George H. Gadbois, Jr.
George H. Gadbois, Jr., a political scientist at the University of Kentucky, died of throat cancer in Woodford County, Kentucky, on February 16, 2017. He was born March 14, 1936, in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up there. He was the son of George and Helen Wiksten Gadbois. He joined the Army after high school, serving much of his enlistment in Taiwan. He then did his undergraduate work at Marietta College in Ohio, graduating cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1959, where he was on the golf team (losing every match in his senior year). He next did graduate work in political science at Duke University, receiving his PhD in 1965. He was an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii from 1963 to 1966 and also associate director at its East-West Center. George came to the University of Kentucky political science department in 1966 and served as director of the Peace Corps Training Center there for two years. He obtained tenure in 1970 and retired in 1991 because of health problems.
George’s research centered on South Asia, particularly India. He was America’s premier scholar about the Supreme Court of India, writing numerous articles in both American and Indian journals as well as in edited volumes often focusing on the selection of judges, division of votes and opinions, and the court’s decisions. Some of them used Glendon Schubert’s analytical approach. In better health 20 years after retirement, he wrote Judges of the Indian Supreme Court, 1950–1989 (Oxford University Press, 2011). George often presented papers at American political science and Association for Asian Studies meetings and some conferences here and abroad. He spent much time in India and developed a special affection for India and the Indian people. He had a rapport with Indian social scientists, and his house in Kentucky was a frequent stopping point for them and for Indian jurists—even long after retiring.
At Kentucky, George taught the basic comparative government course and politics in developing countries classes, along with upper division courses elections and political change in developing countries, politics and culture of South Asia and politics and culture of Southeast Asia as well as graduate courses in the comparative government area. When necessity required it, he once or twice took on American constitutional law.
He won numerous awards. Among them were three Senior Research Fellowships (spent in India) from the American Institute for Indian Studies. He also had a Fulbright Scholarship at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1974–1975.
George was an avid golfer with three holes-in-one to his record. He also loved gardening, so summer and fall bag lunches in the department were often graced with his fresh tomatoes, squash, zucchini, and other vegetables. He was a “big brother” to a couple of adolescents in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program.
George is survived by his wife Judith (Judy) Ann Papania Gadbois and five children: Joyce Gifford (McEwan, Tennessee), Audrey Smith (Newnan, Georgia), Tracy Riva (Middleville, Mississippi), Brian Whittaker (Kailua, Hawaii), and Teresa Whittaker (Richmond, Kentucky). He was preceded in death by a son, Keith Gadbois.
—Bradley C. Canon, University of Kentucky.
William Russell Hardin
William Russell Hardin, prolific scholar, admired teacher, beloved husband and father, died peacefully in hospice at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City, February 24, 2017. Hardin was well-known for his path-breaking work in political science, moral and social theory, and public policy, as he fluidly integrated insights from diverse fields to shed light on the limitations of morality, politics, and knowledge in order to more powerfully make use of their potential without illusions.
In May 2016, Hardin had retired from his position as professor of politics and Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences at New York University (NYU). His two decades at NYU, where he came in 1993 to rebuild the department of politics, followed a nearly 15-year career at the University of Chicago, where he played the key role in establishing and heading the School of Public Policy. At Chicago, he also served as editor of Ethics, guiding the journal with a passionate commitment to rigorous interdisciplinary work and his cultivation of free debate among diverse views. In addition to institutional achievements at the University of Chicago and NYU, he spent time at Stanford University, University of Virginia School of Law, Northwestern University School of Law, University of Maryland, and University of Pennsylvania, nurturing students in every location through his intellectual challenge, joy of learning and teaching, and openness. As one of his former students has remarked, “He was immensely generous in his support and encouragement of his students. He was devoted to their development even when they differed from him.” Another noted, “He had that calm way about him that made you feel valuable.”
