Harvey Molotch - Biography

Biography

Molotch was born Harvey Luskin in Baltimore, Maryland, where his family was in the retail car business on one side and the home appliance business on the other. His father, Paul Luskin, died in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 during World War II. His mother remarried to Nathan Molotch.

Molotch received a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Michigan (1963), with a thesis on John Dewey. He received an MA (1965) and Ph.D. (1966) in sociology from University of Chicago. He served in the U.S. Army, stationed in Maryland and Virginia, 1961-62.

Molotch was on faculty from 1967 to 2003 at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has also been a visiting professor at Stony Brook University, the University of Essex, and Northwestern University. In 1998-99 he was Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. He now holds appointments at New York University as Professor of Sociology, and Professor of both Metropolitan Studies and American Studies within the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.

Molotch's 1964 marriage to Linda Sigesmund ended with her death, by car accident, in 1976. The couple had two children, Shana (born 1969), now with two children (Christopher and Emma Craddock) and living in California where she is the manager of the Hotel Leger, and Noah (born 1972), now with two children (Darwin and Stella Molotch) and living in Boulder Colorado where he is on faculty at University of Colorado as hydrological scientist, as well as research scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Molotch has lived with his domestic partner, Glenn Wharton, a conservator at the Museum of Modern Art and faculty member at New York University, since 1979.