Irving Louis Horowitz
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Irving Louis Horowitz is a sociologist, author and college professor who has written and lectured extensively in his field. Horowitz's "sociological biography", Daydreams and Nightmares: Reflections on a Harlem Childhood was awarded the National Jewish Book Award.
Horowitz was born in New York City on September 25, 1929, to Louis and Esther Tepper Horowitz. He was educated at City College of New York (now City College of the City University of New York, or CUNY), B.S., 1951; Columbia University, New York City, M.A., 1952; and the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Ph.D., 1957.[1]
In 1951, he married Ruth Narowlansky, with whom he had two children, Carl and David; they were divorced in 1964. He married Danielle Salti in 1964; the couple was divorced in 1978. He married Mary Ellen Curtis in 1979.
From the beginning of his career as an assistant professor of social theory at the University of Buenos Aires, 1956-1958, Horowitz spent the next forty-plus years at various academic institutions nationwide and abroad in India, Tokyo, Mexico, and Canada. In addition to his teaching positions, he was an advisory staff member of the Latin American Research Center, 1964-1970; consultant to the International Education Division, Ford Foundation, 1959-1960; a member of the advisory board of the Institute for Scientific Information, From 1963 to 1969, Horowitz was professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. He has also been a visiting professor at Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin, Queen’s University in Canada, and the University of California, and a Fulbright Lecturer in Argentina, Israel, and India; a member of the advisory board of the Institute for Scientific Information, 1969-1973; consulting editor for Oxford University Press, 1969-74, and for Aldine-Atherton Publishers, 1969-1972; the founding president of Transaction Society; an external board member of the Radio Marti and Television Marti Programs of the United States Information Agency, beginning in 1985; chair of the board of the Hubert Humphrey Center, Ben Gurion University, Israel, 1990-1992; and has served as an external board member of the methodology section of the research division, United States General Accounting Office.
As the author of more than twenty-five books and editor of numerous other titles, Horowitz has analyzed such diverse topics as the influence of Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church on American politics, the future of book publishing, and politics in Cuba. In 1990, he published his autobiography, rather a brief "sociological biography" than one that is intellectual of intimate. This was "Daydreams and Nightmares: Reflections on a Harlem Childhood" (London: Jackson Publ., 1990, 104 p.), for which he received the National Jewish Book Award. It is an unromanticized look at growing up as the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants in the streets of predominantly black Harlem, New York City, in the 1930s. Throughout his academic career, Horowitz received many awards, including a special citation from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for his 1957 book, "The Idea of War and Peace in Contemporary Philosophy"; recognition by Time magazine as a leader of a new breed of radical sociologist (January 5, 1970); the Centennial Medallion from St. Peter's College, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1971, for outstanding contribution to a humanistic social science; and a Presidential Outstanding Achievement Award, 1985, from Rutgers University. He is a member of the Carnegie Council, American Association of Publishers, American Political Science Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and past president (1961-1962) of the New York State Sociological Society.
Horowitz latest academic post was Hannah Arendt University Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science at Rutgers University, since 1992. Over the past several decades Horowitz has worked to develop a political sociology that can measure the extent of a society's personal freedom and State-sanctioned violence. As a result of his work, a standard for the quality of life in any particular nation or social system has been constructed based on the number of people arbitrarily killed, maimed, injured, incarcerated, or deprived of basic civil liberties. Horowitz has tried to build a bridge between his current analysis of state power and authority and his earlier studies of comparative international stratification and development. He was key to introducing the phrase "Third World" into the lexicon of social research. Horowitz is the founder of Studies in Comparative International Development—now in its 45th year. He is also chairman of Transaction Publishers. From 1963 to 1969, Horowitz was professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. He has also been a visiting professor at Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin, Queen’s University in Canada, and the University of California, and a Fulbright Lecturer in Argentina, Israel, and India. He is a prolific author. Among his most recent books are Tributes: An Informal History of Social Science in the Twentieth Century; Behemoth: The History and Theory of Political Sociology. Horowitz early in his career was an acolyte of Leftist sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916-62), a Texas-born professor at Columbia University whose significant books include: “White Collar,” 1951; “The Power Elite,” 1956; and “The Sociological Imagination,” 1959. Horowitz also edited two posthumous collections of Mills' work, including "The Cultural Apparatus" (1) Horowitz himself published most relevant pieces on genocide like Genocide: State Power & Mass Murder (Transaction Books, 1976); Taking Lives: Genocide & State Power (Transaction Books, 1980); Genocide and the Reconstruction of Social Theory: Observations on the Exclusivity of Collective Death (in: Armenian Review, vol. 37 [1984] 1, 1-21); Horowitz's last scholarly pieces on genocide were his preface to R. J. Rummel's "Death by Government" (Transaction Books, 1994),and his essay on state-sponsored terror under the title: Counting Bodies. The Dismal Science of Authorized Terror (in: Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 23 [1999] 1, 4-15). In Summer 1994 a volume of essays in honour of I. L. Horowitz was published by Transaction Publishers (“The Democratic Imagination: Dialogues on the Work of Irving Louis Horowitz”, ed. Ray C. Rist). A list of scholarly publications including more two hundred pieces of the author is to be found at the beta-version of Google Scholar.
[edit] Quote
“First comes the act and then comes the word: first [the crime of] genocide is committed and then the language emerges to describe a phenomenon."(2)
(1) Power, politics, and people: the collected essays of C. Wright Mills / edited and with an introduction by Irving Louis Horowitz. Oxford University Press, 1963. - The new sociology: essays in social science and social theory, in honor of C. Wright Mills / edited by Irving Louis Horowitz. Oxford University Press, 1964.
(2) Louis Irving Horowitz, Taking Lives. Genocide and State Power. News Brunswick (N.J): Transaction Books, 1980, 183.
[edit] References
- ^ Horner, Shirley. "ABOUT BOOKS", The New York Times, May 1, 1988. Accessed January 20, 2008.