The Mayer Zald papers mostly consist of information during his time as a professor at the University of Michigan. The collection covers from 1956 to 2012, with the bulk being from 1980 to 2008. The collection is divided into five series: Biographical Information, Correspondence, Courses, Proposals, and Writings and Presentations.
Mayer Nathan Zald was born on June 17, 1931 in Dearborn, Michigan and grew up in a Jewish middle and lower middle class neighborhood in the Detroit area. His father owned a clothing store in Ann Arbor but was bankrupt by the time Zald was born. His mother worked for the Michigan Employment Commission due to his father's recurring illness. As a teenager, Zald was heavily involved in a Jewish fraternity that dealt with intellectual and political debate. He worked in various manufacturing plants from age sixteen until he was twenty. He began his undergraduate work at Wayne State University in 1949 and then transferred in 1951 to the University of Michigan where he graduated with a B.A. degree in sociology in 1953. In 1955 he earned his Master's degree from the University of Hawaii and entered the Army. In 1956 he returned to the University of Michigan where he received his Ph.D. in 1961. He was a faculty member at the University of Chicago from 1960 to 1964, and in 1964 he moved to Nashville where he worked at Vanderbilt University until 1977.
Zald then began working at the University of Michigan as a professor in the Sociology Department. He served as chair of the Sociology Department at both Vanderbilt and Michigan in addition to serving as the Vice President of the American Sociological Association. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and served on the boards of multiple professional journals in the sociology field, including his time as associate editor of the American Sociological Review from 1979 to 1982. His service as chair at the University of Michigan was from 1981 to 1986 and from 1990 to 1992. He also received the additional appointment as professor of business administration in 1989. Much of his research was focused on organizational studies, collective behavior, and social theory. He wrote 100 book chapters and articles, and 20 books. In 1989 he was awarded and presented at the Distinguished Senior Faculty Lecture. He retired from the Sociology Department at the University of Michigan in the spring of 2001 and was awarded professor emeritus status of social work and business administration. In 2008 he received the John D. McCarthy Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Scholarship of Social Movements and Collective Behavior from the Center for the Study of Social Movements and Social Change at the University of Notre Dame. After his retirement from the University of Michigan, he continued to teach a seminar at the University of Arizona. Zald passed away on August 7, 2012.
