Seymour Martin Lipset

Seymour Martin Lipset "is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Hazel Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University. Previously he was the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford University (1975–90) and the George D. Markham Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University.

"His major work is in the fields of political sociology, trade union organization, social stratification, public opinion, and the sociology of intellectual life. He has also written extensively about the conditions for democracy in comparative perspective.

"His most recent publications are American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (W.W. Norton, 1996) and Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (Routledge, 1990), and with Earl Raab Jews and the New American Scene (Harvard University press, 1996).

"He is the only person to have been president of both the American Sociological Association (1992–93) and the American Political Science Association (1979–80). He has also served as the president of the International Society of Political Psychology, the Sociological Research Association, the World Association for Public Opinion Research, and the Society for Comparative Research. He is currently the president of the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Society in Vienna.

"Lipset is also active in public affairs on a national level. He is currently a director of the United States Institute of Peace. He has been a member of the U.S. Board of Foreign Scholarships, cochair of the Committee for Labor Law Reform, cochair of the Committee for an Effective UNESCO, and consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the American Jewish Committee.

"He has been president of the American Professors for Peace in the Middle East, chair of the National B'nai B'rith Hillel Commission and the Faculty Advisory Cabinet of the United Jewish Appeal, and cochair of the Executive Committee of the International Center for Peace in the Middle East." 

He is also a director of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, director of the Albert Shanker Institute, a member of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, and was a director of Committee for the Free World.


 * Recipient of the 2004 NED Democracy Service Medal
 * Network Member, Cultural Change Institute