Herbert Julius Gans

Herbert J. Gans is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at the Columbia University. He has published analyses in academic journals and widely read books, including The Urban Villagers, The Levittowners, Middle American Individualism and the War Against the Poor. Gans has been a major public spokesperson for sociology.

He has served as President of the American Sociological Association (1988) and of the Eastern Sociological Association (1973). He has been widely recognized as an important voice in the field of media studies, as reflected in his reception of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters Book Award for this 1979 book, Deciding What's New, and more recently, the Freedom Forum Media Study Center's Award for Distinguished Contribution to Media Studies (1995).