Joel D. Barkan
Joel D. Barkan, professor emeritus of political science at The University of Iowa, died suddenly on January 10, 2014, of a pulmonary embolism while on vacation in Mexico with his wife, son, and daughter-in-law. He had been at work on a comparative study of 17 sub-Saharan African Legislatures with Robert Mattes of the University of Cape Town and Shaheen Mozaffar of Bridgewater State University, the crowning achievement of his life-long study of the role of legislatures on that continent.
Professor Barkan was born in Toledo Ohio, on April 28, 1941. His interest in Africa originated while he was still in high school. He visited Kenya for the first time before his senior year in college as a participant in Crossroads Africa, a volunteer program that was one of the forerunners of the Peace Corps. Influenced by that experience he wrote a series of op-ed pieces on Kenya and Uganda for the Columbus Citizen Journal. In his freshman year at Cornell University he met his wife, Sandra, in an American government discussion section. Passionate concern for political issues formed one of the many close bonds between them. In more than half a century of their travels together in Africa, their complementary interests in that part of the world blossomed and reinforced each other.
For graduate work, Barkan chose University of California, Los Angeles, one of the two most distinguished African studies programs in the United States at that time. He spent a year at Makerere University College in Uganda doing field work for his doctoral dissertation on universities and development policy in Tanzania, Uganda, and Ghana. It was the second of what were to become his repeated trips to Africa, which eventually gave him first-hand acquaintance with 10 countries on that continent. His frequent, extended stays in Kenya made him one of the United States’ leading experts on that country and an influential policy adviser in Washington.
Two years out of graduate school, Barkan was already recognized as one of the outstanding specialists on African political institutions in his age cohort. That reputation led the department of political science at Iowa to recruit him to fill a faculty position on the role of legislatures in developing countries, initially funded by the US Agency for International Development. He immediately participated in the design of a major cross-national research project, using survey research methods to study legislative behavior in three less-developed countries. The methodology had been pioneered by John C. Wahlke (who had recently been department chair at Iowa), and Heinz Eulau, William Buchanan, and Le Roy C. Ferguson. They had used it to explore legislative behavior in four US state legislatures (The Legislative System, New York: John Wiley, 1962). Employing that approach cross-nationally was a prodigious undertaking, involving interviews with constituents, local elites, and legislators in Kenya, Korea, and Turkey. The result was The Legislative Connection, written with Chong Lim Kim, Ilter Turan, and Malcolm E. Jewell (Durham, University of North Carolina Press, 1984). The project established Barkan’s commitment to comparative research on African legislatures, the subject on which his knowledge was eventually unmatched in the profession. In his career Barkan published five books on democratization in Africa, more than 50 articles in scholarly journals, and countless shorter articles in newspapers, periodicals, and reviews.
At the University of Iowa, Professor Barkan was a leading figure in the establishment of the Center for International and Comparative Studies and its first director. The Center facilitated research and curriculum development, promoting interdisciplinary teaching and study. It was one of many examples of his enterprise in raising research funds and designing large scale projects. Barkan was chair of the Iowa department of political science from 1985 to 1987 and twice chaired the University’s African Studies Program, which frequently brought distinguished African scholars to the Iowa campus. An enthusiast, Barkan could be impatient with undergraduates who did not share his enthusiasm for the subject of the courses he taught. He strongly supported his graduate students and went out of his way to be helpful to the students of his colleagues. With Professor Gerard Rushton, a leader in the development of geographic information systems at Iowa and Paul Densham of University College, London, he created a website for “Designing Better Electoral Systems for Emerging Democracies,” applying a spatial decision support system with illustrations from Kenya and South Africa, an impressive example of his collaboration across disciplines.
Barkan was devoted to international studies, despairing often of the America-centeredness of political science in this country. Although he focused his research on problems of democratization in Africa, he was also interested in democratization in Asia and Latin America. He had an abiding interest in the relationship between institutions of government and rural development, and particularly in the prerequisites of democratization in rural societies. During his career he established collegial relationships with scholars at many prominent universities throughout the world, including the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, the Institute of Development Studies in Nairobi, the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris, the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, and the Centre for Social Science Research at the University of Cape Town. In this country, he had close connections with students and faculty at Cornell University, the Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, and of course with his colleagues and friends throughout the University of Iowa. He was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the US Institute of Peace.
Increasingly Barkan was sought as a consultant by government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, which found him willing and indeed eager to apply his knowledge to policy problems. From his earliest interest in Africa, he was concerned both with policy problems and with academic research questions arising in political development on that continent. More than many scholars he was anxious to relate academia to the policy establishment. Throughout his career he had devoted some time to advisory functions, and in 2005 he decided to retire from teaching at the University of Iowa and to move to Washington, DC where, with undiminished energy, he spent full time in consulting and continuing research. He held a series of advisory appointments at the World Bank, the National Democratic Institute, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. At the time of his death he was senior associate at that Center.
In contrast to the solitary scholar, Barkan was the prototypical collaborator in group enterprises, which often resulted from his own initiatives. He appreciated the value of collaboration, was generous in giving help to others, and, in turn, was always open to advice on his own research. He and his wife were endlessly hospitable, so that the Barkan home was often the site of a continuation of classes, seminars, or consultations, and home to visitors from other countries. Those who knew him will forever miss the sparkle with which he approached everyone around him, sometimes appearing mischievous, always earnestly engaged.
Joel Barkan is survived by his wife, Sandra, his children, Bronwyn and Joshua, his grandchildren, Arlo and Gabriel, and his mother, Theresa. Memorial contributions in his name may be made to the Joel D. and Sandra Barkan Scholarship for Study Abroad at the University of Iowa Foundation, or to the Crossroad Springs Institute School and AIDS Orphan Care Center in Hamisi, Kenya (P.O. Box 242, East Aurora, NY 14052). There will be a memorial service in Washington, DC, on May 18, 2014.
—Gerhard Loewenberg, Professor Emeritus of Political Science,The University of Iowa
Craig Leonard Brians
We’re all researchers!’” proclaims the website for the eighth edition of Empirical Political Analysis (Brians et al., 2011). In so many ways this captures Craig Brians’s excitement about political science research as well as his passion and commitment as a teacher and scholar.
Those of us who knew Craig as colleague, professor, and friend take comfort and counsel from such memories. Dr. Craig Leonard Brians, associate professor of political science at Virginia Tech, passed away unexpectedly on Sunday, November 10, 2013.
