  todd gitlin (born 1943) is an american sociologist, political writer, novelist, and cultural commentator. he has written widely on the mass media, politics, intellectual life and the arts, for both popular and scholarly publications. ==new left activist== gitlin became a political activist in 1960, when he joined a harvard group called tocsin, against nuclear weapons. in 1963 and 1964, gitlin was president of students for a democratic society; he was elected, he writes, because "none of the other four candidates, each of whom was experienced, was willing to serve," since "we mistrusted power, including our own! recruiting leaders was hard." (letters to a young activist, p.&nbsp;117) he helped organize the first  national demonstration against the vietnam war, held in washington, d. c., on april 17, 1965, with 25,000 participants, as well as the first civil disobedience directed against american corporate support for the apartheid regime in south africa - a sit-in at the manhattan headquarters of chase manhattan bank on march 19, 1965.sale, kirkpatrick, sds (new york: random house, 1973), pp.&nbsp;153â54. in 1968, he signed the âwriters and editors war tax protestâ pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the vietnam war.âwriters and editors war tax protestâ january 30, 1968 new york post in the mid-1980s, he was a leader of berkeley's faculty for full divestment and president of harvard-radcliffe alumni/-ae against apartheid. in 2013, he became involved in the alumni wing of the divest harvard http://www.divestharvard.com movement, seeking the university's exit from fossil fuel corporations, which fill the atmosphere with climate-changing carbon and fund anti-science propaganda. ==academic career== gitlin graduated as valedictorian of the bronx high school of science, one of new york
1943_births American_antiaVietnam_War_activists American_sociologists American_tax_resisters Columbia_University_faculty Counterculture_of_the_1960s Harvard_University_alumni International_opponents_of_apartheid_in_South_Africa Living_people Members_of_Students_for_a_Democratic_Society_(1960_organization) The_Bronx_High_School_of_Science_alumni University_of_Michigan_alumni