Lawrence Julius (“Larry”) Hanks, Sr.
Lawrence Julius (“Larry”) Hanks, Sr. (1954–2011), a tenured associate professor of Political Science at Indiana University, passed away at his Bloomington residence on Thursday, November 10, 2011 after a long and courageous battle against cancer. He was 57 years old. From 1993 to 1998, Dr. Hanks served as Dean for the Office of African American Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington. In this capacity he led efforts to improve recruitment and retention of black faculty and students. He also institutionalized a variety of programs, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration (with a well-received essay contest for graduate and undergraduate students of Indiana University), which continues to be a vital part of campus life. Upon leaving the deanship, Dr. Hanks focused on teaching and research in the department of political science, with adjunct status in the department of African American and African Diaspora studies. A 1976 magna cum laude graduate of Atlanta-based Morehouse College, Dr. Hanks entered Harvard University's department of government, where he earned his MA degree in 1978 and PhD in 1984. At Harvard, he specialized in African American Politics, Minority Politics, Political Philosophy and African American Political Thought. Dr. Hanks subsequently became chairman of the department of political science at the historic Tuskegee University in Alabama, currently headed by Dr. Gilbert L. Rochon. During his career, Dr. Hanks was invited by several academic institutions, including the University of Kentucky, to deliver keynote addresses and serve as a visiting professor. He was a nationally recognized scholar, dedicated teacher and powerful motivational speaker. His seminal work, Black Political Empowerment in Three Georgia Counties (University of Tennessee Press, 1987), is still used as a text on several university campuses. Dr. Hanks also co-edited Black and Multiracial Politics in America (NYU Press, 2000) and wrote several journal articles, book chapters and book reviews. He regularly contributed essays on race relations to local and regional newspapers. A believer in the power of positive thought and healthy living, Dr. Hanks was passionate about realizing our human potential. As a motivational speaker, he brought inspiration and clarity to his presentations. His published trade publications included 365 Days of Kwanzaa: A Daily Motivational Reader; Daily Fruit: 365 Days of Fruit of the Spirit; as well as Blessings and Bush Arbors. On the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Dr. Hanks mentored students and junior faculty members. He and his wife Diane, assistant principal of a local middle school, opened their home to residents and out-of-town visitors to the Bloomington and Indianapolis area, creating a strong sense of community in the process. Dr. Hanks was an active volunteer for varied causes. He served as a reviewer for and consultant to the National Endowment for Humanities, US Department of Justice, and several statewide organizations in his native Georgia and Alabama. In addition to extensive travels in the United States for research and lecturing, Dr. Hanks was a member of the “People to People” delegations from the United States to Russia, China, and Poland. Dr. Hanks was a devoted life member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., having been initiated into the Pi Chapter at Morehouse College on November 19, 1973. He was a member of several professional organizations, including the American Political Science Association, Southern Political Science Association, and the National Council of Black Political Scientists. All of his colleagues and friends will miss Larry's debating skills and his unswerving commitment to the improvement of race relations and the human condition. Dr. Hanks is survived by his wife, Diane, and four children: Shonda, Julius, Mahogany and Joy, all of Bloomington. Contributions in honor of Larry may be made to the Dr. Lawrence J. Hanks, Sr. Memorial Fund, Office of Institutional Advancement, Morehouse College, Gloster Hall, Room 305, 830 Westview Drive S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30314.
Russell L. Hanson, professor, Department of Political Science, Indiana University Bloomington
A. B. Assensoh, professor emeritus, department of African and African American Diaspora Studies, Indiana University Bloomington
Yvette Alex-Assensoh, professor, department of political science, and dean, Office of Women's Affairs, Indiana University Bloomington
Timothy A. Hodson
We lost a great friend and colleague, as well as a giant in the study of California politics, when Timothy A. Hodson passed away on October 25, 2011 after a long battle with brain cancer. Tim had been Executive Director of the Center for California Studies at California State University, Sacramento. He was also a professor in the departments of government and public policy and Administration.