For someone who lived far too short a time (he was 51), Craig had mult-faceted talents, and his accomplishments were wide-ranging and impressive. Born in Hollywood, California, and raised in Hollister, he worked from 1981 through 1985 in radio broadcasting. He graduated in 1988 from Fresno State University with majors in criminology and journalism. Starting in 1987, Craig served as a police officer in Fresno. Years later, his former colleagues there warmly recall his honor, generosity, and compassion; a peer from the police academy remembered his affectionate nickname, “‘scantron’ because he was the smartest cadet in the class.” Craig broke his back and badly injured his spine while on duty and ultimately, with great sadness, had to accept disability retirement. His injuries left him to endure unrelenting pain throughout the rest of his life.
Yet Craig was resilient and resolved not to let this misfortune define him. He went on to receive a master’s degree in social sciences and a PhD in political science from the University of California at Irvine (UCI). There, he worked as an instructor and teaching assistant, developing his considerable talent at teaching research methods to sometimes reluctant or resistant undergraduates. Also at UCI, Craig probed his fascination with the interplay between electoral institutions and political participation, learning from mentors like Bernard Grofman, Marty Wattenberg, Carole Uhlaner, and others.
We were fortunate to have Craig join us at Virginia Tech in 1998, where he was tenured and promoted in 2005. He taught undergraduate and graduate courses in politics, research methods, political communication, and public opinion. From the outset, Craig earned accolades from students, who praised his intellectual stimulation, his energy, and his patience. As time went on, he also helped design and assisted with an innovative First-Year Experience undergraduate research course in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. Throughout, Craig worked closely on their research with undergraduate honors students and with on-campus and on-line masters’ students, many of whom pursued PhDs in political science as a result of his mentoring and inspiration. Meanwhile, his department colleagues benefited from Craig’s assistance with statistical and computer software and hardware problems, his sage questions and observations, and his intellectual and personal generosity. Craig served as associate department chair for several years, as associate program director in the University Honors program, and on several college and university committees. He received several teaching awards, including the 2011–12 College award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research Mentoring. Craig was a quiet but persistent advocate for awareness of and responses to disabilities. He also devoted time to service on committees addressing concerns about race and ethnicity, receiving the 2013 Diversity Award from the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.
Craig’s passion extended to political science scholarship. His work on electoral institutions and participation and on how people acquire, retain, and utilize information from diverse sources has appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, American Politics Research, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Public Choice, Political Research Quarterly, and other journals. He also devoted considerable attention to the prominent research methods text, Empirical Political Analysis, where he joined the coauthors in 2006 and became the principal author thereafter; Craig also authored the related lab manuals.
Like all of us, Craig was deeply affected by the horrors that took place at Virginia Tech in April 2007. He told many of us that the events bolstered his resolve to redouble his commitment to students. Among the fruits of that emphasis was a scholarly shift to research on pedagogy, while still highlighting information acquisition and sense-making. Craig (frequently with colleagues Bruce Pencek and Scott Nelson) authored numerous papers on how students process and interpret information, in settings ranging from introductory classes through research methods and political theory courses to graduate seminars. He was an avid proponent of student research and worked with many undergraduates and graduate students on research projects. Craig also was a regular participant in APSA’s annual Teaching and Learning Conference. Renee Van Vechten of the political science education section added that “he was an active builder of [the] section, and his expertise and intellectual interests were impressively wide-ranging. Many of us who knew him marveled at his level of activity, both in volume and quality, and will vouch for his warm and energetic spirit, caring habits, impeccable honesty, intellectual wealth, and gentle but transformative ways.”
Similar energy characterized other aspects of Craig’s professional and personal life. For example, his comments appeared in publications such as the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe and on national and local radio and television. For many years, Craig was a live election-night commentator on Virginia NPR affiliate, WVTF-FM. Moreover, a colleague adds that he was a Cub Scout pack leader, as well as a lover of country music, technology, radio broadcasting, and astoundingly terrible jokes.
Many of us have been inspired by Craig Brians —remembering his intellectual curiosity, his passion, his energy, and his caring. Perhaps colleague and friend Geoff Layman expressed it simply and best: Craig was a “very, very nice guy.” He was deeply committed to his students and “a valued and beloved member of our profession.”
Craig is survived by his wife, Jessica A. Folkart (associate professor of foreign languages and literatures at Virginia Tech); his children, Ruth Ondelacy (and son-in law Patrick); Martha, Nicholas, and Lucas Brians; his parents, Robert and Janet Leonard Brians; his brother and sister-in-law, Grant and Juliette Brians, and his former brother- and sister-in-law, Dan and Elizabeth Lathrop.
—Karen M. Hult, Virginia Tech
Eugene Eidenberg (1939–2013)
It was with great sorrow that APSA learned the news that Eugene Eidenberg had passed away on December 3, 2013, at his home in Santa Monica, California. Wire service reports noted that he was “a Silicon Valley executive who was a top adviser to President Jimmy Carter and director of the Democratic National Committee, and who had important roles in the U.S. telecommunications industry.” While all true, the description fails to get to the heart of Gene Eidenberg’s profound importance to the APSA. Gene was a great political scientist, great APSA Congressional Fellow (1964–65), and great benefactor of the fellowship whose legacy will live on.
Born in New York City, he grew up in Mamaroneck, New York, where he was a high school All-American swimmer. Gene earned his BA at the University of Wisconsin where former APSA president Chuck Jones who, in his first American government course taught as a graduate student instructor, remembers having Gene as a student. Gene went on to earn his MA and PhD in political science from Northwestern University and was an APSA Congressional Fellow in the class of 1964–65. He went on to teach political science at the University of Minnesota and was then appointed vice president of administration for the University of Minnesota system. During this period he joined another 1964–65 Congressional Fellow, Roy Morey, in coauthoring An Act of Congress: The Legislative Process and the Making of Education Policy in 1969.
Gene left his academic career in 1977 to join President Jimmy Carter’s administration, first as Deputy Under Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, then on the White House staff as Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet and Deputy Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs. On learning of Gene’s death, former President Carter stated that “Gene was a delightful and cherished friend and a superbly competent and dedicated public servant. Rosalynn and I will be…comforted by memories of the times we spent with Gene.” Following his service with the Carter administration, Gene went on to spend two years as executive director of the Democratic National Committee. This was a particularly challenging position in the wake of the Democrats’ loss of the presidency in 1980.
