapel, sat me down, and insisted that I compose a long letter about my inner feelings. I hated every minute of it. It took me longer, and I had to toss out more drafts, than most anything I had written to date. But I did get my first academic job. The move to New York City was an easy one; we had little packing to do.
Adapted from My Brothers Keeper: A Memoir and Message, published by Rowman & Littlefield, May of 2003
Dissertation: The Organizational Structure of the Kibbutz