Russell Hardin was born December 11, 1940, in Bristol, Tennessee, one of six children. He attended the University of Texas, where he studied mathematics and physics. In 1964, he traveled to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, where he continued to pursue mathematics, and in 1971 received his PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Asked in an interview how he moved from science to politics, he explained, “The thing that was really important at that time was the Vietnam War … and I thought I was doing the wrong thing, studying math and physics. … I shifted into political science. And at first I thought that there would be no use for all that background. … But in fact, immediately I was in a course that did game theory, and game theory could be conceived as a kind of minor topological set theory.”
Hardin was the author of more than 15 books, including Collective Action (1982), Morality Within the Limits of Reason (1988), and One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (1995) as well as hundreds of articles on topics including nuclear deterrence, constitutionalism, moral reasoning, trust, and “street-level epistemology”—the everyday knowledge humans construct and rely upon to make sense of political, social, and cultural worlds. He repeatedly returned to a set of questions concerning social order: the relationship between self-interest and group identification, the nature of strategic action, the dynamics of conflict and coordination. His academic work provided an entrée to real-world engagement: He was Coordinator for Soviet-American exchange on ethics and the nuclear confrontation, sponsored by the USSR Academy of Science and the American Philosophical Association from 1988 to 1990, and a member and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists from 1984 to 1993. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and a Guggenheim Fellow in the mid-nineties, among numerous other honors and awards. His fascination with the study of psychology and the complexity of human relationships extended itself to fiction: He also published three works, What We Go By, Perhaps It Was Never the Same, and Dmitri Esterhaats, all with Wings Press.
In 2004, Hardin was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, which impaired his ability to read, speak, and walk and caused enormous pain and debilitating side-effects. His indomitable spirit overcame these hurdles, and he continued to engage in scholarly life, teaching and traveling to conferences and making light of his brutal impediments. He brought to bear a capacious interest in the world and bracing demotion of illusions, and throughout retained his passion for classical beauty in opera and art. His brilliant mind, unmitigated humor, and warm heart in the face of difficulty at the end cap off a life supremely well lived.
He is survived by his wife, Andrea Belag; his son from a prior marriage, Joshua R. Hardin; sisters Linda Langston, Pat Sporn, and Joni Hardin-Teague; brothers Ronald Hardin and Stephen Hardin; nieces Angela Weddle and Jalynn Moody; nephew Trevor McClain; many other nieces and nephews; and one great-niece.
Contributions can be made to the American Civil Liberties Union. A memorial was held in the spring.
— Melissa Schwartzberg, New York University
— Diana Barnes, New York University
Dustin Howes
Our friend and colleague Dustin Howes, holder of the David J. Kriskovich Distinguished Professorship at Louisiana State University (LSU), succumbed to the ravages of ALS on Saturday evening, January 21, 2017, in Boston, Massachusetts. Dustin had been struggling valiantly with this brutal disease for some time. That struggle, however, had not altered his indomitable spirit or his passion for that which most inspired his scholarship—the politics of nonviolence. Indeed, in one short decade Dustin had amassed a considerable record of masterful writing and scholarship.
He received his doctorate from the University of North Carolina in 2005, after having earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago respectively. He taught at the State University of New York at Oswego and St. Mary’s College of Maryland before joining the LSU faculty in 2008. His area of expertise was political theory with a specialization in philosophies of pacifism and nonviolence. He taught undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of political thought, introduction to political thought, democratic theory, theories of freedom, and nonviolence in theory and practice, as well as a course in the Honors College on political humor. Dustin was an active member of the Association for Political Theory as well as an occasional contributor to the website “Waging Nonviolence.”