In 1982, William G. McGowan, founder and chairman of MCI Communications, convinced Gene to join MCI as Senior Vice President at MCI for Regulatory and Public Policy. His MCI tenure also included serving as Senior Vice President for Strategic Planning and Corporate Development, President of MCI’s Pacific Division in San Francisco, and Executive Vice President and Group Executive for MCI’s International Business Operations.
In the history of the APSA Congressional Fellowship Program, few events could rival the announcement in the September 1991 issue of PS: Political Science & Politics that the MCI Communications Corporation had endowed the APSA Congressional Fellowship Program in the amount of $5 million. Under the terms of the grant agreements, the endowment could annually fund as many as eight political scientist and journalist Fellows. It was one more instance of a former Congressional Fellow coming to the program’s support decades after completing the fellowship. The careful collaboration of Gene Eidenberg and APSA Executive Director Cathy Rudder, a former Congressional Fellow (1974–75) and director of the program, put the fellowship on an unprecedented sound financial footing into the decades that followed. Gene became a longtime member of the fellowship’s advisory board and was recognized for his sustained contributions to APSA with the prestigious Frank J. Goodnow Award in 1997. The Goodnow Award, named after APSA’s first president and “an exemplar of the public service and volunteerism that the award represents,” was created in 1996 “to honor service to the community of teachers, researchers, and public servants who work in the many fields of politics
As noted in the San Jose Mercury News/San Mateo County Times on December 24, 2013, after MCI, Gene pursued a highly successful career in the worlds of high tech business and venture capital investment. He served as president and CEO of Macrovision Corp., was a principal in the San Francisco-based venture capital firm of Hambrecht & Quist, and joined Granite Venture Associates LLC. He also served on the board and as chairman of Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDQ; INAP).
For some, public service is in the blood. Such was the case with Gene Eidenberg. For more than 20 years Gene served on the board and as treasurer of the nonprofit, nonpartisan, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) working to support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide. Through his work with the NDI, Gene personally supported and participated in the election observations and civil rights and democracy education programs in Asia, the Caribbean, South America, and the Middle East. Madeline Albright, former Secretary of State and current chair of NDI, observed that “Gene loved politics. He did not disparage the practice of politics; rather, he embraced political action as an avenue to represent the views of ordinary citizens and respond to their concerns, hopes and aspirations with tangible results.”
The San Jose Mercury News noted that when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008 Gene and his wife Anna moved to southern New Mexico to register voters and work on the campaign. Gene helped to recruit, organize, and train volunteer attorneys from across the country to staff the Democratic Party’s Voter Protection Project “which reduced incidents of voting rights violations in areas historically known for voter harassment.” Even in his recent “retirement” years, Gene helped to support and inspire a group on the Hawaiian island of Kauai who were creating Kauai’s first renewable energy company.
Drawing again from the San Jose Mercury News, Gene’s first marriage to Susan Zox produced two daughters, Danielle and Elizabeth. Later he would marry Angenette Martin, who specialized in grassroots organizing and consulting for political campaigns and other social causes. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, Gene took leave from work to be with her as she fought the disease that eventually took her life. In 1999, Gene married former San Francisco news anchor and broadcast journalist Anna Chavez. Along with Gene who did so much for the Congressional Fellowship Program, Anna provided pro bono advice to the program’s public engagement activities. Gene is survived by his wife Anna; his sister, Dorothea Ellern; his brother, David Eidenberg; his daughter Danielle Eidenberg-Noppe and her husband Phil Eidenberg-Noppe and their children Esther and Naomi, and his daughter Elizabeth Cazenave and her husband Eric Cazenave and their children Nora and Owen.
Gene Eidenberg’s legacy will be remembered by the association in years to come and most especially by generations of APSA Congressional Fellows who will benefit from their distinguished benefactor who did honor to the discipline of political science, the public service, and the applied world of politics.
—Jeff Biggs, Director, APSA Congressional Fellowship Program
Walter F. Murphy
In March of 2013 Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio became Pope Francis I. But he is actually Francis II. Declan Walsh, a Trappist monk, was the first pontiff to take the name of the most beloved of saints. When elevated to the papacy in 1978, he chose to be called Papa Francesco, Italian for Francis. Except for their very different paths to the Chair of Peter, Francis II—Jorge Borgoglio—bears an uncanny resemblance to Francis I. The former is like the latter in his disdain for pomposity and the trappings of office. Francis II has also modeled himself on the earlier Francis by his love of the poor, his pledge to reform the Roman Curia, and his determination to change the mood of the church on several of its teachings. As this sequence of aspirations suggests, serving the poor ranks first on the agenda of Francis II. Like his predecessor, the present Francis has spent time in the slums of Latin America’s congested cities and enjoined the world’s leaders to assist the poor rather than the rich.
Papa Francesco is the tragic hero in Walter F. Murphy’s best-selling novel, The Vicar of Christ. Praised by Van Wyck Brooks—at the time, America’s foremost literary critic—for combining “breadth, depth, and elevation,” Vicar was a major publishing event of 1979. It tells the fascinating story of an American Catholic layman who, after an unbelievable combination of circumstances, emerges as the Bishop of Rome. Declan Walsh was the brilliant and polished son of the hard-drinking American ambassador to Italy. Educated in Rome, fluent in Italian, academically accomplished, and son of a noted diplomat, he was clearly a young man on the move. He would soon count himself among students admitted to University of Chicago law school. World War II, however, interrupted his legal studies when he reported for duty as a commissioned officer in the Marine Corps.
Wounded in combat, he returned to Chicago to finish his law degree, along the way earning a PhD in political science at Princeton University. Sometime later, he received an appointment as associate professor of law at the University of Chicago. His star was on the rise. It shot up even more when he married Kathryn, one of his brightest students and the daughter of a prominent Minnesota political family. Her mind was as sharp as her tongue, her beauty as stunning as her social skills, all attributes she skillfully deployed to advance her husband’s ambitions. Murphy describes Kathryn as Walsh’s “voluptuously sculptured wife” whose intelligence and cunning would help nudge him to the top of whatever political or legal field he would choose to enter. By the end of 1949 the world was at Declan Walsh’s feet.
