1968

I entered the PhD program in the spring of 1968, graduating a little early with a BA from Berkeley and taking advantage of Dave Nasatir's offer to work as his assistant at the Survey Research Center. I ran through all his computing money very quickly, but he had the good grace not to take it out of my salary. I accepted a fellowship at Columbia, but after completing my MA working with Paul Lazarsfeld and Immanuel Wallerstein (not a typical combination) I was brought back to the Bay Area with a community organizing job that fulfilled my conscientious objector alternate service.

Both what I received and what I failed to receive from my six years in the Sociology program at Berkeley have had lasting consequences. I learned a tremendous amount from faculty and peers, but probably because of the political struggles of that period, I was spared the 'disciplining' that is often thought to be indispensable for graduate 'training'. Nobody taught me that I could only address certain questions and must ignore others. This was an extraordinary gift'the freedom to explore those issues at the intersection of sociology and economics that have always excited my imagination.

My first degree before I went to Berkeley, was in economics at Oxford. When I returned to  Cambridge, UK, I worked as a research associate in the Labour Studies Group of the Department of Applied Economics.