Dustin’s first book, Toward a Credible Pacifism: Violence and the Possibilities of Politics, with SUNY Press, was hailed as a landmark study of the relationship between politics and violence. The reviewer for the Journal of Religion, Conflict, and Peace wrote, “Against all expectations, [Dr. Howes] has clarified the relationship between human ‘violence and the possibilities of politics’ by clarifying the relationship between human violence and sociopolitical power. It is a stunning achievement.” Indeed, that achievement was the subject of a Roundtable Discussion at the 2009 meeting of the Peace and Justice Studies Association and, because of it, Dustin was invited to be the plenary speaker for an international symposium on The Politics and Aesthetics of Nonviolence at the University of Verona in Italy, sponsored by the Finnish Centre for Conceptual Thought and Political Change. That book was accompanied by a remarkable array of journal articles in such prestigious publications as Political Research Quarterly, the European Journal of Political Theory, International Studies Quarterly, symplokē, and Perspectives on Politics. Dustin’s final book, Freedom without Violence: Resisting the Western Political Tradition, was completed while he was in the advanced stages of ALS and published last year (2016) by Oxford University Press. One reviewer says of it, “A sober analysis of the entire Western political tradition has led Howes to the conclusion that the yearning for nonviolent ways of maintaining freedom is steadily getting stronger. This is a book for our troubled times. Academics, journalists, and policy makers will find its vision appealing and realistic.”
University professors are contributors to and participants in the life of the mind. Ideas are paramount to our research and our teaching. At times, our overly abstract considerations have little immediacy for the everyday lives of human beings; at other times they have the potential for changing the world. Howes’ contributions to the discourse on politics and nonviolent change have that potential, both for the rule of law and human rights in developing democracies, as well as in advanced industrial nations. Dustin loved that life of the mind, passionately so. In the latter days of his illness, speaking only with the aid of his eyes and a recording/typing device, he participated in numerous graduate examinations long distance through video/audio connections. His questions were always the most challenging and his demeanor always the most gentle. Faculty and students alike will miss his delightful thoughtfulness, his engaging smile and good humor, and his challenge to our conventional ways of thinking about politics. Born in Detroit, Michigan, on October 17, 1973, Dustin is survived by his mother, Janet, brother, Brandon, former wife, Rachel, and six-year-old twins, Henry and Madeline. Those who wish to contribute to his memory have been asked by Dustin’s family to consider the ALS Foundation.
— Cecil L. Eubanks, Louisiana State University
Janice C. May
Janice C. May, for decades the foremost expert on the Texas Constitution, passed away on July 10, 2016, at the age of 93. Scholars and public officials alike sought her authoritative interpretations of the 93,000-word Texas Constitution and its hundreds of constitutional amendments and the many relevant court decisions. It is no exaggeration to state that Janice (pronounced “Jah-neese”) stood out among her contemporaries in her dedication to and mastery of the details of what is a notoriously vague, often ambiguous, and sometimes contradictory document. For decades, legislators, lobbyists, and other scholars of Texas politics went to May for explanations of how the jurisprudence of particular passages in the Texas Constitution had developed over time.
Janice Evelyn Christiansen May was born on May 29, 1923, in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Her parents, Arnold Christensen and Bernice Schauer Christensen, instilled in her a love of music, education, and scholarship. Janice majored in music at the University of Minnesota, graduating summa cum laude in 1944 and was inducted to Phi Beta Kappa. She subsequently earned an MA and a PhD (1952) in political science, both also from the University of Minnesota. May joined The University of Texas faculty in 1965 as an instructor, after previously serving as an instructor at the University of Minnesota, University of Texas at Austin (1948–1953), and University of Oklahoma.
May became an assistant professor in the government department in 1972. She was promoted to associate professor in 1974, and became full professor in 1997. Janice was the government department’s pre-law student advisor, a charter member of the Southwest Association of Pre-Law Advisors, and the department’s internship coordinator. It was in her roles as the internship coordinator and the teacher of simulation classes on the Texas Legislature and a Texas constitutional convention that she was best known and beloved by hundreds of University of Texas undergraduates. She located internships in which to place her students; she repeatedly called the agencies or organizations during the semester to get progress reports on their University of Texas interns; she met frequently with the student-interns; and she read and graded their three assigned papers.
May continues to be warmly remembered by a generation of professionals still working in and around the Texas Capitol. Legislators, lobbyists, and others recall her simulation classes and the internship program as their high points as government majors. Many of her former students report that it was as a result of taking these classes that they were inspired to work in Texas state politics.
She also taught a graduate class “State Constitutionalism,” and she supervised nine PhD dissertations and dozens of Honors and MA theses. In 1983, her classroom performance was recognized with the President’s Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching.