Suddenly, in 1950, the Korean War broke out. Now a captain in the Marine Corps Reserve, Walsh was recalled to active duty with the embattled First Marine Regiment. Over several days he engaged in fierce combat, repeatedly exposing himself to hostile fire while taking a strategic hill infested with enemy machine gun nests and 60 millimeter mortar stations. His bravery and the astounding number of kills he inflicted on the enemy, while losing half of his own company, earned him no less than the Congressional Medal of Honor and a Purple Heart. Upon returning to the United States in early 1952, and widely celebrated for his heroism, he landed a position in the White House as President Truman’s special military aide. Now a lieutenant colonel, he met and socialized with senior White House officials, US senators, and members of the diplomatic corps.
In late 1952 President Truman, convinced of the papacy’s value as one of the world’s top listening posts, decided to send an envoy to the Vatican. Walsh, a Catholic fluent in Italian and familiar with Roman ways, was the perfect choice to represent the president. The decision to appoint Walsh raised hackles among Protestants and other Americans united for the separation of church and state, but the president, a faithful Baptist, had little fear that anyone would “attack the red-blooded Americanism of a marine with a Congressional Medal of Honor and a chest full of Purple Hearts from two wars.” Having served with distinction in Rome, Walsh was reappointed to the same position by President Eisenhower. He resigned as the president’s envoy in late 1953. During his two years in Rome, Walsh won the respect and gratitude of several cardinals in the Curia; he was also a close friend of Herman Pritchett, the influential Cardinal Archbishop of Detroit.
Returning to the United States, Walsh took a position as professor of law at the University of Michigan. Having established himself by the mid-1960s as one of the country’s most distinguished constitutional scholars, he was named dean of the Michigan Law School and also served for a time as a member of the US Commission on Civil Rights. A little later, with the untimely death of the Chief Justice of the United States, Walsh—lawyer, scholar, soldier, diplomat, and by now a prize-winning author to boot—emerged as a leading candidate to head the Court. In appointing Walsh, the president had resisted pressures to nominate instead a distinguished member of the US Senate. After weeks of controversy, the Senate’s Judiciary Committee endorsed Walsh’s nomination by the less than impressive margin of 9-5. The Senate confirmed by a vote of 53-27.
The new Chief Justice settled into the center chair with ease and determination. He was not known for his judicial modesty. He seized the reins of leadership quickly, whenever possible unhesitatingly importing his liberal views into the meaning of the Constitution. He was particularly adamant in defending racial minorities in affirmative action cases and in condemning capital punishment for its denial of human dignity. In one famous opinion, he wrote: “The poor, the sick, and the downtrodden are entitled to rights under the Constitution no less than are the healthy and the wealthy.” For the new Chief, a fellow justice complained, the Court “was a pulpit [from which] to preach what he considered to be social justice, natural rights, and limitations on governmental control over the individual.” Even Walsh’s friends conceded that his view of the Court’s function “was overly grandiose” and that “his opinion of his own intellect exceeded arrogance.” What Walsh never said openly, however, is that his intellect was informed by the social teachings of his church.
Walsh’s Catholicism was most evident in his lengthy and moving dissent in the Supreme Court’s famous abortion decision holding that a woman had a fundamental constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy. The decision flung the justices into the vortex of a political tornado. Murphy’s narrative records that Walsh himself “initially emerged unbruised from the controversy” since the abortionists needed his “liberal” vote in other cases, publicly admitting that “they understood how his Catholicism had ‘forced’ him to vote and speak as he had.” The Catholic bishops of America were elated with his dissent and the passion with which it was crafted. Soon thereafter, with the help of Cardinal Pritchett of Detroit and the Apostolic Delegate to the United States, Pope Paul VI personally bestowed on him the Order of Saint Gregory the Great. The ceremony in Rome, televised around the world, caused an uproar in Washington, with several US senators imploring Walsh to repudiate the honor. Nonreligious Americans could not stomach the image of the Chief Justice of the United States publicly accepting a papal knighthood. In time, the storm receded as the Chief devoted full attention to his role as head of the federal judiciary—developing a “fetish,” according to Murphy, “for neat administration”—while simultaneously softening his rhetoric in hot-button constitutional cases. Meanwhile, his addiction to work was beginning to crack his marriage.
Then came the shocking news. After a night of heavy socializing, Kathryn Walsh was killed in an early morning one-car automobile accident. The Chief Justice blamed himself for her death, a tragedy that tested his faith, leading to his ferocious argument with God. As Murphy reports, he could not believe “in a god who wants people to crawl on their bellies to him like beaten dogs.” The funeral High Mass was lavish. Con-celebrated by three cardinals—Detroit’s Pritchett, the apostolic delegate to the United States, and the archbishop of the District of Columbia—it was attended by the “who’s who” of Washington’s legal establishment and high society. Several days later, Walsh himself shocked the nation with this one-sentence letter to the president: “I herewith resign my commission as Chief Justice of the United States.” The former Chief Justice retired to a Trappist monastery in South Carolina to lead a life of silence as a monk. The once Marine killer resolved to spend his remaining years in contemplation, spiritual reading, and manual labor.
Brother Walsh’s first years in the monastery provided him with time to reflect on the state of the church. He was particularly unhappy with its governance. Like the dealings of the Vatican Bank, the decision-making procedures of the Curia were cloaked in secrecy. In addition, the Vatican’s slapdown of priests and nuns who strayed from papal teaching on faith and morals—even from non-ex cathedra declarations—lacked all semblance of due process of law. Walsh had long felt that the church could do with a good dose of American constitutionalism. But more than this, he faulted the church for its neglect of the poor and, closer to home, for closing its ears to the pain of divorced Catholics barred from communion. Particularly disheartening in his view, and no less than a tragic error, was Humana Vitae, Paul VI’s encyclical reaffirming the church’s uncompromising position on birth control. Not only did the encyclical unleash a massive breakaway among Catholics from traditional church teaching on sexuality; it ignored the problem of world overpopulation. Brother Walsh could only hope and pray that the Holy Spirit would somehow intervene to set the church on the path both to reform and repentance.
