“The main thrust of the testimony I was prepared to offer,” he wrote, “was that the disaster had damaged the tissues of communal life as well as the bodies and the minds of the persons who had experienced it.” Legend has it that his powerful presence and voice became so well-known and feared by opposing counsel that once, when he was seen to enter a courtroom for the defense unannounced, the other side immediately settled. A mentor to generations of undergraduate and graduate students, the longtime chair of Yale’s Department of Sociology and of the American Studies Program, editor of The Yale Review for more than a decade, and president in turn of the American Sociological Association and of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, Erikson was always counted on to participate in and build communities. Jonathan Fanton, another special assistant to Brewster and a close friend of Erikson’s who went on to become the president of the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation and the president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, remembered that Erikson’s “wisdom, empathy, and ability to bridge differences made him central to Yale’s ability to navigate the challenges of May Day,” the massive anti-war and Black Panther support rally that took place in New Haven in May 1970.
Author: news@yale.edu (Yale News)
Published at: 2025-11-11 21:44:14
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