May was trained in an era when political science consisted of research that was highly factual and descriptive in nature, consistent with the discipline’s origins as an offshoot of history and its purpose, rooted in the Progressive Era, to better educate voters and public officials so as to improve the United States as a self-governing society. She was the author of the 512-page The Texas State Constitution: A Reference Guide (1996), the coauthor of two editions of a Texas Government textbook, the author or coauthor of five other books, and author or coauthor of 50 journal articles, book chapters, and reference articles on Texas state politics, state constitutions, and related topics. She also spoke frequently at events and conferences in Austin, around Texas, and in other states, and she was often called in to speak as an outside expert for advising state legislatures in the process of amending their constitutions.
May’s scholarship addressed the full range of Texas’ political institutions and those of the other American states: their legislatures, judiciaries, systems of voter representation, constitutional initiatives, civil rights practices, redistricting efforts, tax systems, and other topics. In particular, Janice played a vital role in the Commission of the early 1970s appointed to propose revisions to the Texas Constitution. Although the attempt to revise the state constitution failed amid the turbulent legislative politics of the period, she was a central and active member of the commission and she wrote extensively about it afterwards.
May was active with the League of Women Voters. She served as president and board member of the local chapter and was on the board of the national organization. She was a registered lobbyist to Texas officials explaining League-supported agenda items. She was also a lifelong active member of the American Association of University Women, for which she served as the University of Texas’s representative. And she was an election observer for ABC News.
Janice married Francis Barnes May, a professor of statistics at the University of Texas, in 1956, and they were married 50 years. The two of them loved classical music and the opera, traveled together to France, the Soviet Union, and China, and spent holidays in their cabin in the northern Arizona woods. They also enjoyed hosting potluck dinners for friends and colleagues. They provided a loving home to one dog and a succession of cats. They had no children; she had three nephews and one niece. Upon her retirement from the University in June 2002 as professor emeritus, Janice took on the fulltime task of caring for her ailing husband. Following his death on January 12, 2007, she moved to Arizona to care for her elderly mother.
Janice May was a true pioneer. For a woman to receive a PhD in political science was a rare accomplishment in 1952. As an expert in Texas politics and state politics, particularly state constitutions, Janice worked in areas not considered to be cutting-edge fields, and non-theoretical scholarship did not receive much recognition in the discipline. But her research was of some importance in the mid-late 20th century. In particular, Janice worked in areas that members of the Texas state legislature considered useful and appropriate for the state’s flagship institution to be studying. The promotion letters written by scholars of state politics on behalf of Janice revealed just how much they relied upon and respected her painstaking research and scholarly expertise; she made their work and that of many others possible.
Only belatedly and because of outside pressure from the university and federal government did the department of government appoint her as an assistant professor and then grant her tenure. It was only with Janice’s long-overdue promotion to full professor, under the leadership of the then-chair James Fishkin, that the department made a concerted effort to advance her to the rank she certainly merited.
May, like many other pioneers, paid a price for being first. Throughout, however, she displayed a remarkable graciousness and was never heard to complain.
Many of us in the department of government share the fondest memories of her.
—Bartholomew H. Sparrow, The University of Texas at Austin
—Gary P. Freeman, The University of Texas at Austin
—James Henson, The University of Texas at Austin
Otis Stephens, Jr.
At a time when the world needs more people like him, we lost a valiant and gentle soul in Otis Stephens, a truly remarkable scholar, teacher, mentor, and person. His obituary provides the outline of a life well lived. Otis Stephens, Jr., was born in East Point, Georgia, on September 20, 1936 to Otis and Margaret Stephens. He departed this life on December 2, 2016 in Statesboro, Georgia. Blind from birth due to the genetic disorder retinitis pigmentosa, his parents created an environment for success, curiosity, and intellectual rigor that characterized his life.
Otis attended public schools before transferring to the Georgia Academy for the Blind in Macon where he graduated valedictorian of his class at the age of 16. A gifted pianist, he enrolled at the University of Georgia and paid his way through college by tuning pianos and playing in the dance band. He received a BA in political science in 1957 and a MA in political science a year later. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1963 and a JD from the University of Tennessee in 1983. In 1975–1976 he was awarded the Russell Sage Residency in Law and Social Science at Harvard Law School as a post-doctoral scholar.
