Dr. Harold Guetzkow, professor emeritus of political science, psychology, and sociology at Northwestern University, passed away on Novermber 11, 2008, in San Jose, California, at age 93. His wife, Lauris, whom he had married in 1944, preceded him in death. He is survived by sons James (Charolette) and Daniel (Diana) Guetzkow, and his daughter Gay (Howard) Ben Tré. In his seven decades of active scholarship, he distinguished himself as a vibrant and path-breaking scholar as well as an incredibly talented mentor.
Harold Guetzkow was born in 1915 in Milwaukee. At the age of 15, Harold accompanied his ailing father to Austria for diagnosis of what turned out to be amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). During this visit the family traveled throughout Europe, documenting some of his visits with 16mm film he took on a black and white movie camera. One such visit was to the battlefields and graveyards that scarred the fields of Verdun, France. This experience led him to be opposed to killing men who might be like himself but fighting for another nationality, and he became interested in the decisions that stood behind war. He sold the family construction business in Milwaukee, and headed to college.
On his way to freshman orientation at the University of Chicago via the Interurban Electric North Shore Line he met another UC freshman who was to be an important colleague throughout most of his career, Herbert Simon. Harold taught high school biology for several years in Milwaukee after his graduation.
During the Second World War, Harold applied for and received status as a conscientious objector. This was based on a deep conviction of the necessity to evaluate all sides of any serious debate, only making a decision when it was absolutely and abundantly clear which decision was correct. Part of his alternative service duty as a CO was working in the Civilian Conservation Corps in northern Michigan, near Traverse Bay, Michigan. In the camps as well as public venues along with other COs, he debated the moral, ethical, and religious pros and cons of going to war. In 1943 he began a new set of CO duties, as resident psychologist at the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene in the Medical School at the University of Minnesota, where he worked for Josef Brozek and Ancel Keys. In anticipation of the end of the war, and the need to return starving civilians to health in Europe and elsewhere, the laboratory used 36 conscientious objectors to conduct the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. This lead to the important work by Keys et alia, The Biology of Human Starvation (1950), as well as Harold's first book, written with P. H. Bowman, Men and Hunger: A Psychological Manual for Relief Workers (1946, Brethren Publishing House, Elgin, Illinois). The Minnesota experiments are widely credited with discrediting the idea that bed rest is a helpful recovery strategy as well as the benefits of high-quality protein versus carbohydrates in recovery diets.
Harold Guetzkow began graduate school in psychology at the University of Michigan after the war, graduating in 1948. His doctoral thesis established the idea of changing context (known as “set”) in problem-solving behavior via a series of experiments. After completing his Ph.D., Harold stayed at the University of Michigan as an assistant professor, guiding the Conference Research Project, where he focused on group decision making and information networks in task-oriented committees and groups. During this period, he wrote the classic article “Long Range Research in International Relations,” which proposed the linking of divergent “islands of theory,” and led to his interest in using simulation as a method of integration as well as experimentation. He said he conceived of the idea of using the simulation for political science while discussing budgetary constraints with physicists over lunch.
At Herb Simon's invitation, in 1950 he joined the faculty at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, directing the Social Science Laboratory and collaborating with Simon, Richard Cyert, and James March on creating the field that came to be known as “organizational theory.” Simon would later dedicate his classic book, Models of Man, to Harold. During the early 1950s, summers were spent at the Center for Research on World Political Institutions at Princeton; during this time he wrote his prescient, landmark study, “Multiple Loyalties.”
In 1956–1957 a sabbatical at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto led to his development of the InterNation Simulation, which became a widespread vehicle for pedagogy and research in world politics, focusing on simulated decision making in a hypothetical world. In 1957 he returned to the shores of Lake Michigan, where he took up joint appointments in political science, psychology, and sociology at Northwestern University, co-directing the International Relations Program with Richard Snyder. This period was very productive for Harold, yielding landmark books in organizational theory, social psychology, and simulation sciences. From 1958–1962 he spent one day a week at the University of Chicago directing a program on executive judgment in the business school. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s he developed and supported the transition to all computer simulations, based on his early work with the InterNation Simulation and funded in part by his Gordon Scott Fulcher Chair of Decision-Making. These efforts, known as the Simulated International Processes project, were widely influential in international relations, and led to the volume Simulated International Processes: Theories and Research in Global Modeling (1981). During his final years at Northwestern, Harold began to visit scholars in other continents to spread the idea of collaborative computer simulations for international relations scholarship, a project he termed Five-Continents project.
After an active and influential career, Harold retired from Northwestern University in 1985, having been feted at the 1985 International Political Science Association meetings with the presentation of a Festschrift, Theories, Models, and Simulations in International Relations: Essays in Honor of Harold Guetzkow (Westview Press, 1985). During 1987–1988 Harold was elected president of the International Studies Association. After this graduation from Northwestern University (as he put it), he and Lauris moved to Sunnyvale, California, and he took up a project focused on the study of values as they affect decision making in the international arena. He began a study of cultural values in decision making with scholars at the Pacific School of Divinity and also began a productive relationship with Kent Kille of Wooster College who brought the project to culmination in 2007 with the publication of The UN Secretary-General and Moral Authority: Ethics and Religion in International Leadership (Georgetown Press, 2007). Throughout his career, Harold worked to support the efforts of other scholars interested in decision making and international politics. An incomplete list includes: Stuart A. Bremer, Richard Brody, Richard Chadwick, Barry Collins, W. Ladd Hollist, Kent Kille, Rudolph J. Rummel, Hiroharu Seki, Paul Smoker, Warren Silver, Raymond Tanter, Gary J. Tygesson, Joseph J. Valadez, Michael D. Ward, and many others around the world.
A memorial academic symposium is being planned for the latter part of 2009 at Northwestern University. Donations may be made to Northwestern University, for the purposes of the Harold Guetzkow Prize Fund, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, International Studies Program, 897 Sheridan Road, University Hall, Room 20, Evanston, IL, 60201.
A memorial Web site is planned at http://www.haroldguetzkow.info, which will contain information about the upcoming symposium.
