Publication: A Princeton Companion
Sociology became an independent department in Princeton only in the 1960s, but in 1895 a course was given with this description: ``Sociology. A his torical review of the evolution of modern industrialism. . . . The genesis and development of a science of sociology.'' The instructor was Walter A. Wyckoff 1888, Lecturer in Sociology and later Assistant Professor of Political Economy, who was called ``Weary Willie'' because from 1891 to 1893 he made his way, mostly on foot, from Connecticut to California, supporting himself as a laborer in order to learn by experience about America's emerging ``labor problem'' and poverty.
Beginning in 1912, the economist Frank A. Fetter continued this ameliorative approach to the new ``industrialism'' with a course in ``Social Economics.'' After 1913 this course was offered in the Department of Economics and Social Institutions, which split off from the Department of History, Politics, and Economics, set up in 1904 by Woodrow Wilson.
The establishment of the Office of Population Research in 1936 provided a further impetus to Sociology through the work of its first director, Frank W. Notestein, and later of demographer-sociologists Dudley Kirk, Kingsley Davis, and Wilbert E. Moore. Under Moore's guidance, Sociology took a more scientific direction, complementing the earlier and continuing interest in social problems and reform. Soon after the Second World War, Frederick F. Stephan joined the department as professor of social statistics along with three younger scholars, Marion J. Levy, Jr., specializing in general theory and East Asia; Melvin M. Tumin, in social class and race relations; and Gerald W. Breese, in urban studies. In 1948, on the recommendation of an interdepartmental committee, a doctoral program was established; the first Ph.D. was granted in 1951.
Sociology grew slowly in the 1950s. Morroe Berger joined the sociology faculty and also the recently expanded Program in Near Eastern Studies in 1952, adding to Sociology's specialization in foreign ``area'' studies and comparative social structure. In 1954, the Department of Economics and Social Institutions became Economics and Sociology.
Growth was rapid in the next decade, beginning in 1960, when the junior partner of Economics and Sociology became the senior partner of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Charles H. Page came from Smith College to be the first chairman, and he was joined a few years later by Charles F. Westoff, a demographer, and Marvin Bressler, a specialist in the sociology of education.
In 1963, the department moved to Green Hall (vacated by the School of Engineering), which it shared with the Psychology Department. Sociologists continued to be active as teacher-scholars and administrators in the Woodrow Wilson School, the Office of Population Research, the ``area'' programs on East Asia, the Near East and Russia, and the newer Program in Afro-American studies; Bressler headed the Commission on the Future of the College, which conducted a three-year review of undergraduate education at Princeton.
In 1965, Anthropology assumed separate status, and the department's title became simply the Department of Sociology. Under the new chairman Westoff and his successor, Bressler, Sociology attracted new faculty members and large numbers of students. Suzanne Keller joined as visiting professor in 1965 and three years later became the first woman full professor in Princeton's history.
During the national crises of the later 1960s, students took a heightened interest in sociology, seeking ``relevance'' to problems of the war in Vietnam, race and sex relations, and the environment. Several young instructors made the subject even more attractive, among them Robert A. Scott and Stephen L. Klineberg, whose course attracted hundreds of undergraduates. The number of undergraduate concentrators rose from 20 in 1965 to about 150 in 1969 and 1970, the largest in the University.
This great influx ended as student unrest declined. Sociology, under Berger's chairmanship, faced the problem of orderly contraction. Modest, regular growth seemed to have returned by 1974. Meanwhile the department acquired several new professors: in 1970, Norman Ryder, a demographer who was one of the first Princeton Ph.D.'s in sociology, and Gilbert F. Rozman, specializing in East Asian and Russian Studies; in 1972, Walter L. Wallace, a specialist in general theory and in Afro-American studies; and in 1973, Howard F. Taylor, a social psychologist, who was also appointed director of the Program in Afro-American Studies.
By the mid-1970s, Sociology at Princeton was on a more even course. In the face of rapid change, it had maintained a combination of specialization and breadth that saved it from the fluctuations of fashion. The department continued its commitment to effective teaching, and its scholarly work gave it a place, despite its small size, among those ranked highest in the country.
Morroe Berger
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).