This collection is located onsite - ReCAP staging.
This collection has no restrictions.
The collection consists of course materials for some of the classes taught by William Martin (1932-2023) while an instructor at Columbia University in the 1960s and 1970s. The collection also contains extensive personal correspondence between William Martin and Columbia University Sociology Professor Allan Silver (1930-2015) dating from 1960s-2010s. Correspondence topics include sociology, political controversies at Columbia/Barnard, classical music, and — perhaps most of all - Israel and antisemitism, especially in academia.
Series I: Course Materials, 1957-1978
This series consists of course materials maintained by William Martin for classes he taught in the Sociology department at Columbia University from 1957 to the late 1970s. Contents include syllabi, exam questions, and hand written lecture notes. There are sometimes examples of syllabi he referenced which were created by other professors for similar or same courses.
Series II: Correspondence, 1969-2012
This series consists of personal correspondence between Martin and his colleagues Marc Bernstein and Allan Silver. Most of the correspondence is with Allan Silver. Correspondence topics with Allan Silver include sociology, political controversies at Columbia/Barnard, classical music, and — perhaps most of all - Israel and antisemitism, especially in academia.
This collection is arranged in two series. Course files are arranged in order of course number and correspondence files are arranged by name and then chronologically.
You will need to make an appointment in advance to use this collection material in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room. You can schedule an appointment once you've submitted your request through your Special Collections Research Account.
This collection is located onsite - ReCAP staging.
This collection has no restrictions.
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. The RBML maintains ownership of the physical material only. Copyright remains with the creator and his/her heirs. The responsibility to secure copyright permission rests with the patron.
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); William Martin Papers; Box and Folder; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Libraries.
No additions are expected.
Collection donated by William Martin's son, John Levi Martin, in December 2023.
Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Collection processed and EAD finding aid created by Jocelyn Wilk in February 2024.
William Martin was born in New York City in 1932 to parents who were immigrants from Eastern Europe. He attended Seward Park High School, a center of intellectual leftist New York thought, and then, at the age of 15, matriculated at NYU to study law. There, he was exposed to sociology and, after graduating in 1951, he went on to graduate school at Columbia, becoming part of Robert Merton's medical school project. Martin abandoned work on his dissertation, and became a lecturer at Columbia between 1959 and 1968.
Martin was a popular college teacher who was credited with helping bring into sociology a fair number of scholars currently at top departments. Remaining as an adjunct, a position first given to him as an ABD graduate student, he also helped develop certain parts of the Columbia Civilization sequence. Martin bridged a major divide in the Sociology department, establishing good relations not only with Robert Merton (his erstwhile advisor), but also with Daniel Bell (with whom he would speak Yiddish in faculty meetings), Robert Lynd (largely marginalized at that time), and his close friend Allan Silver. Like others of his background (Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, and so on), he had begun as a precocious Marxist, and though he soon saw the Soviet Union as a corrupt empire, he retained an appreciation of Industrial Democracy, and when Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) started a Columbia branch, he was its first faculty advisor (Mark Rudd had been one of his students). They soon parted company as Martin detested what he saw as the college left's irrationalism, faux radicalism, and a worship of destruction.
This disillusionment, combined with the increasing aberrance of a faculty member not holding a PhD, led Martin to leave Columbia. He began giving investment advice and helped to structure some start-up businesses. The support of ex-students, including some rising stars, and a few faculty at Columbia, then brought him back for a few more years (1972-1978) as a dedicated lecturer, after which he returned to his catch-as-catch-can vocation. Among his lasting achievements, he was the father of John Levi Martin, the Florence Borchert Bartling Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He was also the devoted father of Anne Martin, DrPH, and husband of Sylvia Martin.
William Martin died in Chicago in 2023.
The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches for other collections at Columbia University, through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, and through ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.
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