Tim's background before coming to Sacramento State prepared him well for his responsibilities on our campus. A native of Orange County, he received his bachelor's degree from California State University, Fullerton and his PhD in political science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Prior to joining the faculty at Sacramento State he taught at what is now Claremont McKenna College. He also had a distinguished career as a state legislative staff member, serving as staff director for the State Senate Elections and Reapportionment Committee, where he was heavily involved in the state's decennial redistricting process. Additionally, he was the principal consultant in the Senate Office of Research, a consultant for the Senate Select Committee on Political Reform, and chief of staff for a member of the Senate. Among other accomplishments, Tim was mainly responsible for drafting what at the time was probably the toughest legislative ethics law in the nation.
At Sacramento State Tim particularly made his mark and left a legacy as Center for California Studies Director. Under his leadership this organization grew to be one of the most important entities for studying Golden State politics, policies, and culture, promoting civic engagement, and preparing people for careers in public service. At the heart of this work was Tim's administration of the four Capital Fellows Programs. These nationally recognized, highly competitive programs place exceptional college graduates in staff positions in the California State Assembly, State Senate, Executive Branch, and judicial administration. Fellows participate in a graduate level academic seminar along with their placements. Former Capital Fellows include members of Congress, state legislators, judges, and leaders in other walks of life. The programs are sufficiently well regarded that Vault Inc. recently named them as among the ten best internships in the entire country, alongside internships with such prominent organizations as Google and the Smithsonian Institute. The success of the graduate level Capital Fellows programs was complemented by establishment of the LegiSchool project under Tim's watch, which brings high school students together with each other and key officials such as legislators to better understand major public issues. The LegiSchool project earned the National Association of Secretary of State Medallion award from California Secretary of State Debra Bowen.
Prior to Tim joining the Center there was no fellowship program for the judicial branch and the existing programs were smaller. Tim had the vision to work with top court officials to establish the Judicial Administration Fellowship Program, which places Fellows in full-time positions in California trial and appellate courts throughout the state and the Administrative Office of the Courts. This program was so well regarded by the courts that key officials subsequently approached the Center about helping to establish a graduate level judicial administrative certificate program. This successful collaboration led to one of the only such programs in the entire country, and in a few short years graduates have obtained positions as chief county court administrators. Tim earned enormous respect from court officials for these efforts. This fact was underscored at a fall ceremony honoring Tim at which Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and other court leaders spoke in glowing terms of his legacy.
The judicial programs established under Tim's watch reinforce another aspect of his leadership: his skill at working with entities outside our university to establish programs that benefit the state. Many people “talk the talk” when it comes to collaboration; Tim “walked the walk.” For example, Tim worked with former University of Southern California Sacramento Center Director Rich Callahan to bring the National Conference of State Legislature's training program for legislative staff from throughout the nation to Sacramento. Additionally, Tim collaborated with the Sacramento Press Club to establish the annual Journalism Awards, recognizing top contributions in print, visual, and on-line formats. Tim also formed a partnership with the Center for Southern California Studies to strengthen the annual “Envisioning California” conference, which had previously been the responsibility of the Center for California Studies alone. This conference assembles Californians with particular insight into the bits and pieces of the state's diversity of histories, cultures and philosophies, and the consequences of the diversity.
Tim's effort in another area illustrates his strong commitment to academic values as well as his collaborative orientation. He worked with the office of California's Secretary of State and the Institute of Social Research at Sacramento State to establish the California Electronic Data Archives (CEDA), the first central repository of local election results in the Golden State. This has proved a boon to scholars, which is exactly what Tim hoped. Researchers have used CEDA to study such topics as the impact of election timing on turnout and policy choices, the effects of constituency size on incumbent safety, the impact of ballot order on electoral outcomes, the determinants of local ballot initiative results, and the impact of appointment versus election of local officials on fiscal choices.
Tim also strongly valued connecting academic research with policy makers who might use it. This led him to establish the Faculty Research Fellows program. Members of the Legislature and the Governor's office can submit research proposals to the Center which in turn forwards these to faculty and staff on all 23 California State University campuses. This program, funded by the state, has led to completion of reports in such areas as K–12 education, higher education, corrections, transportation, environmental policy, and redevelopment.
