Todd Gitlin, "whose immersion in the student rebellions of the 1960s laid the foundation for his later work as a writer, a cultural historian and both a voice and a critic of the left," died February 5 at age 79, the New York Times reported. A professor of journalism and sociology, Gitlin was chair of the Ph.D. program in Communications at Columbia University, and an honorary professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Gitlin "personified the cultural and political ambitions of the '60s, with a continuous readiness to confront orthodoxies of whatever stripe," the Times wrote, adding that as a president of Students for a Democratic Society, he assisted in organizing the first national demonstration against the war and helped lead the first protests in the U.S. against apartheid in South Africa.
Gitlin wrote 16 books, including The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage; The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked with Culture Wars; Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives; The Whole World Is Watching; the novel Sacrifice, which won the Harold Ribalow Award for Fiction on Jewish Themes; and co-author of The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election. His novel The Opposition will be published June 1 by Guernica World Editions.