One never knows when or whether the Holy Spirit intervenes in human affairs. We may, however, be forgiven to think that the intervention came with the sudden death of Pope Paul VI in an airplane collision over Switzerland. (Paul was scheduled to attend a special session of the World Council of Churches in Geneva.) As the news flashed around the world, Vatican officials wasted no time in preparing the Sistine Chapel for the election of a new Pontiff. But after three weeks of deliberation and multiple rounds of votes, the 82-member conclave failed to elect Paul’s successor; deep divisions erupted among the conclave’s traditionalists, liberals, and moderates. The daily exchange of views began amiably enough but soon descended into bitter quarreling over the future of the church. Not one of the cardinal electors was strong enough to garner the necessary number of votes for releasing the puff of white smoke signifying the election of a new Pope.
Desperate to break the deadlock, the conclave came up with a desperate proposal: to choose a Pontiff from outside the College of Cardinals, one who could heal or bridge the divisions among the tired and demoralized princes of the church. After further discussion within and outside the conclave, some cardinal archbishops, Detroit’s Pritchett in particular, entertained the unheard of thought that a Trappist monk—not a priest—might be chosen to occupy the papacy. This possibility would not be a first in church history. Murphy recalls that in choosing Gregory VII—among the greatest of popes—on 30 June 1073, “the Holy Spirit [had] passed over eminent cardinals and bishops to choose a monk to guide the church out of a crisis.” (Gregory became Pope less than a month after his priestly ordination.)
A critical mass of cardinals in the conclave felt the need for a Pontiff who could lift the church out of its crisis of legitimacy, invigorate its government, and above all liberate it from the rule of a clerical hierarchy. As Murphy writes, he would have to be “a man who is ready to take on the mantle of John as well as the burdens of Peter,” just as he would need the “qualities of a statesman as well as those of a saint.” Decorated soldier, eminent legal scholar, and personal envoy to the Vatican under two presidents, Declan Walsh appeared to be the man of the hour. His bravery on the field of battle, his administrative experience as head of the US judicial system, his ready ability to make hard decisions, his fluency in Italian, his fidelity to the social magisterium, and his current life of prayer as a Trappist monk—bolstered by his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience—commended him to many in the College of Cardinals.
A three-person delegation—Cardinal Pritchett among them—was dispatched to the South Carolina monastery to solicit Walsh’s consent to be included among the Papabilia. Walsh reacted in “stunned silence,” accusing his visitors of “joking badly.” But then, convinced of their sincerity, he remarked that “I am not worthy.” He also confessed that since his wife’s death his life “had become a living nightmare.” He allowed that “there are sins in my life that you know nothing about. Kate’s death was the result of several of them.” But at length he consented and the delegation returned to Rome, setting off additional rounds of discussion—much of it focusing on whether an American with Walsh’s background could fill Peter’s shoes and lead the church into a new century. Then came the announcement from St. Peter’s Basilica: “We have elected a new Pontiff. The conclave has chosen Declan Walsh as Bishop of Rome.” He chose the name of Francesco and was forthwith ordained as a bishop of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
Francis I was the surprise of the Catholic world and the source of alarm within the Vatican bureaucracy. First, he cut back on formal ceremonies within the Vatican and adopted a simple lifestyle, wearing a plain white cassock and an unjeweled bishop’s miter. Second, he seized the reins of papal power with the same resolve that marked his leadership on the Supreme Court. One of his first acts as Pope was to sell off the Vatican’s art treasures, worth millions, with the proceeds going to the poor. In the first years of his papacy, and to the consternation of traditionalists within the church’s episcopal ranks, he restaffed the Curia, changed the way seminaries operated, formed a commission to examine the spiritual renewal of the church, and initiated a massive campaign for social justice throughout the entire world.
In the ensuing months and years, Francesco shocked the Catholic world with a series of pronouncements and draft encyclicals that some church officials regarded as bordering on heresy. Francesco saw himself, like Francis of Assisi, called by Christ “to go forth and rebuild my church, for as you can see it is falling down.” New shepherds were needed to do the rebuilding. Francis envisioned himself as the new shepherd. He would relax old rules and update the church but would need the help of “The Shepherd’s Dog”—the title Murphy gave to his chapters in Vicar on Francis’ papacy—to keep his flock together. The following checklist includes Francesco’s actions and utterances that galvanized opposition to him within and outside the Vatican:
1. Early on in his papacy, Francesco drafted an encyclical letter which, among many other socioeconomic exhortations, condemned the concentration of wealth in various countries. The draft made clear that he wanted the church, as he put it, “to be a living embodiment of social justice.” The encyclical recalled several of his social justice pronouncements on the Supreme Court. Much later, in an impassioned speech before a large audience at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, he urged Catholics “to avoid material values [and]to reverse the unjust consumption of the earth’s riches.”
2. In several pastoral letters, he called for a reexamination of the volatile issue of clerical celibacy and of the ban on the ordination of women to the priesthood. He also solicited comments on a rule change that would permit divorced Catholics to return to the sacraments.
3. Upon reflection, he added these statements to the draft of his social justice encyclical: “While we unreservedly condemn compulsory sterilization and abortion as an immoral means to the control of the growth of population, it remains an important duty of all persons to exercise prudence in the number of children that they conceive.”
4. In a related declaration he faulted Humanae Vitae “for its false view of the nature and functions of sex. One of its objectives is procreation, but that is not its sole objective [for] sex can be a sublime expression of love.” He continued: “Never to want children is wrong under most, although not necessarily all, circumstances. We can no more ignore the procreative purpose of sex than we can its other functions. But whether a married couple should have one or two or three or four or no children depends on a host of psychological, economic, and ecological factors.”
5. On yet another occasion, without mentioning birth control, he once again unreservedly condemned sterilization and abortion but went on to say, in the interest of controlling population growth, that “we remind the people of God that they have an obligation not to conceive children for whom they cannot provide the necessities basic to physical and, more importantly, spiritual life.” Later in his pontificate, he made it known that he was planning an encyclical that would put an end to celibacy within the priesthood and, finally, to admit women to holy orders.
6. In the last phase of his papacy, described by a biographer as “apocalyptic,” Francesco turned to issues of war and peace, remarking on one occasion that “the only way not to have a war is not to have armed forces.” He declared further: “We must not only condemn war but categorically forbid all Catholics—yes, all humans—to participate.” Pacifism, in Francesco’s view, was a moral imperative.
