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Irving Louis Horowitz (September 25, 1929 – March 21, 2012) was an American sociologist, author, and college professor who wrote and lectured extensively in his field, and his later years came to fear that it risked being seized by left-wing ideologues. He proposed a quantitative index for measuring a country's quality of life, and helped to popularize " Third World" as a term for the poorer nations of the
Non-Aligned Movement The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a forum of 120 countries that are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. After the United Nations, it is the largest grouping of states worldwide. The movement originated in the aftermath o ...
. He was considered by many to be a
neoconservative Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and count ...
, although he maintained that he had no political adherence.


Early life and education

Horowitz was born in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
on September 25, 1929, to Louis and Esther Tepper Horowitz. He was educated at City College of New York (now
City College of the City University of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, City ...
, or CUNY), B.S., 1951;
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, New York City, M.A., 1952; and the University of Buenos Aires,
Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
, Ph.D., 1957.Horner, Shirley
"ABOUT BOOKS"
''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', May 1, 1988. Accessed January 20, 2008.


Academic positions and consultancies

After beginning his career as an assistant professor of social theory at the University of Buenos Aires, 1956–1958, Horowitz spent the next forty-plus years at various academic institutions in India, Tokyo, Mexico, and Canada. In addition to his teaching positions, he was an advisory staff member of the Latin American Research Center, 1964–1970; and consultant to the International Education Division, Ford Foundation, 1959-1960. From 1963 to 1969, Horowitz was professor of
sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...
at
Washington University Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...
in
St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
. He has also been a visiting professor at Stanford University, the
University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...
, Queen's University in Canada, and the
University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...
, and a Fulbright Lecturer in Argentina,
Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
, and
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
; a member of the advisory board of the Institute for Scientific Information, 1969–1973; consulting editor for Oxford University Press, 1969–74, for Aldine-Atherton Publishers, 1969–1972; an external board member of the
Radio Marti Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
and Television Marti Programs of the United States Information Agency, beginning in 1985; chair of the board of the Hubert Humphrey Center, Ben Gurion University, Israel, 1990–1992; and served as an external board member of the methodology section of the research division, United States General Accounting Office. Horowitz's latest academic post was Hannah Arendt University Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science at Rutgers University, since 1992.


Transaction Publishers and ''Society''

He was the founding president of the Transaction Society, whose
Transaction Publishers Transaction Publishers was a New Jersey-based publishing house that specialized in social science books and journals. It was located on the Livingston Campus of Rutgers University. Transaction was sold to Taylor & Francis in 2016 and merged wit ...
has been an international publisher of scholarly monographs, including academic monographs that need not have been viewed as profitable. He was the founding editor of ''
Society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soci ...
'', which published articles on sociology, politics, and social criticism. It has been purchased by Springer Verlag.


