by Playfuls Staff |
5th January 2007
Seymour Lipset, an influential social scientist and a leading scholar of democracy, died in an Arlington, Va., [more] hospital of complications from a stroke.
Lipset, 84, explored the peculiarities of U.S. culture and politics, The Washington Post said. He studied the nature of political extremism, how American values of equality and achievement held affected class conflict and what the United States could learn from other countries.
"We are the worst as well as the best, depending on which quality is being addressed," Lipset once wrote.
Lipset, who wrote more than 20 books, was the only person named president of both the American Sociological Association and the American Political Science Association.
He taught at the University of Toronto, Columbia University, Stanford University, Harvard University and University of California, Berkeley.
Recently, Lipset was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. He was associated with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Progressive Policy Institute.
Lipset, who died Dec. 31, is survived by his wife, three children and six grandchildren.
© 2007 UPI
