André Schiffrin, the founder of The New Press and a leader in the book publishing world for nearly half a century, has died at the age of 78. Schiffrin served as editor-in-chief of Pantheon Books, where he edited titles by Jean-Paul Sartre, Studs Terkel and Noam Chomsky. In 1990, he made waves across the publishing world with his departure from Pantheon following a dispute with Alberto Vitale, head of Pantheon’s parent company, Random House. Schiffrin described that moment on Democracy Now! in 2007.

André Schiffrin: “And Vitale said to us, 'Why can’t you publish more books on the right rather than those on the left?' It was clear to us at that point that we were in a situation where there was no compromise, no solution. So all of my colleagues and I resigned at the same time, which is something that normally doesn’t happen in publishing. When there’s a new owner, everybody says, 'Oh, well, let’s see. Maybe we can work it out. We don’t want to leave our corner offices,' and so on. But we did leave all together. And…”

Amy Goodman: “How many of you?”

André Schiffrin: “Well, there were six who left altogether, the editorial staff. And there was a big picket line outside of Random House. There was a lot of noise about it, protests from all over Europe and so on. And it was clear that people saw that as a sea change, a moment when the conglomerates would really try to alter, as they had been doing, what was published.”

After his departure from Pantheon, Schiffrin went on to found The New Press, an independent, nonprofit company dedicated to “publishing in the public interest.” He died in Paris on Sunday of pancreatic cancer. Click here to watch our full interview with him.