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David Riesman, Thoughtful Pragmatist. Por: Gitlin, Todd, Chronicle of HigherEducation, 00095982, 5/24/2002, Vol. 48, Fascculo 37

THE CHIEF VALUE that David Riesman, who just died at age 92, affirmed in his

1950 landmark study of American character, The Lonely Crowd, was autonomy --neither glad-handing membership in an "other-directed" crowd, nor back-glancingretreat to an asceticism of the "inner-directed" fathers of the past, but acommitment to pursue one's own way.In person, Riesmanwas nothing if not autonomous -- which meant, along the way,impolitic (though polite) and unpredictable (though deliberate). I met him in the fallof 1960, when he was a Harvard professor and I was a lowly sophomore. He wasfamous, but you wouldn't have known it. His demeanor matched his prose:accessible yet a bit awkward, as if he were faintly embarrassed to have anaudience, let alone a following. He was didactic but modest, not haughty, no snob.He combined Philadelphia's German-Jewish and Quaker traditions, from which hehad descended.A faculty adviser to the Harvard-Radcliffe peace group Tocsin, he readily openedhis door for lengthy conversations with undergraduate activists. Distinct agendaswere not required -- he seemed to like schmoozing. Even more remarkable, he lenthis station wagon so that groups of us could drive to Vermont to campaign for apacifist congressman, William Meyer, who was up for re-election. (He wasclobbered.) Without populism or condescension, Riesman was unafraid to becountercyclical -- ambling, perhaps, to a flutist, not a drummer -- yet I don't think hereveled in contrariness as such. Whether it came to foreign policy or domesticreconstruction, he was deeply pragmatic. He wanted results.By the time I got to know him, he had moved on from The Lonely Crowd and didnot seem to be looking for another Big Idea. He was not one of those self-enamored great men. I don't think I ever heard him refer to the book that had madehim famous, to "inner" or "other direction." His political conviction was neverformulaic, either. He believed in lobbying and did not sneer at ordinary Americans -- yet he was also open to utopians, affectionate toward radical pacifists and otheroddballs, inviting the likes of Paul Goodman, Buckminster Fuller, and MarshallMcLuhan to speak to his classes. He was a feminist before feminism wasreinvented.THE CORE of his beliefs in his most heavily activist phase, the late 1950s andearly '60s, was that nuclear weapons were wicked and unspeakably dangerous,and that intellectuals should apply themselves practically to getting rid of them. Inthose years, he presided over the Committee (later Council) of Correspondence, aloose-linked network of academics brought together by their urgent concern overnuclear weapons and a cold war barely kept cold. Their dissents diverged in manyrespects, but the atmosphere was congenial, ecumenical. (The ferocious politics ofthe Vietnam era had not yet crystallized.) From his office, Riesmanpublished thecommittee's journal, which rambled along with a pleasing modesty, running apolitical range from modest arms controllers debating the intricacies of a nucleartest ban, to the unilateral initiatives promoted by the psychologist Charles Osgood,to the fervent disarmament politics of Howard Zinn, among others. Riesmanled off

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each issue ruminating on American politics in his characteristically chatty, social-psychologically astute way.With I.F. Stone and Harold Taylor, president of Sarah Lawrence College, he signeda fund-raising letter for Students for a Democratic Society in 1963. Yet he was noradical democrat, no socialist, not really a left-winger at all. He argued with C.

