Charles Tilly, R.I.P.

Via Crooked Timber, I learned today that Charles Tilly, one of the great political and historical sociologists of his time, has died. The news makes me very sad, because Chuck was one of the most important academic influences in my life: I took every class he offered, from “Introduction to Political Sociology” to a three-person independent study on social movements, at the New School for Social Research in the late 80s and early 90s, and he supervised my Masters thesis there, which was about the Chartists. Chuck’s simple response — “Kevin, you could be an excellent scholar” — played an enormous role in my decision to pursue a life in academia. I’m just sorry I didn’t stop in to see him at Columbia in the past few years; I had been meaning to.

I was very lucky to be Chuck’s student. I will miss his love of “Big Structures, Large Processes, and Huge Comparisons,” his categorization of books as “right, wrong, and wrong but interesting,” his abiding dislike of Durkheim, and his very, very bad poetry.

Rest in peace, Chuck.