Maurice Zeitlin
Maurice Zeitlin is a well-known sociologist and teacher whose early work about Cuba concerned the revolution and worker’s consciousness. He travelled to Cuba twice in the early 1960’s, meeting with and interviewing Che Guevara on both occasions. Che help Maurice set up interviews with ordinary workers about their hopes for the revolution.
These interviews became the crux of his doctoral thesis, Working Class Politics in Cuba: A study in Political Sociology.
Maurice was greatly influenced by graduate school in Berkeley in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s where he wrote a book with Robert Scheer, CUBA: TRAGEDY IN OUR HEMISPHERE. His Campus activist work against capital punishment, in rallies against violations of civil liberties by HUAC’s notorious hearings in San Francisco in 1960; picketing in support of the civil rights movement, and especially making speeches at Sather Gate about in defense of the Cuban Revolution, galvanized students at Berkeley and was a major influence to many as a integral part of campus life.
He spent three years at Princeton and then his appointment to the faculty of the University of Wisconsin paved the way for organizing against the Vietnam War. His tenure was constantly in jeopardy because of his fervent opposition and his pivotal role in campus unrest.
He spent the rest of his teaching career at UCLA, shaping the minds of students who were interested in the lessons of revolutionary politics in the 1960’s and what could be gleaned from that history and applied to the political landscape of their times.
He is featured in our documentary Robert Scheer – Above the Fold.