Early Life and Education
Gutman was born in 1928 to Jewish immigrant parents in New York City. His parents' leftism was deeply influential. He attended John Adams High School and graduated with a bachelor's degree from Queens College in 1948. During his teens and his college years, Gutman became involved in numerous left-wing causes, flirted with communism, and worked for the Wallace presidential campaign.
He received a master's degree in history from Columbia University. His thesis studied the Panic of 1873 and its effects on New York City, and focused heavily on workers' demands for public works. It was written under the supervision of Richard Hofstadter. Gutman later dismissed it as "boring conventional labor history."
Gutman was awarded a doctorate in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1959. His doctoral dissertation was on American labor during the Panic of 1873 and supervised by Howard K. Beale. During this time, Gutman worked with the eminent labor scholars Merrill Jensen, Merle Curti and Selig Perlman, who had turned the University of Wisconsin–Madison into the cradle of modern American labor studies.
He later married Judith Mara, and they had two daughters.
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