hardships, the dangers and boredom with people of all races and backgrounds and then turn around and exclude them from opportunities to which they were entitled." He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University in 1952. There, he studied under Paul Lazarsfeld, Robert Staughton Lynd, Robert Morrison Maclver, Robert K. Merton, and C. Wright Mills. Baltzell realized that his background made him different from others the field of sociology which was dominated by people from the middle class. However, this also meant that the upper class was an understudied topic. He decided to write his dissertation on the American upper class, and "for the rest of his life remained the world’s foremost authority on it." Baltzell’s developed his class theory from Max Weber and Alexis de Tocqueville; rejecting a Marxist framework. Career Baltzell taught at a branch of Pennsylvania State University. He joined the faculty of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1947. He said, "It was good to be born rich, because if you’re rich, you have freedom. But if you can’t be born rich, then the next best thing is to be a professor." In his most influential book, The Protestant Establishment (1964), he asserted, "…While socialist faiths might aim for a classless society, the United States stressed equality of opportunity in an open class system." This book also introduced the term WASP in the book's tables. Baltzell explained, "How was I going to fit those words in the little boxes?″ It was easier to just fit 'WASP' in there." Although he preferred aristocratic leadership in society, his views were liberal. In the 1960s, Baltzell stated, "The existing elites must assimilate talented black leaders into a national aristocracy." He also believed that the Protestant aristocracy of the American upper class had damaged the country by failing to allow talented members of other groups, especially minorities and Jews, into their class. He also spoke well of women: "Throughout history, great men have tended both to have had mothers who were socially, morally, or intellectually superior to their husbands and also to have chosen as wives women who were well above them in one way or another.... Of all the thirty-nine presidents [as of 1980]…only Nixon, Ford, and Carter married beneath themselves." Frank Furstenberg, a University of Pennsylvania sociology professor, said, "He felt the best of WASP culture represented the best virtues to which everyone could aspire: honor,