Jacobson, Norman

Norman Jacobson, born 1922, served as Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley from 1951-1989, holding the role of department chair fom 1974-1975, and of vice chair from 1957-1960. Jacobson continued to be active at the University of California following his retirement in 1989, serving as consulting professor from 1995-2006.

From the description of Norman Jacobson papers, 1949-2002. (University of California, Berkeley). WorldCat record id: 85760899

Biographical Information

Norman Jacobson was born in New York City on October 15, 1922. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1946. He graduated from St. John's University in 1946 and received his doctorate in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin, where he studied with the renowned political theorist Merle Curti, in 1951.

Jacobson had an illustrious career in the Political Science Department at the University of California, Berkeley from 1951 through 1989. Following his retirement, he held the title Professor Emeritus and continued to teach and consult at Berkeley, Stanford University, and the University of South Carolina. Jacobson was the subject of an hour-long television program, "Men Who Teach" in 1969. He was chosen State of California Professor of the Year in 1988 by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).

Jacobson's areas of interest included political theory, the history of ideas, and literature and politics, and he taught a variety of courses in these subjects. He earned a reputation as a dedicated teacher and, in 1965, was one of the founding faculty of the University of California, Berkeley's Experimental College Program. Jacobson has published widely on the topics of European and American political thought from the Renaissance to the present, and on such figures as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Paine, Lincoln, Dostoevsky, Thoreau, Arendt, Orwell and Camus. His publications include Pride & Solace: The Functions and Limits of Political Theory .

Jacobson served as an alternate member of the U.S. Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in 1955, and as a consultant to Fund for the Republic, an organization dedicated to defending civil rights and civil liberties, from 1957-1958. In addition to teaching political theory, Jacobson was a psychotherapist in the Department of Psychiatry at Cowell Memorial Hospital in Berkeley between 1965 and 1970, and led seminars in the Department of Psychiatry at the U.S. Veterans Administration Hospital in San Francisco in 1970. His interests also extended into the realms of television, film, and theater. Jacobson collaborated on a number of (unproduced) television scripts with fellow political scientist, Eugene Burdick, and a screenplay about John Brown with Robert Peyton. He co-produced the U.S. premieres of two pieces by Bertolt Brecht at UC Berkeley in 1969: the symphony "Primer of War" and the opera "The Measures Taken." Jacobson also co-produced and wrote Report, a short film about teaching and learning at a large American University in the early seventies.

From the guide to the Norman Jacobson papers, 1949-2002, (The Bancroft Library)