Keizer, 103, of Cornwall, PA, formerly of Princeton, NJ, passed away peacefully November 12, 2021, at Cornwall Manor. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Princeton Public Library () or to PER’s successor organization, the Council for Inclusive Governance (CIG), by check to 2 Hillside Road, Newtown PA 18940, with “in memory of Allen Kassof’’ in the memo.Īlice S. In addition to Arianne, he was predeceased by a grandson, Julian Harned.Ī memorial service will be scheduled in spring/summer 2022. He is survived by his sister Rhoda Kassof-Isaac daughters Annie, Arlen Hastings (Tom), and Anita (Josh Neiman) grandchildren Deja Kassof, Sara (Dan Hayes-Patterson) and Kevin Hastings, and Sophie and Daniel Neiman great-granddaughter Jordan Carroll nephew Jeffrey Isaac (Sophie Clarke) and great-nephew Elias Isaac. In accordance with his wishes that he leave his house “feet first,” he died surrounded by family in the home he loved and that had been the site of so many lively gatherings. After her sudden death in May 2021, his health declined precipitously. He spent the last several years of his life with his partner, Trudy Glucksberg. He was an avid photographer and technology enthusiast, a Fellow of Princeton’s Forbes College, a Friend of the Institute for Advanced Study, and an active member of the Harvard Club of Princeton, the Old Guard of Princeton, and Community Without Walls. He maintained that tradition even after Arianne died in 2013, seven months after their 60th anniversary. He and his wife - the former Arianne Scholz, whom he married on Valentine’s Day, 1953 - were legendary for their hospitality, hosting family, friends, and colleagues from all over the world in their Princeton home. His own nickname, bestowed with great affection by his family, was “Big Al.” A devoted and enthusiastic husband, father, grandfather, and uncle, “Big Al” showered us all with love and generosity. He had a joke (usually off color) for every occasion and a ridiculous nickname for almost everyone. His self-assurance and sense of humor put everyone at ease. To all of his interactions, whether on the world stage or at the kitchen table with good friends, he brought perspective shaped by coming of age in a time of American optimism and honed by decades of world travel. He supervised Princeton’s Critical Languages Program (which brought women to study there before they were first admitted as undergraduates in 1969), referring to himself tongue-in-cheek as Princeton’s “first dean of women.” In 1978-1979 he served as a member of President Jimmy Carter’s Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies. He remained on the Princeton faculty until 1973, serving as an assistant dean of the college from 1965 to 1968. He taught sociology at Smith College and was recruited in 1961 to join the sociology faculty at Princeton University. in sociology from Harvard University, where he studied at the Russian Research Center. from Rutgers University in 1952, and in 1960 he earned his Ph.D. In a 1999 oral history with Carnegie Corporation of New York, he said, “I learned very early that if you didn’t feed or water the chickens they died, and it did not matter how good your ideas were there was an absolute and fundamental necessity just to get certain things done in the real world.” He credited his childhood on the farm for the pragmatism that was his hallmark skill as a negotiator. He was born in New York City to Morris and Sophia (née Baron) Kassof, and the family took up chicken farming in Toms River, New Jersey, where he grew up. His extraordinary breadth of vision and humanitarianism enabled him repeatedly to accomplish the seemingly impossible by bringing together antagonistic majority government officials, minority representatives, opposition leaders, security authorities, and human rights activists, and helping them find nonviolent ways to reconcile major differences. He played an essential role in preventing Romania from experiencing the horrors of ethnic conflict that affected so many of its neighbors. As president of PER from 1992 to 2005 he led negotiations and mediated ethnic conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
In 1991 he founded the Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) in anticipation of the serious interethnic conflicts that were to erupt following the collapse of Communism.
He was the founding director of the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), which administered the foremost exchanges of scholars with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Kassof, 90, of Princeton, died on Novemof heart failure.