Word: riesmans
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...more "American" In fact, throughout its first two centuries. Yale had a more geographic diversity. The less affluent New Haven had no equivalent of the Boston Brahmin and hence was less status conscious. It was hardly a Jacksonian democracy, but it was more open than Harvard. Sociologist David Riesman (Harvard '33) describes the differences during his undergraduate days, writing that at Yale, membership in secret societies was based on personal characteristics, but "at Harvard, it was ascribed not achieved. No matter how much of a lout you were you could get in a final club [with connections]. There wasn...
...David Riesman is Ford Professor of Social Sciences emeritus...
...Francis Biddle, and members of the Department of Justice; these men opposed internment. General DeWitt, in command of West Coast Army headquarters, joined the pressure; "military necessity" overruled objections from Washington. In my recollection, McCloy was not an actor in what quickly became West Coast mass California hysteria. David Riesman...
...criminals, are taking increasing liberties with the legal codes that are designed to protect and nourish their society. Indeed, there are moments today-amid outlaw litter, tax cheating, illicit noise and motorized anarchy-when it seems as though the scofflaw represents the wave of the future. Harvard Sociologist David Riesman suspects that a majority of Americans have blithely taken to committing supposedly minor derelictions as a matter of course. Already, Riesman says, the ethic of U.S. society is in danger of becoming this: "You're a fool if you obey the rules...
Nothing could be more obvious than the evidence supporting Riesman. Scofflaws abound in amazing variety. The graffiti-prone turn public surfaces into visual rubbish. Bicyclists often ride as though two-wheeled vehicles are exempt from all traffic laws. Litterbugs convert their communities into trash dumps. Widespread flurries of ordinances have failed to clear public places of high-decibel portable radios, just as earlier laws failed to wipe out the beer-soaked hooliganism that plagues many parks. Tobacco addicts remain hopelessly blind to signs that say NO SMOKING. Respectably dressed pot smokers no longer bother to duck out of public sight...