Life
Fishman, nicknamed Shikl, was born and raised in Philadelphia, where he attended public schools while also studying Yiddish at elementary and secondary levels. As he grew up, his father would ask his children at the dinner table, "What did you do for Yiddish today?" He studied Yiddish in Workmen’s Circle Schools, which emphasized mastery of the Yiddish language along with a focus on literature, history, and social issues. He graduated from Olney High School. From 1944 to 1948, he attended the University of Pennsylvania on a Mayor’s Scholarship, earning B.S. (history) and M.S. (psychology) degrees. After graduating from Penn, he studied Yiddish with Max Weinreich during the summer of 1948. He took a position as an educational psychologist for the Jewish Education Committee of New York in 1951. The same year, he married Gella Schweid, with whom he shares a lifelong commitment to Yiddish. In 1953, he completed his Ph.D. in social psychology at Columbia University with a dissertation entitled Negative Stereotypes Concerning Americans among American-born Children Receiving Various Types of Minority-group Education.
He first taught the sociology of language at the City College of New York while also directing research at the College Entrance Examination Board from 1955 to 1958. In 1958, he was appointed an associate professor of human relations and psychology at Penn. He subsequently accepted a post as professor of psychology and sociology at Yeshiva University in New York, where he would also serve as dean of the Ferkauf Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities as well as academic vice president. In 1966, he was made Distinguished University Research Professor of Social Sciences and in 1988 he became professor emeritus. He later became affiliated with a number of other institutions: Visiting Professor and Visiting Scholar, School of Education, Applied Linguistics and Department of Linguistics, Stanford University; Adjunct Professor of Multilingual and Multicultural Education, School of Education, New York University; Visiting Professor of Linguistics, City University of New York, Graduate Center. He has held visiting appointments and fellowships at over a dozen institutions around the world, including the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford, CA) and the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ).
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