"He did what I don't think one person in a thousand would do," Sagan says.

Bellah's openness ultimately made it difficult for him to stay at Harvard.

His graduate fellowship was threatened, and he was pressed to identify members of the Communist Party, even though Bellah had left the Party by his graduate school days, according to an essay he wrote in Beyond Belief.

Although his fellowship was ultimately saved, an offer of a job as a Harvard instructor was made contingent upon similar conditions, so Bellah left the University for good.

Despite the circumstances of his departure, Bellah, who was on vacation in Italy as this article was written, writes fondly of his years as a social anthropology concentrator and graduate student inBeyond Belief.

"Harvard was in many ways a liberation for me. Instead of the isolation I felt in high school, I felt supported in the intellectual as well as political ideas I was beginning to develop," he writes.

"It's hard for current undergraduates to appreciate that in the post-war era, the link between freedom and democracy and learning was more appreciated. It's hard to recapture that in the more professionalized academic climate today," Swidler says.

Although Swidler says Bellah "had opportunities to go back even when they wanted him," Sagan suggests that Bellah's decision was based mostly on the desirability of the Berkeley post.

"The sociology department at Berkeley is a very exciting place, in my view the finest in the country, and Berkeley is a beautiful city," Sagan says.

Bellah is married and has four children and still lives in Berkeley.