Katznelson, Ira 1944–

(Ira Isaac Katznelson)

PERSONAL: Born July 3, 1944, in New York, NY; son of Ephraim and Sylvia (Rosenbaum); married Deborah Ruth Socolow, January 14, 1967; children: Jessica, Zachary, Emma, Leah. Education: Columbia University, B.A., 1966; Cambridge University, Ph.D., 1969.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Office—Department of Political Science, Columbia University, Mail Code 3320, 7th Fl., IAB, 420 W. 118th St., New York, NY 10027. E-mail—iik1@columbia.edu.

CAREER: Columbia University, New York, NY, assistant professor, 1969–73, associate professor of political science, 1973–74; University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1974–82, began as associate professor, became professor of political science, chair of department, 1979–82; New School for Social Research (now New School University), New York, NY, Loeb Professsor of political and social science, 1983–94, dean of graduate faculty, 1983–89, co-director of Center for Politics, Theory, and Policy, 1989–94; Columbia University, New York, NY, Ruggles professor of political science and history, 1994–, interim vice president of arts and sciences, 2003–04, and dean of faculty of arts and sciences. Distinguished political scientist, University of Vermont, 1989–90; Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar, 1990–91.

MEMBER: Social Science and History Association (president, 1997–98), American Political Science Association (president of politics and history section, 1992–93), Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Euretta J. Kellett fellow, 1966–68; Danforth Foundation fellow, 1966−69; German Marshall Fund fellow, 1978, 1979.

WRITINGS:

Black Men, White Cities: Race, Politics, and Migration in the United States, 1900–30, and Britain, 1948–68, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1973.

(Editor with others) The Politics and Society Reader, McKay (New York, NY), 1974.

(With Mark Kesselman) The Politics of Power: A Critical Introduction to American Government, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (New York, NY), 1975.

City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterning of Class in the United States, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 1981.

(With Margaret Weir) Schooling for All: Class, Race, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1985.

(Editor with Aristide R. Zolberg) Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1986.

Marxism and the City, Clarendon Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor with Pierre Birnbaum) Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1995.

Liberalism's Crooked Circle: Letters to Adam Michnik, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1996.

(Editor with Martin Shefter) Shaped by War and Trade: International Influences on American Political Development, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2002.

(Editor with Helen V. Milner) Political Science: State of the Discipline, Norton (New York, NY), 2002.

Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge after Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2003.

When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America, Norton (New York, NY), 2005.

(Editor with Barry R. Weingast) Preferences and Situations: Points of Intersections between Historical and Rational Choice Institutionalism, Russell Sage Foundation (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: Ira Katznelson is Ruggles professor of political science and history at Columbia University. He has written extensively on the American political system, urban policies, and race relations in the twentieth century. In Marxism and the City Katznelson addresses the changes in interpretation of Marxism as they apply to urban politics. Richard E. DeLeon, in a review for Policy Studies Journal, called the book an "intellectually rigorous and systematic attempt to update the theoretical map of Marxism as a guide to the new roads and left turns being taken in urban politics." Writing in the American Political Science Review, Martin Shefter stated that Katznelson's effort "not only is a major work of urban politics and urban history but also makes significant contributions to comparative politics," calling it "an extraordinarily rich book."

In Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship Katznelson collects essays that examine Jewish emancipation in eight separate instances around the world, and draw connections between such emancipations and the rise of so-called liberalism. Benjamin Ginsberg, writing for the American Political Science Review, remarked that "Jews have played a key role in modern world history. Paths of Emancipation helps to illuminate that role and to move the story of the Jews from the parochial place it has occupied to the more central place it should occupy in the study of modern Western history. This is an outstanding volume." Political Science Quarterly contributor Irving Katz stated that, "in unusually stimulating and provocative chapters, buttressed by erudite historical and histographical writing, the editors have rendered a valuable service to scholars of modern Western history, in general, and of modern Jewish history, in particular." Alan Mittleman, in a review for the Journal of Church and State, opined that "the strengths of the book are found in its theoretical sophistication and its comparativism. Theoretically, it tries to do justice both to those macro-structural trends over which individual actors had no control, and to the individual actor's construction of him or herself. The authors explain how Jews 'constructed' their identities in light of the choices available to them."

Katznelson takes a closer look at liberalism in Liberalism's Crooked Circle: Letters to Adam Michnik. In this work he examines how the end of Soviet-style socialism has impacted modern liberalism around the world. He uses the epistolary format in order to better connect and compare American and European reactions. William E. Scheuerman, writing for Political Science Quarterly, remarked that the book is a "thoughtful and eminently readable contribution to debates about the future of liberalism."

Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge after Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust addresses the state of the political arena, citing the breakdown of traditional diplomatic strategies in the face of terrorism and other modern-day evils, and looking to those twentieth-century thinkers who attempted to solve the world's problems, such as Karl Polanyi, David Truman, Hannah Arendt, Robert Dahl, and Richard Hofstadter. In a review for Ethics and International Affairs, Anna Wertz noted that Katznelson's "book provides inspiration and considerable guidance for anyone who believes in the social responsibilities of intellectuals."

In When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America Katznelson examines social welfare programs of the mid-twentieth century, including Social Security, the G.I. Bill, and laws that assisted labor and trade unions. A contributor for Publishers Weekly wrote that "this intriguing study closes with suggestions for rectifying racial inequality, but its strongest merit is its subtle recalibration of a crucial piece of American history." In an article for Kirkus Reviews, a contributor stated that "Katznelson does good service in excavating the archaeology of institutional racism, which, he notes, was brought about bit by bit, and not as a coherent program, and was thus easy to overlook." He concluded that the book "deepens our understanding of the modern civil fights movement, which begins in the 1930s, not the 1960s."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Sociology, March, 2003, Miguel Angelo Centeno, review of Shaped by War and Trade: International Influences on American Political Development, p. 1159.

American Political Science Review, June, 1993, Martin Shefter, review of Marxism and the City, p. 527; March, 1996, Benjamin Ginsberg, review of Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship, p. 211.

Antioch Review, winter, 2004, Maurice Meilleur, review of Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge after Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust, p. 172.

Ethics and International Affairs, December, 2004, Anna Wertz, review of Desolation and Enlightenment, p. 109.

Foreign Affairs, September-October, 1996, Stephen Holmes, review of Liberalism's Crooked Circle: Letters to Adam Michnik, p. 126.

Journal of Church and State, autumn, 1997, Alan Mittleman, review of Paths of Emancipation, p. 794-795.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, winter, 1997, Paula E. Hyman, review of Paths of Emancipation, p. 568.

Journal of Urban History, January, 1997, Rick Halpern, review of Marxism and the City, p. 221.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2005, review of When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America, p. 525.

Library Journal, August 1, 2005, Steven Puro, review of When Affirmative Action Was White, p. 100.

Mother Jones, September-October, 2005, Debra J. Dickerson, "The Great White Way," p. 77.

Policy Studies Journal, spring, 1993, Richard E. DeLeon, review of Marxism and the City, p. 149.

Political Science Quarterly, summer, 1996, Irving Katz, review of Paths of Emancipation, p. 359; spring, 1997, William E. Scheuerman, review of Liberalism's Crooked Circle, p. 165.

Political Science and Politics, September, 2000, "Political Scientists Elected to the American Academy," p. 656.

Publishers Weekly, June 6, 2005, review of When Affirmative Action Was White, p. 53.

ONLINE

American Political Science Association Web site, http://www.apsanet.org/ (October 17, 2005), "Ira Katznelson, President."

Columbia University Web site, http://www.columbia.edu/ (October 17, 2005).