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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: Justin Harmon 609/258-5732
Date: January 5, 1998
Professor of Religion Malcolm L. Diamond Dies at 73
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Malcolm L. Diamond, William H. Danforth Professor of Religion, Emeritus, at Princeton University, died on December 27, 1997, at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick of complications from multiple myeloma. He was 73 and a resident of Princeton.
Diamond taught psychology, religion and philosophy of religion until his retirement in 1992. In 1970, he received the E. Harris Harbison Award for Gifted Teaching from the Danforth Foundation. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976, he pursued research at the University of London for a year.
Diamond worked with leading figures in religious thought, including Martin Buber, W. Richard Niebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich and John Wisdom. He was a visiting professor at Columbia and Stanford universities, the University of Pennsylvania, and Swarthmore, Howard and William Smith colleges.
He was the author of Contemporary Philosophy and Religious Thought (McGraw-Hill, 1974) and Martin Buber: Jewish Existentialist (Oxford University Press, 1960; paperback, Harper's, 1968). Diamond was also co-editor of The Logic of God: Theology and Verification (Bobbs-Merrill, 1975).
Diamond published numerous articles and reviews in the fields of religion and Jewish studies, including articles on Kierkegaard treating his role as a defender of traditional Christianity, on the challenges posed by contemporary skeptical philosophy to traditional religious thought, and on Jewish and Christian tensions after the Israel-Arab confrontations.
Since the fall of 1981, Diamond worked in the field of family therapy and marriage counseling, first at Trinity Counseling Service in Princeton and, since 1983, at Corner House in Princeton. He earned an Ed.S. degree in family therapy from Seton Hall University in 1985. That summer, he participated in a practicum in family therapy at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center. He incorporated material deriving from his clinical practice into his courses on Psychology and Religion and The Self in World Religions. At the time of his death, he was completing a book drawing on this material.
Born in New York City on November 6, 1924, he received a bachelor's degree in metallurgical engineering from Yale University in 1945 and a doctorate in philosophy and religion from Columbia in 1956. He also studied at the Yale Divinity School in 1946-47 and at Trinity College, Cambridge University, during 1947-48.
Diamond served on the faculty of social studies at Sarah Lawrence during 1950-51. He was adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Religion at New York University, Washington Square College, from 1951 to 1953. In the fall of 1953 he was appointed an instructor in religion on the Princeton faculty. He advanced to assistant professor in 1956, to associate professor in 1963, and professor in 1968. He was named to the Danforth chair in 1978. He retired from the University in 1992.
Diamond was the first master of Stevenson Hall and served as a faculty representative to the Council of the Princeton University Community.
A member of the Society for Religion in Higher Education and the American Philosophical Association, Diamond served on the executive committee of the American Academy of Religion from 1969 to 1971. He served as secretary-treasurer of the Princeton of the American Association of University Professors and on the executive committee of its N.J. Regional Conference.
A civil rights activist, Diamond joined the Freedom Riders in the South and participated in numerous anti-war demonstrations in the Northeast. He helped found the Princeton Association for Human Rights, which sponsored a local delegation to the March on Washington for Jobs and Opportunity of August 28, 1963, as well as to the march in support of the Poor People's Campaign in June 1968. He was a member of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament.
Diamond served in the U.S. Navy during World War II in the Pacific Theater of operations.
He was passionate in his love of opera, skiing, and poker.
He is survived by his wife, Denise; two sons, Michael of Amherst, Mass., and Jonathan of Heath, Mass.; a grandson, Julian of Heath; a step-grandson, Jarrett Justin Landry of Bucks County, Pa.; and two brothers, Norman of Bethesda, Md., and Theodore L. of New York City. His first marriage, to Barbara Reingold, ended in divorce.
A memorial service will be held 3 p.m. February 8 at McCosh 50 on the University campus, with a reception to follow at Prospect House. Memorial contributions may be made to the International Myeloma Foundation, 2120 Stanley Hills Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90046.
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