Maurice Robert Stein

Maurice R. Stein (Maury) took his last breaths in the same way he strove to live- peacefully and surrounded by family in his Cambridge home. His passing was one last lesson after nearly 97 years of living, teaching, and loving.

Born in 1926 in Buffalo, New York, Maury saw worlds of change during his near century of life. In the U.S. Army from 1944-1946 he served in Okinawa and Korea. After graduating from the University of Buffalo and receiving his doctorate from Columbia, he began a 50-year career teaching sociology at Dartmouth and Oberlin, followed by 46 years at Brandeis.

There Maury participated in several decades of rapid growth. In the sixties, he planned and chaired an innovative graduate sociology program. His long friendship with colleague Morrie Schwartz was beautifully chronicled in the book Tuesdays with Morrie.

Maury was a fierce advocate for civil rights, women's rights, and world peace. Both of his children remember frequent protests on Cambridge Common. He stood out as an advocate at Brandeis, sponsoring an early queer studies course and being part of the early initiatives to question canon literature taught at Universities and add in works by authors of color. His children recall his passion for gender equality played out at home. His daughter remembers her parents constantly renegotiating domestic duties, striving to make them fair. His wife, Phyllis Stein was Director of Radcliffe Career Services and still continues her work as a career counselor.

After witnessing his wife give birth to their daughter, he began teaching Birth and Death at Brandeis, a wildly popular course ultimately taken by thousands of students. The course countered the very American fear of death and gave a new, more nuanced narrative that many students took to heart and Maury embodied, even up to the moment of his own passing.

Maury's books include The Eclipse of Community, Identity and Anxiety (with A Vidich and D. White), Reflections on Community Studies (with A.Vidich and J. Bensman), and, most notably, Blueprint for Counter Education (with L. Miller) which has been celebrated in libraries and art museums throughout the US and Europe. This three-dimensional intellectual history of social thought and change anticipated the Internet decades before its inception.

Maury was founding Dean of the School of Critical Studies at California Institute of the Arts and earned a life-long Research Contribution Award from the Community Section of the American Sociological Association. He considered the feminist movement, Buddhism, Bauhaus, Native American spiritualities, world poetry, and the global peace movement as key to his perspectives.

During his fifty years of college teaching, Maury was a revered teacher who cherished interacting with colleagues and students. In retirement, he maintained his intellectual curiosity and passions, teaching or taking classes at Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement for 10 years.

In his last years, struggling with Alzheimer's, he began forgetting. Even as what happened that morning was gone or when he gave impromptu lectures in the middle of the night, he remained peaceful and loving.

Maury is survived by his wife of 59 years Phyllis Stein, son Paul, daughter Ninian, daughter-in-law Lauren Levine, granddaughter Rowan Stein-Levine and many other loved ones.

Contributions in Maury Stein's honor can be made to the ACLU, Good Shepherd Community Care Hospice, or a charity of your choice.

Memories of Maury can be shared and found at https://www.forevermissed.com/maury-stein.