This turned out to be too much for the Pope’s closest associates in the Vatican; they feared that the withdrawal of all Christians from the field of battle might turn the world over to atheists. Francesco’s simple answer: “That is not the important thing. The inner life of faith and morality can remain, while the outer political order changes. What matters is that we love one another and practice that love.” He was at the time working on yet another encyclical called Monstrum Bellum (“The Horror Called War”).
In a major appearance in St. Peter’s Square before 150,000 people, he lashed out against Italians and Romans in a “blistering attack on pornography,” mincing no words in defending the dignity of women against the peddlers of indecency. The fiery speech led to violence against the peddlers in the streets of Rome and other Italian cities. Some thought that Francis was encouraging the kind of violence he deplored in other contexts.
Several cardinals publicly differed from Francesco’s views on how to battle social injustice and the moral failings of the wider society, whereupon he forthwith asked for their resignations from all ecclesiastical offices, returning them to the ordinary priesthood.
Many princes of the church, along with millions of Catholics committed to the church’s traditional teachings on social morality, celibacy, sexual ethics, and just war theory were profoundly disturbed by Francesco’s edicts and pronouncements. They were equally unnerved by his disciplinary measures against members of the hierarchy who would question his teachings. Papal punishment ordinarily reserved for dissident nuns and priests were now being imposed on bishops, archbishops, and cardinals. For some observers, as Murphy reports, the Pontiff sometimes combined the personalities of John the Baptist, St. John of the Book of Revelation, and Savonarola. Murphy writes that “he was no longer the shrewd but moral manipulator using a charismatic personality to move people. Rather his was the strident voice of repentance as well as the soft call for love and social justice,” urging Catholics, among other warnings, “to avoid material values [and] to reverse the unjust consumption of the earth’s riches.” Among the poor of the world, Francesco came to be seen as God’s savior on earth, drawing adoring crowds in the millions—including the sick and the maimed looking for cures—on all his travels.
Traditional Catholics accused Francesco of being a “Fabian socialist.” Others thought that on moral issues he had gone off the rails. For many patriotic Catholics, his condemnation of all military adventures and advocacy of pacifism was beyond the pale. His questioning of life after death, however, was the last straw. “Every intelligent human being,” he said, “has some doubts about an afterlife. We may believe. We may hope. And we surely may pray. But we cannot be absolutely certain that there is anything beyond the grave but cold blackness. If Christ knew himself to be God He ran no risk whatever that there was nothing after death.” One can imagine how disturbing such remarks must have been to millions of believing Catholics. As a consequence, several cardinals, distinguishing sharply between the papacy and the Pontiff, entertained the thought of bringing a heresy trial against Francesco.
A trial would not be necessary however. A man wearing a cassock over a business suit made his way into St. Peter’s Square where Francesco was about to grant an audience to 20,000 people. As the figure in white was being carried into the Square, the “cassocked” stranger fired two shots from a 38-silencer pistol as the crowd screamed “il Papa! il Papa! The bullets were on target; Francesco slumped over. As the sainted Pope lay dying, there rushed into his mind the gunfire and killings he had experienced when back in 1951 he had been ordered to take a godforsaken hill in Korea. It became clear to investigators that the assassination was the result of detailed planning and carried out by an experienced “hit-man.” But who was behind the killing? Some observers speculated that it could have been the CIA, Soviet KGB, British M16, PLO, or even the IRA. Murphy does not say so but another possibility is that the order to “execute” Francesco may have originated within the Vatican bureaucracy.
Postscript
In the ten years it took to write The Vicar of Christ, Walter Murphy was recalling much of his own life. The autobiographical dimension of the novel is clear to those of us who knew him. First, Walsh’s military exploits were based on Murphy’s own experience as a combat officer in the Korean War. Second, as the holder of the McCormick Chair of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, Murphy had established himself as one of this country’s most accomplished Supreme Court scholars. Finally, later in his academic career, and along with his regular work in constitutional studies, he spent time in Rome observing Vatican politics in action. An honors graduate of the University of Notre Dame, he had developed a strong avocational interest in Catholicism and the papacy. He knew his church history; he was familiar with the social encyclicals; he had read the reports and declarations of Vatican II. Catholic to the bone, he nevertheless authored occasional essays questioning papal views on birth control and the ordination of women.
The background to Murphy’s trilogy—with its separate parts on Korea, the Supreme Court, and the Vatican—deserves further mention. After graduating from Notre Dame in 1949, Murphy served in Korea as a junior officer in the United States Marine Corps, winning several decorations for his leadership in combat. In The Run-Up to the Punch Bowl,” John Nolan’s 2006 memoir of the Korean War in 1951, there is a chapter entitled “Walter Murphy Moves Up Hill 676.” The hill was doubtless the same one that the young Captain Walsh was ordered to seize. As Murphy moved up 676 with his platoon, the battle scenes were brutal. In one of them, for which he received the Distinguished Service Cross, he was almost left for dead by his troops. Murphy’s injuries, like those of Declan Walsh, were sufficient to end his military service in Korea. Back in the states, and like Walsh, he embarked on graduate studies at the University of Chicago. Instead of law, however, Murphy entered Chicago’s graduate program in political science; specializing in public law, he wrote his PhD dissertation under the direction of Herman Pritchett, one of the country’s leading constitutional scholars upon whom in Vicar Murphy conferred the Red Hat.
One of Pritchett’s brightest students, Murphy went on to join the faculty of Princeton’s department of politics where, after years of writing on the Supreme Court and the American judicial process, much of it seminal, he was installed in the University’s McCormick Chair of Jurisprudence, the distinguished seat originally occupied by Woodrow Wilson. Murphy continued to produce an imposing body of constitutional scholarship which, toward the end of his life, was capped by his celebrated tome, Constitutional Democracy: Creating and Maintaining a Just Political Order— magnum opus on constitution-making and constitutional change several years in the making. Justice William Brennan was a frequent participant in the author’s famous Princeton seminar on the Supreme Court, and Murphy would live to witness the appointment of one of his own students, Samuel Alito, to the nation’s highest tribunal. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Declan Walsh would bring an air of verisimilitude to his role as Chief Justice of the United States. In this phase of the trilogy, incidentally, readers learn all they would wish to know about the Supreme Court, its internal decision-making procedures, and the nature of constitutional interpretation.
