Sidney Harman

On July 24, 2012, the Harman family only held a minority stake in Newsweek.

Harman died on April 12, 2011, in Washington, D.C., at the age of 92 of complications from acute myeloid leukemia.

Less than a year before his death, in August 2010, Harman bought Newsweek magazine from The Washington Post Company, paying $1 and accepting the assumption of $47 million in liabilities.

The University of Southern California Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies named Harman the "Entrepreneur of the Year 2007".

Harman displayed a remarkable amount of energy into his 80s, staying active by playing golf and engaging in various other hobbies. He remained involved in the day-to-day management of Harman Kardon until formally retiring on his 88th birthday in August 2006. After turning 90 in 2008, he remarked "I don't feel much different than I did at 70. Maybe a little bit, but nothing has significantly diminished."

After he left government in 1978, he reacquired a number of businesses of Harman International he had sold to Beatrice. The company continued its growth plan with a string of acquisitions throughout the 1980s that pushed Harman International's sales from about $80 million in 1981 to more than $200 million by 1986, and then to more than $500 million by 1989.

Harman (Ph.D. in Higher Education, Union Institute & University, 1973), a graduate of Baruch College of the City University of New York in 1939, served as a trustee of the Martin Luther King Center for Social Change, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the National Symphony Orchestra. He was chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of the Public Agenda Foundation; chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Business Executives for National Security; a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. Council on Competitiveness; and a member of the Board of the Leadership Institute of the University of Southern California.

In the 1970s, Sidney Harman accepted an appointment in the Carter administration as undersecretary of the United States Department of Commerce. When Harman took office in 1976, he sold his company to conglomerate Beatrice Foods to avoid a conflict of interest. Beatrice promptly sold many portions of the company, including the original Harman Kardon division, and by 1980 only 60% of the original company remained.

Harman was married to the former Sylvia Stern for 25 years and had four children with her. They continued an amicable relationship until her death. His second wife was Jane Harman (born 1945), a former Democratic member of Congress from California who represented California's 36th congressional district, which included the Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach areas of southern California.

Sidney Harman (August 4, 1918 – April 12, 2011) was a Canadian-born American engineer and businessman active in education, government, industry, and publishing. He was the Chairman Emeritus of Harman International Industries, Inc. A co-founder of Harman Kardon, he also served as the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce in 1977 and 1978. Late in his life, Harman was also the publisher of Newsweek, having purchased the magazine for one dollar in 2010.