Charles Tilly, Columbia’s Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science and founder of the noted Workshop on Contentious Politics, died April 29 after a 20-year struggle with cancer that fluctuated in severity. He was 78.
A vigil was held in his memory Tuesday night in front of Fayerweather Hall, as an intimate group of about 10 candle-bearing students and colleagues gathered beneath his office window to share memories both humorous and heartrending.
Sun-Chul Kim, GSAS ’08, recalled working in Fayerweather each night until 4 or 5 in the morning—around the same time Tilly would come in for the day. Tilly said “good morning” each time Kim came in—“But he said one time, ‘Goodnight!’” Kim explained, laughing.
Other stories were more profound.
John Krinsky, GSAS '02, recalled one day about eight years ago when he looked around Tilly’s library-like office and asked why the professor owned and wrote so many books.“He said, ‘I’m just trying to collect as many pieces as I can before I die,’” Krinsky recalled.
At the time, Krinsky said, he laughed. “I said, ‘You’re one of those guys who’ll live to be 110. You’ll outlive me!’ He probably knew something I didn’t.”
Tilly was born in Illinois in 1929. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard and taught sociology at Harvard, the University of Michigan, and elsewhere before coming to Columbia in 1996. He published 51 books and more than 600 articles, and his curriculum vitae spans 30 pages.
“It seemed that he could write, interpret, and explain virtually anything to curious minds,” University President Lee Bollinger wrote in a statement released Tuesday. Tilly “literally wrote the book on the contentious dynamics and the ethnographic foundations of political history,” Bollinger wrote.
During his 12 years at Columbia, Tilly advised 101 Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Ph.D. candidates—of whom Kim and Cecelia Walsh-Russo, GSAS ’08, were the last.
Walsh-Russo, who was also present at the vigil, said she had expected her March 6 dissertation defense to proceed without Tilly, who had been in the hospital.
“All of a sudden, there’s Chuck in the doorway,” she said. The panel offered to let Tilly ask his questions first, so he could leave early if he got tired. “But he didn’t get tired,” Walsh-Russo said.
Tilly was perhaps best known for his trademark Workshop on Contentious Politics, held regularly at Columbia and various other universities. Students and professionals from across the northeast and even the world attended to share their work.
“It became an institution. It’s what Charles Tilly started and everywhere he went he took it with him,” said Mona El-Ghobashy, GSAS ’06 and a professor of political science at Barnard. “Whatever I learned in graduate school, I learned at the workshop. It wasn’t a class, but people took it even more seriously than that.”
There was a much-praised rule at the workshop that required non-Ph.D. attendees to share their work first. The goal was “to include the young people and teach them how to be scholars,” El-Ghobashy said.
Despite some trepidation, those at the vigil vowed to continue the workshop despite the loss of the “name in lights” Tilly gave, Walsh-Russo said.
The workshop “will go in new directions, and that’s what Chuck would want,” El-Ghobashy said.
While there were some tears, the overall tone of the vigil was one of fond remembrance.
“His intellect comes once in a hundred years,” Francesca Bremner, GSAS ’04, said. “He wouldn’t show his feelings very much, but when you needed protection, you’d see how deeply he cares and how fiercely protective he is.”
maggie.astor@columbiaspectator.com