M.M Tumin was a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Princeton University whose work examined race relations. He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Northwestern University. In the early 1940s, Tumin completed field work for his doctoral thesis in Guatemala. This research was later published as a book, Caste in a Peasant Society. After finishing his doctorate, Tumin worked at Wayne State University and served on the Mayor’s ComÑý¼§Ö±²¥ on Race Relations in Detroit. In 1947, he moved to Princeton, where he stayed until his retirement in 1989. In 1966-67, Tumin assumed the role of President of The Society for the Study of Social Problems, and in 1969, he was named a Guggenheim fellow. He also directed a task force of the U.S. National ComÑý¼§Ö±²¥ on the Causes and Prevention of Violence and was an author of three volumes of its 1970 report Crimes of Violence. He was the author of Desegregation: Resistance and Readiness (1958), Social Class and Social Change in Puerto Rico (1961), and Social Stratification: The Forms and Functions of Inequality (1967).
Tumin’s lecture was held in November 1967.