Tim's heavy administrative responsibilities, and his commitment to maintaining a role in the classroom (he taught a popular graduate seminar on legislative politics as well as undergraduate classes on American government), left him with relatively little time for scholarly pursuits. Nevertheless, he authored articles about legislatures, reapportionment, political transitions, California politics, and other topics that appeared in academic books and journals. He also frequently authored commentary that appeared in outlets such as the Los Angeles Times and San Jose Mercury News. Throughout his university career he served as a valued source of knowledge for policy makers and was appointed by then-Governor Schwarzenegger to the Fair Political Practices Commission, allowing him to continue shaping the ethics and campaign finance laws of the state.
Aside from his many career achievements, Tim had a well earned reputation for being a kind, thoughtful person—albeit one with a sometimes wicked sense of humor. He was known for informing staff members that they needed to put their families first, and staff reciprocated his support with hard work and loyalty. He was a great story teller, and those of us who joined him regularly for informal lunches probably all have several that could be recounted. He was no pushover, and could hold very firm and say “no” when he thought it necessary for some larger purpose. But he had what Ross Johnson, his former colleague on the state Fair Political Practices Commission, called that rare ability to disagree without being disagreeable. This praise was especially notable because it was offered by someone who had been a leader among Assembly Republicans, and was said about Tim, an avowed Democrat who had worked for top Democratic officials. Tim's ability to maintain respect and friendships amidst political struggle and disagreements set him apart, especially in this sharply polarized political era.
Finally, no discussion of Tim's legacy would be complete without mention of his own family. He was happily married to Ruth Holton-Hodson, who herself has a distinguished career in the nonprofit and public service world. He was very close with his son Matt and enormously proud of his new grandson Max. Matt Hodson gave a moving tribute at the memorial service for Tim, and his final remarks provide a fitting end: “I am blessed to be Tim Hodson's son. We are all lucky to honor his memory and celebrate a truly great life.”
Edward L. Lascher, Jr.
California State University, Sacramento
Dean R. Jaros
Dean R. Jaros, 73, professor of political science emeritus and retired Dean of the Graduate School at Colorado State University, died of a virulent form of lymphoma at his home in Winsdor, Colorado, on November 4, 2011. He had been ill for the previous year and underwent extensive treatments, including stem cell removal and restoration, at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, all to no avail.
Dean was born in Racine, Wisconsin, on August 23, 1938, and grew up on his parents' farm outside the town. Much of his elementary education was in a one-room schoolhouse. He graduated from Lawrence College in 1960 where one of his teachers was Bill Riker who encouraged him to go to graduate school. Dean obtained a PhD from Vanderbilt University in 1966. His first faculty position was at Wayne State University (1963–66).
He joined the political science department at the University of Kentucky in 1966 and stayed until 1980. S. Sidney Ulmer was the new chair with a mandate to build a competitive program. He doubled the size of the department by recruiting many young faculty, nine alone in 1966. The next dozen or so years were “salad days” for the department—the faculty and graduate students were generating innovative research ideas and frequently collaborating with one another. Dean was at the center of this excitement.
Initially Dean's primary research interest focused on political socialization—a hot field in the 1960s and early 1970s. Perhaps Dean's most important contribution here was his research reported in “The Malevolent Leader: Political Socialization in an American Subculture” APSR, June, 1968). Using responses from school children in Knox County, Kentucky, nestled in the Appalachian mountains, he showed that children in an isolated subculture viewed the president (and officeholders generally) much less positively than did suburban, middle-class children reported in research by Fred Greenstein and David Easton/Robert Hess. Later, Dean co-authored (with Lawrence Grant) a book synthesizing research in the field: Socialization to Politics (1973).
Political socialization's glamour faded by the mid-1970s and Dean branched out. He and I began collaborating on law and courts research. We published three articles investigating the structural causes of unanimity and dissent on state supreme courts. And when I talked with him about the research Larry Baum and I were conducting on the spread of tort law innovations across state high courts, Dean suggested that the demise of the charitable immunity doctrine in the 1940–1975 era should lead to higher hospital room rates in states as their high courts abandoned the doctrine. (The doctrine held charities such as nonprofit hospitals immune from legal liability for harmful accidents.) So we did the research and, sure enough, room rates did rise in states as they overturned the doctrine. (“The Impact of Changes in Judicial Doctrine: The Abrogation of Charitable Immunity,” Law & Society Rev. Summer, 1979).