Scholarly contributions

As the author of more than twenty-five books and editor of numerous other titles, Horowitz analyzed such diverse topics as the influence of Sun Myung Moon and the
Unification Church The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, widely known as the Unification Church, is a new religious movement, whose members are called Unificationists, or " Moonies". It was officially founded on 1 May 1954 under the name Holy Sp ...
on American politics, the future of book publishing, and politics in
Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
. Horowitz was the founder of Studies in Comparative International Development. He was also chairman of
Transaction Publishers Transaction Publishers was a New Jersey-based publishing house that specialized in social science books and journals. It was located on the Livingston Campus of Rutgers University. Transaction was sold to Taylor & Francis in 2016 and merged wit ...
. Early in his career, Horowitz was a student of Leftist sociologist C. Wright Mills, a Texas-born professor at Columbia University whose most significant books include, '' White Collar'', ''
The Power Elite ''The Power Elite'' is a 1956 book by sociologist C. Wright Mills, in which Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of society and suggests that the ordinary citizen in ...
'', and ''
The Sociological Imagination ''The Sociological Imagination'' is a 1959 book by American sociologist C. Wright Mills published by Oxford University Press. In it, he develops the idea of sociological imagination, the means by which the relation between self and society can ...
''. Horowitz edited two posthumous collections of Mills' work, including ''The cultural apparatus.'' Over the several decades until his death Horowitz worked to develop a political sociology that can measure the extent of a society's personal freedom and State-sanctioned violence. As a result of his work, a standard for the quality of life in any particular nation or social system has been constructed based on the number of people arbitrarily killed, maimed, injured, incarcerated, or deprived of basic civil liberties. Horowitz tried to build a bridge between his current analysis of state power and authority and his earlier studies of comparative international stratification and development. He was key to introducing the phrase " Third World" into the lexicon of social research. Horowitz articulated the view that republication of previous publications in different formats is necessary in the social sciences to disseminate research results and make them useful to society. Horowitz wrote about
genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...
: “First comes the act and then comes the word: first he crime ofgenocide is committed and then the language emerges to describe a phenomenon." He published lasting contributions on the subject, including ''Genocide: State power & mass murder''; ''Taking lives: Genocide & state power''; and "Genocide and the reconstruction of social theory: Observations on the exclusivity of collective death" in ''Armenian Review''. Horowitz's last scholarly pieces on genocide were his preface to R. J. Rummel's ''Death by government'', and his essay on state-sponsored terror, "Counting Bodies. The Dismal Science of Authorized Terror" in ''Patterns of Prejudice''. In Summer 1994, a volume of essays in honour of Horowitz was published by Transaction Publishers. In 1990, he published an autobiography, a brief "sociological biography" rather than one that is intellectual or intimate. This was ''Daydreams and nightmares: Reflections on a Harlem childhood'', for which he received the
National Jewish Book Award The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature.George Steinmetz challenged Horowitz. In a 2005 article in '' The Michigan Quarterly Review'' titled "The Cultural Contradictions of Irving Louis Horowitz", he wrote that "historical, cultural and geographic" context remained critical.


Personal life

In 1951, he married Ruth Narowlansky, with whom he had two children, Carl and David; they were divorced in 1964. He married Danielle Salti in 1964; the couple was divorced in 1978. He married Mary Ellen Curtis in 1979. He died on March 21, 2012. In 1973, Horowitz was one of the signers of the '' Humanist Manifesto II''.


Honors and awards

Throughout his academic career, Horowitz received many awards, including a special citation from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for his 1957 book, ''The Idea of War and Peace in Contemporary Philosophy''; recognition by ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
'' magazine as a leader of a new breed of radical sociologist; the Centennial Medallion from St. Peter's College, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1971, for outstanding contribution to a humanistic social science; and a Presidential Outstanding Achievement Award, 1985, from Rutgers University. He was a member of the
Carnegie Council The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs is a New York City-based 501(c)3 public charity serving international affairs professionals, teachers and students, and the attentive public. Founded in 1914, and originally named ''Church ...
, American Association of Publishers, American Political Science Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and past president (1961–1962) of the New York State Sociological Society.


Selected works

* ''The Anarchists'' (1964) * ''Winners and Losers: Social and Political Polarities in America'' (1984); a criticism of left-wing fascism * ''Cuban Communism: 1959-2003''. 11th edition. * ''The Long Night of Dark Intent: A Half Century of Cuban Communism''. Transaction Publishers (2011). * ''The War Game,'' Transaction Publishers (2013), Edited and with a new Introduction,"Conflagration and Calculation," by Howard G. Schneiderman * ''Professing Sociology: Studies in the Life Cycle of the Social Sciences,'' Transaction Publishers (2014), with a new Introduction - "Fugitive Thoughts Tamed," by Howard G. Schneiderman


References


Further reading

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Horowitz, Irving Louis 1929 births 2012 deaths American sociologists City College of New York alumni Columbia University alumni Historians of Cuba Jewish sociologists Rutgers University faculty University of Buenos Aires alumni Washington University in St. Louis faculty