[3] He was a leading authority on the political sociology of the former Yugoslavia, and served as professor at the Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY) from 1973 until his retirement in 1994.
[3] His father was a Yugoslav diplomat,[1] who was forced into exile by the Nazis and then by Marshal Josip Broz Tito's communist regime after World War II.
His machinist union card gave him mobility, and he moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1958.
In 1964 Denitch moved to Yugoslavia for five years, where he did field research for several sociological projects on unions and on students for Seymour Martin Lipset of the University of California at Berkeley.
He received a doctorat d'université from University of Paris in 1972 for research on the new working class with Serge Mallet and Lucien Goldman.
In 1983, he founded and chaired the Socialist Scholars Conference, held annually in New York City, until controversy over his leadership led to its suspension and demise in 2005.
[1] From 1991 he organized an annual conference, the School on Democracy and Social Justice, for human rights activists from these states.