Todd Gitlin

Todd Gitlin "is professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the PhD programme in communications at Columbia University. He has written twelve books, among them The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals (John Wiley, 2007), Letters to a Young Activist (Basic Books, 2003) and The Intellectuals and the Flag (Columbia University Press, 2006). His website is here."

"He is on the editorial board of Dissent, a contributing writer to Mother Jones, and a member of the board of trustees of openDemocracy.net...

"He has been a columnist at the New York Observer and the San Francisco Examiner. His poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books, Yale Review, and The New Republic.

"In 2000, Sacrifice won the Harold U. Ribalow Prize for books on Jewish themes. The Sixties and The Twilight of Common Dreams were Notable Books in the New York Times Book Review. Inside Prime Time received the nonfiction award of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association; The Sixties was a finalist for that award and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award...

"He was the third president of Students for a Democratic Society, in 1963-64, and coordinator of the SDS Peace Research and Education Project in 1964-65, during which time he helped organize the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War. During 1968-69, he was an editor and writer for the San Francisco Express Times, and through 1970 wrote widely for the underground press. He is presently a member of the board of directors of Greenpeace USA.

"He was for sixteen years a professor of sociology and director of the mass communications program at the University of California, Berkeley, and for seven years a professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University. During 1994-95, he held the chair in American Civilization at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has been a resident at the Bellagio Study Center in Italy and the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, California, a fellow at the Media Studies Center, and a visiting professor at Yale University, the University of Oslo, and the University of Toronto. He is now a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the Ph. D. program in Communications at Columbia University."

• Founders and Advisors, Campaign for America's Future
• MediaChannel, International Advisors
• Roosevelt Institution: Advisory Boards
• Corresponding Editor, Theory and Society

Critiques of Gitlin

• Douglas Kellner , “Education and the Academic Left: Critical Reflections on Todd Gitlin”

Chris Hedges writes:

"'The mistake of the former left-wingers, from Tom Hayden to Todd Gitlin, is that they want to be players in the Democratic Party and academia,' said John R. MacArthur, the publisher of Harper's magazine, speaking of two prominent 1960s activists. “This is not what the left is supposed to be. The left is supposed to be outside the system. The attempt by the left to take control of the Democratic Party failed with [Eugene] McCarthy and George McGovern. The left, at that point, should have gone back to organizing, street protests, building labor unions, and the mobilization of grassroots activists. Instead, it went for respectability.'"