| Sidney Harman | |
|---|---|
Sidney Harman, circa 1955 |
|
| Born | August 4, 1918 Montreal, Quebec |
| Died | April 12, 2011 (aged 92) Washington D.C. |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation |
Business As of August 2010: publishing |
| Spouse | Jane Harman |
Sidney Harman (August 4, 1918 – April 12, 2011) was an American businessman active in education, government, industry, and publishing. He was the Chairman Emeritus of Harman International Industries, Inc. Harman served as the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce in 1977 and 1978. As of August 2010 Harman was also the publisher of Newsweek.
Harman was married to Jane Harman (b. 1945), a former Democratic member of Congress from California who represented California's 36th congressional district which included the Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach areas of Southern California.
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Harman's father worked at a hearing aid company in New York while he was growing up.[1] After graduating with a physics degree Sidney's first job was at a loudspeaker company as an engineer.[1] His boss was Bernard Kardon and roughly thirteen years later each invested $5000 to make the Festival D1000 - the world's first integrated hi-fi receiver.[1] Harman and Kardon founded harman/kardon, Inc., in 1953.[2] He was known for the quality of working life programs that he initiated at the company’s plants, especially for the program at Bolivar, Tennessee, which had some short-lived success and has become a model for such activities in American industry and a principal case study at business schools in the United States and abroad.[3] Harman had written on productivity, quality of working life and economic policy, and was co-author, with Daniel Yankelovich, of Starting With the People, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1988.
Harman (Ph.D. in Higher Education, Union Institute & University, 1973), a graduate of Baruch College of the City University of New York in 1939, served as a trustee of the Martin Luther King Center for Social Change, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the National Symphony Orchestra. He was chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of the Public Agenda Foundation; chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Business Executives for National Security; a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Council on Competitiveness; and a member of the Board of the Leadership Institute of the University of Southern California.
He served for three years as president of Friends World College, a worldwide, experimental Quaker College, and was the founder and an active member of the Program on Technology, Public Policy, and Human Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Harman was chairman of the Program Committee of the Board of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies and a member of the Board of the Carter Center of Emory University.
He was a philanthropist and a member of Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company Board of Trustees. The Company’s new Harman Center for the Arts is named for his family with a performance space, Sidney Harman Hall, named for him. He also endowed the Baruch College Harman Writer-In-Residence visiting Professorship.
The University of Southern California Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies named Harman the "Entrepreneur of the Year 2007."
In August 2010, Harman bought Newsweek magazine from the Washington Post Company.[1] He paid $1 and accepted the assumption of $47 million in liabilities.[1][4][5]
Harman displayed a remarkable amount of energy into his 80s, staying active by playing golf and engaging in various other hobbies. He remained involved in the day-to-day management of Harman-Kardon until formally retiring on his 88th birthday in August 2006 and after turning 90 in 2008 remarked "I don't feel much different than I did at 70. Maybe a little bit, but nothing has significantly diminished."
Harman died on April 12, 2011, in Washington D.C. at the age of 92 of complications from acute myeloid leukemia.[6][7]