I received my Ph.D. in sociology of Berkeley in 1986 working with Harold Wilensky, the late Reinhard Bendix, Neil Smelser, Claude Fischer and Michael Wiseman (economics). I was a post-doctoral fellow at Michigan State University, served on the faculty of Duke University for nine years, and have been at the University of Kentucky for the last fifteen years.
1978
1978: I arrive at Berkeley, 21 years old, with little cultural capital, some political idealism, and the shakiest hopes of succeeding in graduate school. I relied throughout on Michael Burawoy and Arlie Hochschild and my warm, funny, brilliant fellow students for the recognition to reimagine myself. I became set on showing that the social world too could be reimagined.
Doing graduate work at Berkeley was a positive experience for a number of reasons, including the cultural richness of the Bay Area, the brilliant and dedicated students, the renowned faculty, and a policy that encouraged students to develop their own intellectual agendas. In addition to taking courses in sociology, I spent a lot of time outside of the Department.
I have been engaged in teaching, research, creating, and beyond at University of Shizuoka in Japan since 1987. I owe a lot to Berkeley, so that I have contributed donations to I-House and UC Alumni Association almost every year. I am most grateful to late Professor John A. Clausen, my thesis advisor as well as ex-head of the Institute of Human Development. I translated his book, Sociology of the Lifecourse, into Japanese in 1987, and it is now the sixth printing. I visited him at home or in his office whenever I visited Berkeley and we had a good time.
When I came to Berkeley in 1969, I was one of two or three students NOT given any financial assistance -- my academic record at Harvard was that bad! In fact, I was fortunate simply to have been admitted. My first two years at Berkeley revolved mainly around becoming a true Marxist intellectual, learning as much from Fred Block and the journal then called "Socialist Revolution" (later "Socialist Review") as from my courses.