In 1962 he embarked on an academic career as a constitutional law scholar by accepting an academic appointment at Georgia Southern College (GSC), now University, and immediately became one of the most popular professors on campus. Indeed, the 1966 yearbook at GSC was dedicated to him by the senior class. In 1967 he accepted an appointment at the University of Tennessee in the department of political science and dedicated the next 45 years to his students, profession, and community, retiring in 2012. His popularity followed him to Knoxville. Over the years, in addition to his stellar work in the classroom, he served in a number of administrative positions in the university. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, he authored, coauthored, or edited six books in his field, most significantly American Constitutional Law now in its 6th edition. He ultimately had a joint appointment in the University of Tennessee School of Law.
Otis Stephens made the national news for being blind and shooting a hole-in-one at the golf course. It’s a great story, but nothing compared with the man himself and the rest of his life. The Supreme Court cited his scholarship. He was admitted to the Supreme Court Bar as well. He was president of the American Council of the Blind. He fought tirelessly for equal rights for all people. He had a fierce commitment to social justice, which was always present just beneath the mild, slightly formal southern manner that was his style. He was full of love, and he mentored with his heart as much as his wisdom. Otis had a tremendous sense of humor and also a bit of a mischievous streak. He enjoyed playing practical jokes on people. For example, when traveling with a sighted companion, Otis would approach the car rental counter alone to inquire about his car. He loved recounting the reaction of the flustered rental agent who thought that a blind person might be attempting to drive. In fact, on at least one occasion, Otis did drive on a country road with his passenger providing verbal corrections. Otis never let his blindness prevent him from doing anything he wanted to do.
Otis’ extensive public service included work with the UT Law Clinic and numerous organizations in service of citizens with disabilities. Notably he served as president of the American Council of the Blind from 1987 to 1989, president of the National Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped (NAC) from 1979 to 1983, and was a trustee of the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) from 1987 to 1999. In 1981 he was appointed to the Governor’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and served a five-year term. He was the recipient of the 2001 Migel Medal awarded by the AFB, the highest honor in the blindness field, for his work significantly improving the lives of people with vision loss. He was a tireless advocate for ultimate passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.
Otis Stephens would hate to be put on a pedestal. He saw that kind of thing as a close cousin of being pitied, and recoiled from that as an affront to recognizing people’s true humanity and equality. He was beloved by many, and with good reason. He fought for a better world. He loved the people around him. He taught generations of students that law and justice are not at all the same, but we shouldn’t let that stop us from using law to demand and secure a more just society.
He was preceded in death by his first wife Linda Duren Stephens, mother of his daughters, whom he married in 1960 and his second wife Mary Torpey Stephens. He is survived by his daughters Ann Stephens (Allen) Henderson of Statesboro, Georgia, and Carol Stephens (Kevin) Frazier of Knoxville, Tennessee, and seven remarkable grandchildren: Caroline Greer Henderson, Katherine Lee Henderson, Grace Elizabeth Frazier, Elizabeth Stephens Henderson, Annie Laura Frazier, Charli Monroe Frazier, and William Clark Henderson, Statesboro, Georgia. In addition, he leaves behind countless students whose lives he enriched and broad panoply of people from all walks of life who never met him nor know his name, but whose lives were improved by his activism.
This tribute to Otis borrowed from his obituary and was composed by his long-time colleague at UT and good friend, John Scheb, his aide-to-camp for many years before he embarked on an academic career of his own (at Otis’ suggestion), Joe Soss of the University of Minnesota, and by Richard Pacelle, who seemed to follow Otis’ footsteps from Georgia Southern to the University of Tennessee. In both places, he taught the same classes and did some of the same work, but he never could replace Otis or fill his shoes.
—John Scheb, University of Tennessee
—Joe Soss, University of Minnesota
—Richard Pacelle, University of Tennessee
