Seymour Martin Lipset By Karlyn Bowman

In March 1978, the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., launched a new magazine called Public Opinion. The idea was to try to make sense of the masses of public opinion data that we as a society were accumulating. At that time, the academic community had several excellent journals devoted to public opinion, but there was nothing for a broad general audience. Public Opinion was the brain child of two political entrepreneurs, Ben J. Wattenberg and Seymour Martin Lipset. I joined the staff immediately after the inaugural issue, and began a long and deep friendship with Marty at that time. He died a year ago, on December 31.

Our introduction wasn’t promising. So enthused was Marty about some of the data that would be included in the magazine’s pages that neither of us noticed that ashes from his pipe were producing a small fire in the wastebasket! Those of us who worked with him on the magazine enjoyed many hours of stimulating conversation (without the pyrotechnics)—a unique private tutorial in sociology and political science. Given his many contributions to these fields, it is not at all surprising that this giant of a man is the only individual who has served as president of both the American Sociological Association and the American Political Science Association. We should all be thankful that he abandoned, after a year of study at City College, the career in dentistry his family favored!

The first issue of the magazine included one of what would become many articles on different aspects of public opinion. Written with his frequent coauthor William Schneider, the article examined the Bakke case and how it would be decided at the “bar of public opinion.” This article, like other writings by Marty, has stood the test of time. The contradictory currents that Lipset and Schneider identified in public opinion on the subject exist today. “Most Americans favor equal rights and equal opportunity," they said, “but they overwhelmingly reject the use of conventional affirmative action and preferential treatment to achieve them.” The article reflected the balance Marty always brought to his work and the careful research that undergirded his conclusions. He and Bill studied nearly one hundred polls taken over a forty-year period for the article.

Throughout the magazine’s history, Marty would tackle a wide range of subjects that reflected his capacious and wide-ranging intellect. He and Bill wrote about stagflation, the public’s views of regulation, and attitudes toward business. He also wrote about public opinion on a subject that comprised a good chunk of his academic work, the health of labor unions. He looked for patterns in elections abroad and also in social mobility in industrial democracies. He tackled methodological issues, too. An article in 1983 asked how confident we should be in confidence measures. As people were just beginning to understand the AIDS epidemic, he and Bill Schneider explored attitudes toward homosexuality and gay rights. Again, their insights stand the test of time. Yet another article in the magazine explored tensions between blacks and Jews. Over his long career, Marty wrote many books and articles on Jewish subjects.

The list could go on, but even this cursory glance at Marty’s output reveals an extraordinary range of interests and unusual depth of understanding. His interest in why socialism never took root in the United States and why the United States never had a strong socialist party led to his pioneering work on American exceptionalism, a term coined by his beloved Alexis de Tocqueville. In the 1990s he wrote three books in which he said he attempted “to come to terms with the idea.” The first was Continental Divide: The Institutions and Values of the United States and Canada, and it was followed by Jews and the New American Scene. The books, he said, sought to “understand the United States by looking at it in comparison with Canada.” The two countries, he noted, “vary considerably in outcomes” even though most people in them spoke the same language and came out of the same revolution. Marty always believed that it was important to understand other countries to understand one’s own.

Marty's last book, American Exceptionalism, A Double-Edged Sword (W.W. Norton) appeared in 1996. In it he explored, among other things, Americans’ unique religiosity, litigiousness, and resistance to unions. He even opined on Americans’ distinctive penchant for jaywalking. Exceptionalism was a double-edged sword, he said, because America is “better than other countries on some criteria” but also worse on others. The title reflects the evenhandedness that was another characteristic of Marty’s work throughout his life.

In his wonderful memoir, "Steady Work," Marty said that he “remained committed to politics as a scholarly vocation and as my main avocation.” He was long active in two moderate Democratic political groups, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and the Democratic Leadership Council. Leaders of both organizations regularly sought his counsel, as did scores of others with whom he would have significant political differences. Conversations with him about politics were always illuminating and never bore the uglier aspects of the partisanship that chill political discourse today.

Marty Lipset's legacy will continue with the scores of students he mentored and counseled throughout his long and distinguished career. Given their number, it is hard to single any out. Some of whom I was fortunate enough to meet in Marty's company were Theta Skocpol at Harvard, Larry Diamond at Stanford, and Bill Schneider, another student, who found practical application to Marty's teaching in his work at CNN. Frank Fukuyama wrote eloquently about his lifelong learning experience with Marty, including teaching with him at George Mason University. There were many others.

Marty Lipset was a scholar of unparalleled ability. He was unfailingly kind and always generous of spirit. The worlds of sociology and political science have lost one of their finest practitioners; the world of public opinion, one of its most astute analysts. Those of us who were privileged to know and work with him have lost a dear colleague and friend.

Seymour Martin Lipset: A Remembrance