Francesco’s pontificate takes up 391 of Vicar’s 632 pages. In the late 1960s, Murphy started work on a book he planned to write on Vatican politics. In the course of his work, he interviewed dozens of high church officials in and out of the Curia. (One may assume that as a loyal son of his alma mater, Murphy’s access to these officials was made easier.) His research covered the mission and decision-making procedures of the Secretariat of State—Vatican City’s highest diplomatic post—and the various congregations, tribunals, and pontifical councils governed by the Bishop of Rome. High on the list of Vatican bureaucracies Murphy would investigate were the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, and Congregation for Catholic Education, along with the Pontifical Councils for the Laity, Family, Culture, and Justice and Peace. In midstream, however, instead of producing an academic study, and worried about revealing confidential sources of information, Murphy decided to turn the project into a gripping work of fiction. The budding novelist within him, dormant up to now, appeared finally to emerge in the life and times of Declan Walsh. Once again, as with his tenure as Chief Justice, Walsh became remarkably believable as Pope Francesco.
Vicar was published prior to the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II. The novel appeared in 1979; John Paul was shot on 11 May 1981. The striking coincidence between the attempted assassination of John Paul and the murder of Francesco in St. Peter’s Square captured the attention of readers and reporters who had read the novel. Were the two events a mere coincidence? Or was there something more to it? Some may have wondered what Murphy knew that they did not. Shortly after the John Paul shooting, Murphy was interviewed on Italian television about the incident. A comparison between the two shootings was doubtless discussed. Murphy was probably asked to reflect on the back stories of the two incidents and on whether the forces behind John Paul’s attempted assassination were similar to or different from the decision to murder Francesco.
Vicar motivated Murphy to embark on yet another major creative writing project, even as he continued to publish scholarly articles in law reviews and political science journals. Murphy was always a pleasure to read; he wrote with clarity and grace and punctuated his work with wonderfully insightful allusions to classical and biblical texts. In the years after Vicar’s publication, Murphy sought to deepen his knowledge of biblical history. With the help of James T. Burtchaell, CSC, a prominent theologian and former Notre Dame provost, Murphy buried himself in New Testament readings, heavily concentrating on the life and experiences of Simon Peter. Burtchaell and Murphy often met in Princeton University’s Jacques Maritain House—named after the twentieth century’s most famous Catholic philosopher— to continue their conversations and hold minor seminars with other biblical scholars. With this background, Murphy went on to publish his well-known fictional biography of St. Peter, fittingly titled Upon This Rock. Meanwhile, Murphy would write two other less-successful novels, both spy stories with Catholic personalities and themes in the background.
Returning to the two popes, a final question remains: Will Francis II follow in the footsteps of Francis I?
—Donald P. Kommers, University of Notre Dame
Robert H. Simmons
Robert H. Simmons, emeritus professor of political science at California State University, Los Angeles, died in Los Osos, California, on December 9, 2013 from complications of a rare autoimmune disorder. He taught at Cal State Los Angeles from 1962 until 1985, when he retired, and he returned for two years during winter quarter on the faculty early retirement program. He was 87 at the time of his death. He was one of the driving forces in administering the department’s public administration program and helped it gain accreditation from the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration in the 1970s and 1980s. One of his publications was among the 10 most cited books in public administration in the 1980s.
Robert spent his youth in Chicago and served in the US Navy during World War II. He attended the University of Dubuque, graduating in 1949 cum laude with a triple major in political science, psychology, and sociology. He received a master of arts degree from the University of New Mexico in 1951, specializing in political science and social work. From 1950 to 1954 he worked for the Sandia Corporation in Albuquerque as the supervisor of the technical report writing section. He then taught high school social science and history for four years in Albuquerque. He received his PhD from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1962, specializing in political science, public administration, and organizational behavior. His dissertation was titled “The Washington Plural Executive: An Experiment in Interaction Analysis.”
He taught all of the standard courses in the public administration program, but his specialty was the courses in organization behavior that resembled psychological therapy in an organization context. He specialized in organizational analysis and behavior, organizational development, group theory and behavior, the executive process, and state and provincial government. He wrote five books, beginning with a general American government text he wrote with Ake Sandler. His collaborator for two additional books was Eugene P. Dvorin, who told me once that they wrote together—literally—with Simmons sitting at the typewriter and Dvorin pacing the room, with Simmons writing and weaving together Dvorin’s sentences, adding and subtracting to make a coherent text. One of those books was a mainstay of many a public administration curriculum in the 1970s, Public Administration: Values, Policy, and Change (1972); the other, From Amoral to Humane Bureaucracy (Canfield Press, 1972), was considered far ahead of its time and some 15 years after its publication in 1972, was still one of the 10 most cited books in public administration. He wrote another book on the same theme in 1981, Achieving Humane Organization (Daniel Spencer Press). In addition to the books, he published some 11 articles about public administration, including one on the political context of student protests in the 1960s.
While on campus he served on many department and university committees and was the chair of the Academic Senate in 1969–70. He was director and faculty advisor for the on-campus master of science in public administration for many years and was active in the off-campus (but administered on campus) external master of public administration program as well, serving as its director in 1981–82 and teaching many courses in that program. He engaged in considerable external consulting, including sitting on oral interview promotion boards over a 20-plus year period for the Los Angeles County Board of Education, doing workshops on organization development matters in many Los Angeles basin cities, helping to establish the Wellness Resource Center in San Luis Obispo and serving on its board from 1979 to 1982, and consulting with many public and private agencies, both in Los Angeles and in San Luis Obispo counties. He consulted with both Antioch College/West and University of California, Irvine on the establishment of new graduate programs. He was a senior Fulbright research professor at the department of political science of the University of Tasmania in Australia in 1971–72 and had two Danforth Foundation grants while on campus in the 1960s. He directed a Peace Corps cohort that trained at CSULA in 1964–65.
He had one of the most professionally active post-retirement careers of any faculty member I have heard of. He did more than 20 publications on aspects of organizational development for various workshops up and down the West Coast. He consulted for many nonprofit and public agencies in the San Luis Obispo area. He had an extensive organizational development consulting practice in San Luis Obispo for individuals and their spouses. He published one book in retirement, summarizing his thoughts about individual and organizational relationships gained from his years as an organizational development consultant, Making Love Last (New Horizon Press, 2005). At the time of his death, he was working on two manuscripts, “Managing the Organizational Unconscious: The Ultimate Management Challenge” and “The Unconscious in Politics: A Meeting of Aristotle and Wilfred Bion.”
