Scott Gest commentary: A unique part of Phil’s intellectual legacy will be his emphasis on thinking about the classroom as a small society. Phil was creative in bringing forward ideas and research findings from applied social psychology and educational psychology in the 1940s and 1950s, but reframing those old ideas in the context of recent empirical work and contemporary educational issues such as bullying and racial/ethnic integration. In our project together we try to capture some of the complexities of classrooms as social systems by highlighting concepts and measures that characterize the entire classroom social system (e.g., status hierarchies, peer norms) and teachers’ attempts to manage that system (e.g., by being attuned to relationship patterns, mitigating status hierarchies, and supporting isolated students). In doing so, we see our work as complementary to research traditions that focus on the importance of providing strong behavioral supports at the school- and classroom-level as well as explicit instruction for individual socioemotional skill development. We hope to add an appreciation of the potential role of teachers in fostering more positive social dynamics at the classroom level. Phil’s passing is a terrible loss for the field because of all the creative contributions he would have made to these efforts, but also because he brought a deep personal commitment and spirit to his work that inspired many of us who worked with him. Phil grew up in a diverse community in New York City which instilled in him an appreciation for the cultural richness that comes from diversity and the tensions and social divisions that can accompany it. He approached his work with a great sense of the fun involved in pressing forward with important, challenging scientific questions, but also with a deep commitment to helping educators find ways to knit together more integrated, supportive classroom and school communities.

Dorothy Espelage commentary: Phil and Scott were really onto something. They recognized that, for the most part, we are not moving the needle of bullying much, and thought that teacher understanding of networks and friendship composition played a huge factor in rates of aggression and victimization. They were focused on ultimately designing an intervention to teach teachers how to navigate and assess the social milieu of their classrooms. Indeed, their basic research showed that if teachers do have a hierarchal classroom, and the kids at top have a lot of friends, changing the classroom to a more egalitarian culture may result in less aggression and victimization. How do you teach teachers this? Some of it is intuition, but other teachers need more explicit training.

Without a doubt, what made Phil quite unique was his ability to pull in historical, seminal pieces of literature. He would often cite literature from the 1800s around peers or classrooms; his memory was incredible. He never forgot the great works, famous philosophers, and historians. He epitomized the professorship, read widely and read everything. He never failed to put modern work into the context of the history of child development and psychology.

Handrea Logis commentary: Philip’s passion was that he wanted children to find their niche at school, which was one of the driving motivations for him to study social networks. His heart was also with the popular kids – especially, the popular-aggressive ones. So, for example, he believed that kids who are aggressive but also popular are the product of a group process; their behavior is often driven by the environment they belong to, the network, the experience they have with peers. In this sense, Phil focused us to not just pay attention to the individual child but rather to how social relations and the group drive everyone’s behavior. Phil had an incredible memory. He would often say, “Research so and so from journal XYZ in 1950.” So when he provided you a reference it always included, the year, the author, the source, off the top of his head. This included book chapters. His office library was immense and among the hundreds of books, he could point specifically to which one is most relevant, and not only from peer relationship literature but social psychology, personality research, statistics, culture, a wide range of topics. I think that is why is his scholarship was so unique. He read a lot and could integrate different perspectives and come up with novel ones.