Todd Gitlin, whose immersion in the student rebellions of the 1960s laid the foundation for his later work as a writer, a cultural historian and both a voice and a critic of the left, died on Saturday in Pittsfield, Mass. He was 79.
His stepdaughter, Shoshana Haulley, who confirmed the death, said he suffered cardiac arrest on Dec. 31 while staying at his home in Hillsdale, N.Y., and had been hospitalized in nearby Pittsfield ever since. He also had a home in Manhattan.
Dr. Gitlin personified the cultural and political ambitions of the ’60s, with a continuous readiness to confront orthodoxies of whatever stripe. He was a president of Students for a Democratic Society, the national flagship student organization that called for constructive social change, whose ranks swelled with protesters against the war in Vietnam and then collapsed into factionalism. At S.D.S., he assisted in organizing the first national demonstration against the war and helped lead the first protests in the United States against apartheid in South Africa.
He later became a chronicler of the decade. He was sometimes a caustic commenter on the left and its tactics, which opened him up to harsh judgments by erstwhile kindred spirits.