Porter, Jack Nusan.

Jack Nusan Porter was born Yaakov Puchtik on December 2, 1944 in Rovno, Ukraine, U.S.S.R. He was the son of Israel and Fayge Puchtik. After World War II, the Puchtiks emigrated from the Soviet Union and in 1946 settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the United States, the Puchtiks anglicized their names to Porter: Irving, Fay, and Jack.

After taking his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1967, Porter undertook graduate study in sociology at Northwestern University. Northwestern awarded Porter his doctorate in 1971. Porter's dissertation, "Student Protest, University Decision-Making, and the Technocratic Society: The Case of ROTC," was a study of student opposition to Northwestern's Reserve Officer Training Corps from 1968 to 1970.

Prior to receiving his doctorate, Porter served as a teaching assistant and part-time lecturer at Northwestern (1968-1969), a part-time lecturer at DePaul University (1969-1970), and a part-time lecturer at the Wesley/Passavant School of Nursing (1970-1971). After receiving his doctorate, Porter secured a number of short-term teaching appointments. He was an assistant professor of sociology at the State University of New York-Cortland (1971-1972), a part-time lecturer in Jewish studies at Boston College (1973-1974), a lecturer in behavioral sciences at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts (1974-1975), and a lecturer in Jewish history at Emerson College in Boston (1976). Porter also taught at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, and was a visiting lecturer at the University of Lowell (Massachusetts). Porter instructed a number of adult education classes at the Boston Center for Adult Education, the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Center for Adult Education, and the Hebrew College in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Porter's teaching and research fields included sociology, psychology, and Jewish studies. He was most active in the sociological study of Jewry, of genocide, and of the effects of the Nazi Holocaust. With Peter Dreier, Porter participated in a cross-cultural research project on "Young Jews and the New Left" sponsored by the Institute on Jewish Affairs. Porter and Dreier later co-edited Jewish Radicalism (Grove Press, 1973), an anthology of readings pertaining to militant forms of Jewish national, social, and cultural expression. Porter has authored many published articles and pamphlets on Jewish affairs and history. He has studied American neo-Nazi groups and translated into English accounts of Jewish partisan groups who fought the Nazis during World War II. In addition to his other publications, Porter privately published a revised form of his dissertation, Student Protest and the Technocratic Society: The Case of ROTC (Adams Press, 1973). Porter was the founding editor of the short-lived Journal of the History of Sociology .

Porter married Miriam Almuny on September 18, 1978. They have a son, Gabriel. Porter remains active in American Jewish and Israeli affairs.

From the guide to the Jack Nusan Porter (1944- ) Papers, 1965-1997, (Northwestern University Archives)