In his biography written for the Cal State LA emeriti association’s faculty biography project, he told a story that moved him very much, the story of Momo. In his large lecture introduction to American politics course, taught to some 200 students in the largest lecture hall on campus, he lectured on the unfairness of the relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Toward the end of the lecture he shared a story that he had read to his own children titled “Momo’s Umbrella,” about a Japanese American girl who received an umbrella for Christmas and waited for the rain to come so that she could use it and her new rain boots. Momo and her family were in an internment camp in Washington State. After one class was over, a student came to the front, looked up at him, and said, “Dr. Simmons, I am Momo.” He took great pride with the end of the story: “and she became a student at California State University, Los Angeles.”
He leaves his wife Mia, four children (one of whom is a professor of Chinese studies and chair of the Asian language and cultures department at Rutgers University), a brother, seven grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
—J. Theodore Anagnoson, California State University, Los Angles
Robert H. Stern
Robert H. Stern, a founding member of the political science department at the University at Buffalo (UB), died from cancer in Amherst, New York, on June 26, 2012. He served UB as faculty member, department chair, and university ombudsman. He also became involved in numerous metropolitan initiatives and boards.
Professor Stern was born in Herkimer, New York in 1920, the son of a clothing store proprietor. After completing his BA at Syracuse University in 1941, he joined the government, serving in the Office for Emergency Management and the United States Navy, including postings at Pearl Harbor and Tokyo as a Japanese interpreter during World War II. Stern benefited from the GI Bill. He was accepted at Harvard Law School but decided to follow an academic track. He came to UB in 1950, after completing his MA, MPA, and PhD at Harvard. His doctoral dissertation dealt with the Federal Communications Commission’s regulation of television—a 1950 analysis (published in 1979) that remains in many respects the authoritative study of this period.
The University at Buffalo’s department of history and government at that time included between nine and ten faculty members, some of whom served concurrently as major administrators. Stern took responsibility for teaching introduction to American government, public administration, and constitutional law.
Professor Stern remained consistent throughout his long career in his interest and involvement in more effective governance. He consulted with a variety of state and local governmental bodies, such as the 1967 Legislative Committee on Constitutional Revision and Simplification, or the Niagara Frontier Port Authority, for which he coauthored a 1967 monograph. He served as president of the AAUP SUNY/Buffalo Chapter from 1974 to 1976. Stern regularly appeared on television in the 1950s and 1960s as a panelist and some-time moderator of the show, “University of Buffalo Roundtable.”
He also was selected as the one of the first ombudsmen at UB (1969–71), dealing with nearly 150 cases in a single year. In terms of community involvement, Stern’s commitment to the overall socioeconomic-political health of the Buffalo area was manifested in his service as a Trustee of the United Way and presidency of the Urban League from 1962 to 1963.
His mentorship to countless UB students through several decades was honored in 1986 with the establishment of the annual Robert H. Stern Prize for undergraduate excellence in political science. Traveling extensively abroad with his wife Madeleine well into his 80s, Bob conveyed an infectious curiosity for the world’s cultures and natural heritage. For many decades, Robert and Madeleine included annual visits to many area arts festivals in their avid outdoor pursuits.
Fellow UB constitutional law specialist Charles Lamb praised Stern as “a modest, quiet man, but one who frequently had a strong influence on students and faculty alike. When Bob spoke, others listened—and learned. His students will carry his lessons throughout their days; his colleagues will always remember him with respect and fondness.”
He married Madeleine Izsak in 1949. As a senior member of the UB libraries staff, she published several monographs on nineteenth-century American popular literature. (Mrs. Stern died in November 2013.) They are survived by three sons, two grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.
—Claude Welch, Professor of Political Science, Univeristy at Buffalo, SUNY
Randall Strahan
We mourn the loss and celebrate the life and contributions of our friend and colleague, Randall Strahan, an exemplary scholar and teacher, who died on January 16, 2014. Randy received an MA from University of Houston, where he formed a close relationship with his mentor and thesis advisor Ross Lence, and a PhD from the University of Virginia, where he developed his interest in American political institutions under the guidance especially of Martha Derthick, James Ceaser, and his dissertation advisor, Charles Jones. In 1985 Randy was appointed assistant professor at Emory University where he stayed for his entire career, rising to the rank of professor in 2008.
Randy’s scholarly record included numerous articles and contributions to edited volumes along with two major books: New Ways and Means, a study of the changing politics of the House Ways and Means Committee, and most recently, Leading Representatives, an examination of the role played by transformative House Speakers from Henry Clay to Newt Gingrich. Leading Representatives has been recognized as an important contribution to the literature on leadership in Congress. The book makes a strong argument for the impact of transformative Speakers on the House of Representatives at key moments in history. In his scholarship and in his own life, Randy demonstrated that leadership matters.
Rigorous qualitative methods, including a combination of archival research and elite interviews, together with a deep knowledge of American history and lucid writing, were the hallmarks of Randy Strahan’s scholarship. He had a rare ability to discover the essence of politics in the fine details of individual case studies of public policy and political leaders. The breadth of Randy’s interests was evident in his recent research on American political development and the political thought of Alexis de Tocqueville. Anyone who shared a seat on a conference panel with Randy will attest to his insightfulness, curiosity, and collegiality. He regularly took time to talk with and review the work of junior colleagues who sought his advice.
Emory students benefitted from Professor Strahan’s carefully crafted lectures, his ability to lead discussions, and his attention to the interests of individual students. Over his career, he served on numerous PhD committees and as dissertation advisor for eight students, all of whom went on to successful careers in academia. He was honored with both of Emory University’s highest awards for teaching, the Crystal Apple for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award. Randy also served in several key leadership positions at Emory including as a member of the Faculty Liaison Committee to the University Board of Trustees.
A memorial service attended by dozens of current and former colleagues and students was held on January 20, 2014, at The Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in Atlanta. The congregation remembered his rare gifts and dedication to Emory, his students, and especially to his wife Annie and two children, Andrea and Alex. An additional memorial service will be held at Emory University, Cannon Chapel, on April 10, at 4 pm. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to Emory College’s Voluntary Core Curriculum Program, which Randy co-founded with his colleague Harvey Klehr.
—Alan Abramowitz, Emory University —Daniel Palazzolo, University of Richmond
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