Dean had a superb ability to theorize about the political consequences of situations or events (often nonpolitical ones) and the imagination to use good surrogate variables to test his expectations. This was illustrated by his groundbreaking research on the effects of drugs on attitudes toward political leaders (“Biochemical Desocialization: Depressants and Political Behavior,” Midwest J. of Pol. Sci., Feb., 1972). The experiment featured undergraduates answering a questionnaire about political attitudes, activity, knowledge, etc. They returned a week later and were divided into three random groups, one of which took 100 mg. of pentobarbital, another 60 mg., and the third group a placebo. After a wait, they were asked to vote for one of three candidates, a demagogic extremist, an ideological nondemagogue and a centrist. Those who had taken the 100 mg. were more likely to shift away from the center in casting their votes. Of course, Dean's findings were not startling. As an editorial in the Paducah (Ky.) Sun put it: this research confirms the long-held belief that bars and liquor stores should be closed on Election Day. (The experiment was conducted prior to the days of Human Subjects Committees, but Dean did consult a Medical Center physician throughout the experiment.)
In 1977, Dean became Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Kentucky. This marked a shift from Dean the researcher to Dean the administrator. In 1980 he became Dean of the Graduate School at Northern Illinois and in 1983 was named the Graduate School Dean at Colorado State University, a position he held until his 1999 retirement.
Dean had many interests beyond academia. He loved railroads and their history, perhaps stemming from his summer track maintenance jobs on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad during his undergraduate years. He visited railroad museums around the country, particularly in the West, and served as curator of Winsdor's local railroad museum for several years.
More than railroads, however, Dean loved flying. He built a fabric-covered two-seater experimental aircraft in Lexington over three years time in the mid-1970s and flew his braver colleagues over the Blue Grass countryside. The passenger sat in front of the pilot. The first time I flew with him, Dean admonished me to “duck down when we are landing so I can see the runway.” One day while flying alone, the seal on the gas tank came apart and gasoline rushed back covering Dean and the tank soon emptied. But he managed to land the plane undamaged on a fairway on a horse farm below.
Indeed, his happiest times in Colorado were flying his Mooney (store bought), often with his wife Jan McKenzie, also a pilot, around the Front Range and venturing all over the United States, up to Alaska and down to Mexico He was active in the Colorado Pilots Association and organized many of their “fly-ins” around the West and the Great Plains. His interest in aviation led him to publish a book, Heros without Legacy: A Tribute to Women in Aviation, in 1993. He loved to travel and flew commercially to see other continents. A visit to the Czech Republic in 2003 renewed interest in his forebears, and he met some not too distant cousins there. Or he would visit far away parts of the United States. He and I would develop “summer adventures” spending a week or so touristing around in places such as Boston, St. Louis, Santa Fe, Lake Tahoe, and Vancouver Island. Late in life Dean also developed an intense interest in Mayan culture and frequently visited the Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and Nicaragua, climbing pyramids and hiking through jungles to see millennium old ruins.
No portrait of Dean would be complete without noting his sense of humor. He was a devotee of puns, but otherwise his humor was wry and/or cynical, especially when it came to politicians and university administrators. Such humor spiked his classes. An undergraduate once told me that I was the second most cynical professor he had Naturally, I took the bait and asked who was Number One. “Oh, Dr. Jaros,” he replied. I'm sure I ran a distant second. Even scholarship could trigger his humor. For example, a reference to a scholar's work was not a citation. It was a “fame unit” and even negative ones counted.
Dean Jaros certainly brightened and enriched the lives of those who knew him. He leaves behind his wife Jan and two daughters, Cynthia Gwash of Prescott, Arizona, and Lisa Delaney of Jackson, Wyoming.
Bradley C. Canon, Professor Emeritus, University of Kentucky
Boyd R. Keenan
Boyd R. Keenan, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of Illinois, Chicago and the University of Illinois' Institute of Government and Public Affairs. Boyd died on Saturday, September 10, 2011, in Cary, North Carolina. He had lived for several years with Alzheimer's disease and made comfortable through the constant and loving care of his wife Donna and daughter Karen and her family. Born on June 29, 1928, he was 83 at the time of his death.
Boyd Keenan received his BA and MA degrees from the University of Kentucky in 1949 and 1957. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois in 1960. He came to UIC (then the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle) in 1967 after teaching at Marshall University in Huntington, WV and Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN where he was a full professor and department head from 1963 to 1967. He retired from teaching at UIC in 1993.
