Remembering Professor Todd Gitlin
A letter from Dean Steve Coll to students, faculty and staff
Dear Colleagues,
I'm deeply sorry to report that our friend and colleague Professor Todd Gitlin passed away yesterday at 79. He had been fighting a recurrence of cancer and suffered a series of setbacks this winter.
Todd was a gifted, multifaceted person -- journalist, sociologist, activist, author and poet. He embodied the idea of the public intellectual. He was fiercely independent in his thinking, and although he grew up among the New Left, and remained sympathetic to many of its critiques and aspirations, his views were never predictable or doctrinaire. He was a champion of free speech and was a reliably free thinker himself.
Even as he battled illness, Todd remained a dedicated, thoughtful colleague at the Journalism School -- sympathetic and engaged. We will all miss his spirit and generosity.
We'll keep you posted when we hear from the family about any plans for a memorial service.
The Times published its obituary today. His was certainly a stirring and inspiring life. Here are some of the contours:
Born in New York City on Jan. 6 1943, Todd was the valedictorian of his class in 1959 at The Bronx High School of Science. While studying mathematics at Harvard, he saw a poster for an activist rally that he later said changed the direction of his education.
He joined an anti-nuclear weapon student group called Tocsin and helped organize a demonstration in Washington DC in 1962 to protest the arms race and nuclear testing. Soon he joined Students for a Democratic Society and served as its president from 1963-64. He was coordinator of the SDS’ Peace Research and Education Project in 1964-65.
Todd helped organize one of the first national demonstrations against the Vietnam War. He also helped organize early mass demonstrations in America against corporate support for the apartheid regime in South Africa.
After Harvard, Todd earned a master’s in political science from the University of Michigan and a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation became the book The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. This is one of 18 books he has written, including The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage; Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street; and Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives. Todd is also the author of several novels.
Of course, Todd has also written hundreds of articles in dozens of publications from the New York Times to the New Republic. He has lectured all over the world.
Before coming to Columbia in 2002 (and becoming chair of our PhD in communications program 2006), Todd was for seven years a professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University. Before that, he was a professor of sociology and director of the mass communications program at the University of California, Berkeley.
An extraordinary life. May he rest in peace.
Steve