Fred Siegel attended Rutgers University, where he was an errant student. He went on the road to make his fortune but was disappointed when hustling pool proved to be a dead end. He later earned a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
In 1976, he married Jan Rosenberg, a sociologist. In addition to his son Harry, she survives him along with another son, Jacob, and four grandchildren.<\/p>\n
Mr. Siegel taught on campuses of the State University of New York from 1973 to 1980; at the Sorbonne in Paris from 1980 to 1981; and as a professor of history and the humanities at the Cooper Union from 1982 to 2010. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., from 1989 to 1990; the editor of City Journal from 1990 to 1993; a columnist for The New York Post from 1994 to 1997; and a scholar in residence at St. Francis College in Brooklyn from 2011 to 2018.<\/p>\n
Harry Siegel said that his fathers liberalism was largely shaped by conversations with his maternal grandfather, a garment worker and labor organizer, and that his political conversion as an adult was gradual.<\/p>\n
The essayist Irving Kristol famously defined a neoconservative, a breed Mr. Kristol epitomized and popularized, as a liberal who has been mugged by reality. But Mr. Siegels conversion wasnt the result of a single personal experience, his son said even though a thief once grabbed a bag of $100 worth of kosher meat from him on the subway and several of the familys cars were stolen.<\/p>\n
If Mr. Siegel approached a philosophical epiphany, though, it was during the blackout of 1977, when looters raged through parts of Brooklyn, stripping stores of merchandise and setting them ablaze in a night of rioting.<\/p>\n
Mr. Siegel, whose favorite restaurant, Jacks Pastrami King, was among the places destroyed, reflected in 2017: The city itself had been mugged, I realized. Im still haunted by that moment from 40 years ago, when my political re-education began.<\/p>\n
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Fred Siegel, Urban Historian and a Former Liberal, Is Dead at 78 - The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fred Siegel attended Rutgers University, where he was an errant student. He went on the road to make his fortune but was disappointed when hustling pool proved to be a dead end. Continue reading