I interrupt my discussion of the research to highlight three essentials of my personal life that greatly affected my further career and my work: My presidency of the American Sociological Association (ASA), my experiences with the Ronald Reagan administration, and my concurrent move from the NIMH to Johns Hopkins University.

Presidency of the American Sociological Association

To say that I was eager to be president of the ASA would be the greatest possible understatement. A few years earlier, when I was defeated in my bid for the vice presidency, I was keenly disappointed. It turned out that this was a blessing in disguise, because it transformed me from being unknown to many members of the ASA, to becoming a viable candidate for the ASA presidency. In 1986, I was nominated for the presidency. I thought that members not very conversant with the ASA might have thought of me as a government bureaucrat and would have voted against me. I was a bit surprised when I won.

There were three components to my presidency.

The first, and by far the most important in my mind, was the presidential address. I had been a keen student of ASA presidential addresses for many years, and for the most part I had been disappointed. It seemed to me that most presidents had a mistaken notion about what the presidential address should entail. Some thought that this gave them the opportunity to demonstrate to their colleagues that they really were great social theorists. Whatever they had written before, this time they gave a theoretical address – and demonstrated that they didn't have the foggiest idea of what social theory was about. Others thought that they had been elected pope, and preached to their congregations what was wrong with sociology and what should be done. By and large, I believe that they only demonstrated that they had not understood what their colleagues had said in their speeches.

To my mind, only two of my colleagues had given really impressive presidential addresses. The first was by my ego-ideal, Robert K. Merton, in 1957, entitled “Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science.” The second was by my mentor, Robin Murphy Williams Jr., in 1958, entitled “Continuity and Change in Sociological Study.”