David Ernest Apter papers

David E. Apter was born on December 18, 1924, in New York City. He received his A.B. from Antioch College in 1950 and his M.A. (1952) and Ph.D. (1954) in Political Science from Princeton University. He taught at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the University of California at Berkeley and, since 1979, Yale University, where he was the Henry J. Heinz II Professor Emeritus of Comparative Political and Social Development and a senior research scientist in the political science and sociology departments. A former senior fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center, he was executive secretary of the Committee for the Comparative Study of New Nations at the University of Chicago and the director of the Institute of International Studies at Berkeley. At Yale, he was director of the social science division and chair of both the Council of African Studies, and the Department of Sociology. Apter authored numerous books, including Ghana in Transition (originally published as Gold Coast in Transition by Princeton University Press in 1955), The Political Kingdom in Uganda, and Against the State: Politics and Social Protest in Japan, and articles covering a wide range of subjects including comparative politics, political development, and the role of social protest, violence, and revolution in the political process. He spent considerable time studying political movements in Africa, China, Japan, and elsewhere. Apter died on May 4, 2010.