Wright Mills (who was fond of him) about whether big voting blocs or "veto groups"were important (Riesman) or amounted to no more than "middle levels of power"(Mills).Years later, Riesman told me that he had spent several months traveling aroundthe Soviet Union in the 1930s, and had come home deeply skeptical. Not for himthe gullibility of revolutionary tourism: Stalinism was not a future that worked, noteven close. The Old Left dismayed him. Once, I told him that Tocsin was pursuingthe support of Cyrus Eaton, an industrialist who financed the Pugwash East-Westmeetings of American and Russian scientists devoted to reducing nucleararsenals. Riesmanwrote me sharply (in one of many dashed-off letters, as if e-mail had already been invented) that he disapproved mightily of Eaton, who hadrefused to intervene when someone (I forget who) was "ruthlessly detained" by theEast Germans.Puckishly, he once proposed that the United States defeat Soviet Communism bydropping nylons, not bombs. But he wasn't automatically enthusiastic aboutcapitalism as such. Communism was a gigantic mistake, but he still didn't believethat any policy at all could be justified in the name of anti-Communism, or thatcapitalists were automatically beacons of virtue. He was, in fact, much bemused byAmerican capitalists' rushing to strike deals with Khrushchev when the Sovietleader visited the United States. Actually, I don't think the question of what was thebest of all possible economic systems interested him much. Stopping stateviolence interested him far more.HIS PRIME political conviction was a profound distaste for nationalism -- anyone'snationalism (including that of his fellow Jews). Raison d'tat did not impress him atall, nor did the professional caste that administered American foreign policy. Hehad written one of the 20th century's best-selling books on American culture, abook delicate in its appreciations of popular life and lore, yet he did not trustpopular causes, least of all when they led to organized violence.Partly because he was allergic to popular passions, Riesman'spolitics were easyto misunderstand. Unsurprisingly, after the early '60s, he grew impatient with thestudent left. In the '70s and '80s, he retreated from active politics -- though when Iimmersed myself once again in antinuclear politics, in the mid-'70s, I found that hisrightward drift coexisted with a stalwart opposition to the renewed arms race. Hecould never have endorsed Reagan's politics as deliverance, nor could he feelcomfortable with any crusade. Indeed, he was profoundly conservative in a fashionhard to find nowadays. Nothing neoabout it: He wished to conserve. Thoughdisaffected from liberal causes, he was averse to any radical hatred. His kind ofconservative was a Tocquevillean liberal with a populist sympathy, though withoutany particular feeling for underdogs -- with the exception of the intellectual variety.He wrote in agreeable tones, sometimes chatty, sometimes graceful, sometimescolloquial, sober, and good-humored. He seemed to be incapable of (perhapssuperior to) insult. No romantic about "the people," no worshipper of their morals,

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manners, or politics, he was always, affectionately, interested in popular language -- I remember that in the mid-'70s, he was fascinated to hear of the California term"laid back." His analyses of popular culture were somehow warm, even as hedisagreed with this or that moral, even as he worried about America's aesthetic andintellectual stamina. Partly for that reason, The Lonely Crowd remains eminently

worth reading. Prophetic and casual, respectful of popular culture without imputingto it any fantastic emancipations, refusing sneers, it resembles the man.Riesman, for decades America's best-known sociologist, didn't hold a Ph.D. (Hestarted out as a lawyer.) He approved of rigor and scholarship but never made afetish of methodology. He valued range, energy, curiosity. He liked collaborations --Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denny worked with him on The Lonely Crowd. ThoughRiesman and Glazer conducted interviews, the book didn't draw on them much;The Lonely Crowd, Riesman wrote, was "based on our experiences of living inAmerica -- the people we have met, the jobs we have held, the books we haveread, the movies we have seen, and the landscape." (Of course, only an observerboth curious and seasoned would have hazarded such a claim.) He believed thatevery undergraduate should study a foreign language and a musical instrument,the better to keep up the mental and sensory life.He leaves no "school" -- although, or because, he was committed to intellectualrigor and pedagogical sobriety. Each year he taught, he wrote an extended letter toevery student who took his undergraduate course on American society. As legionscan testify, he was a prolific correspondent. His letters frequently loped along forpages, freely associating with his correspondent's interests. He could bespeculative, or delicate, or methodical in the lawyerly manner he was trained in, orcontrary, though not nasty. Well into his 80s, he wrote letters as elaborate as ever.When his wife began to show symptoms of Alzheimer's, they left their houseacross the street from Radcliffe Yard and moved into an assisted-living facilityoutside Cambridge. Riesmankept reading, kept corresponding, kept faith with thelife of the mind and the citizen's mission.