Allan Silver (1930 - November 14, 2015)
Silver earned a B.A., an M.A. and a Ph.D. in political sociology from Michigan in 1954, 1961 and 1963 respectively, taking a break from his undergraduate studies to serve with the Army in the Korean War in 1951. While living in England from 1957 to 1960, Silver worked for a market research firm and, while there, developed a collaborative relationship with Robert McKenzie, a political sociology professor at The London School of Economics. They conducted a study of British working-class conservatives, which became the basis for Silver’s dissertation- turned-book, Angels in Marble: Working Class Conservatives in Urban England, co-authored with McKenzie and published in 1968.
Silver joined the Columbia faculty in 1964. Having joined Columbia at a time of political and social turmoil, Silver nonetheless remained dedicated both to the students and to the institution, working to mediate relations between the administration and students during the demonstrations of Spring 1968.
Silver’s work has been published in the American Journal of Sociology and in essay collections on a range of topics from political sociology of the Hebrew bible and studies of citizenship in the United States to a foundational text on the nature of friendship. Silver also taught at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, Meiji University in Tokyo, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Wisconsin. Even after his formal retirement in 2009, Silver continued to teach in the Core Curriculum and serve as a graduate mentor.
