E digby baltzell schools

 E. Digby Baltzell wrote decades ago, “History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.”

Rediscovering E. Digby Baltzell’s Sociology of Elites – American Affairs Journal offers a brief description of Baltzell’s work on elites.  He coined the term WASP, and wrote of the nation’s elites and their training schools.  His family origins could have been called ‘elites in decline’ – Harvard wasn’t in the cards for him, and it is likely that growing up adjacent to the elites, but with entry closed off, he was more observant of what he couldn’t achieve. 

The end of the WASP elite domination of American leadership might be marked with the death of George Herbert Walker Bush, five years ago, and twenty years after Balzell’s death.  It may have occurred in the 2008 elections.  Baltzell saw the WASP elites as relatively brief:

The structure of the upper class began to shift in the 1870s, driven by several changes in society. The Civil War created a more cohesive American union. Large-scale industrialization, u

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E. Digby Baltzell, one of the University's most well-known and admired professors, died August 17 at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston. A renowned author and sociologist, Baltzell coined the term WASP -- White Anglo-Saxon Protestant-- in his book The Protestant Establishment, published in 1964. He was a 1939 Wharton alumnus and a Sociology professor at the University for nearly 40 years. Baltzell, whose first name is Edward, continued teaching even after he officially retired in 1986. Colleagues and former students recall Baltzell as being extremely dedicated to his students and his research. "I think Digby was a sociologist of enormous stature," Sociology Professor Renee Fox said, noting that most of Baltzell's classes included "hundreds" of students. Fox said Baltzell's teachings were "not only colorful but startling, yet never disrespectful." Philadelphia resident Alan Glicksman, who received a doctorate in Sociology from the University in 1990 though he began his studies in 1978, said Baltzell was a strong influence on his current belief system and career path. "He had a re

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E. Digby Baltzell Papers UPT 50 B197

Finding Aid

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Summary Information

Prepared by

Kaiyi Chen

Preparation date

1997

Date [inclusive]

1846-1994

Extent

10.5 Cubic feet

PROVENANCE

Gift of E. Digby Baltzell transferred to the Archives in 1981 and 1996.

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ARRANGEMENT

The collection has been organized into two series: Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, 1979, and Sporting Gentlemen, 1846-1994. The first series has been arranged in the sequence of the writing-publishing process, from the drafts to manuscripts to proofs. The second series has been arranged alphabetically within each subseries.

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HISTORICAL NOTE

Edward Digby Baltzell was born in Philadelphia in 1915. He graduated with a B.S. from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1940 and with a Ph. D. in sociology from Columbia University in 1952. He served on the faculty of sociology at Penn from 1947 to 1986, the