Keenan was interested in the politics of science, technology, and intergovernmental cooperation, both nationally and internationally. His University of Illinois dissertation was on “The Political Process in Public Higher Education with Special reference to Regional Programs.” Much of his research focused on cooperation among state governments and public universities in the Midwest.
Early in Keenan's career he published articles in the Public Administration Review. His first article in that journal was “The Midwest's CIC: Experiment in Regional Cooperation” (1963) which focused on the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a consortium of Midwestern Universities. Another of his early articles was “High Energy Administration: Big Science Model for the Future” (1968), on the creation of the Atomic Energy commission's BEV atom accelerator, a predecessor of the Tevatron accelerator, at Fermilab near Chicago.
Throughout his career Keenan published papers on Illinois state government, particularly the governor's office, and was the recipient of UNESCO support for research in Europe. But his largest research effort was as codirector with the University of Illinois Engineering Professor and later University President James Stukel on the congressional mandated Ohio River Basin Energy Study (ORBES). This $4.3 million study was administered by the US Environmental Protection Agency from 1976 to 1980. The project included a 13-person core team and 100 cooperating faculty from eight Midwestern universities. ORBES produced many technical studies of energy usage and sources in the Midwest as well as two summary reports by Keenan and Stukel—Ohio River Basin Study, Orbes Phase 1: Interim Findings (1977) and Ohio River Basin Energy Study (ORBES): Main Report (1981). Based on ORBES Boyd Keenan testified at congressional committee hearings and before federal and state government agencies. These studies and congressional reports were particularly significant for documenting the effects of air pollution by coal-burning in many states along the Ohio River. They pinpointed the problem of acid rain caused in North America by this pollution.
Keenan continued his concern with ecological decision making in article on the burying of nuclear waste in the Cook County Forest Preserves, “The Chicago Area Ecopolitical System” in Chicago's Future in a Time of Change (Dick Simpson, ed., Champaign, Il: Stipes, 1993). Keenan was one of the earliest political scientists to carefully study environmental impacts of political and governmental decision-making.
At the University of Illinois at Chicago, Boyd Keenan played important roles in the political science department and beyond. He was a member of the planning committee for the University's Energy Resources Center and a fellow of the Institute of Humanities. He was also a fellow at the university's Institute of Government and Public Affairs
Boyd Keenan was a rare political scientist well outside the mainstream of the discipline. He was a serious student of real world politics focusing on major issues confronting us… the environment, energy and higher education. And he could comfortably speak the language of the practitioner, the policy maker, the academic, and the student. This language he spoke, whatever the setting, faithfully reflected his deep roots of his West Virginian upbringing as well its music through his guitar, trumpet, and singing.
He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Donna May Booth Keenan, son Kevin Keenan and daughter-in-law Sultana, daughter Karen Salkeld and son-in-law David, granddaughter Eliza Salkeld, and grandsons Keenan Salkeld, Raymond Salkeld, Boyeni Keenan, and Joseph Keenan.
Contributions to the National Alzheimer's Association would be appreciated as an honor to his life.
Barry Rundquist, Professor Emeritus, UIC, Department of Political Science
Dick Simpson, Head, UIC Department of Political Science
Richard Johnson, Former Head, UIC Department of Political ScienceIn Memoriam
Donald J. Kreitzer
Donald J. Kreitzer, Professor Emeritus of Government at New Mexico State University, died at his Las Cruces home on January 5, 2012. He was 86 years old.
Born February 15, 1925, in Chicago, he was raised in Dayton, Ohio. He earned his undergraduate degree in history at the University of Dayton, graduating with honors in 1946, and earned his master's degree in political science at the University of Cincinnati in 1948. He then taught middle and high school for a few years before enrolling in doctoral studies at Ohio State University. He obtained his PhD in 1955, writing his doctoral dissertation on “Urban Redevelopment and Rehabilitation in Columbus, Ohio.” Later he attended the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, for two years and was awarded a Bachelor of Science in Law in 1959.
Dr. Kreitzer began his career as a college professor at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, in fall 1955. Four years later, he was appointed assistant professor of political science at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1961, he joined the New Mexico State Univeristy (NMSU) department of history, government and social sciences (comprised of the current departments of anthropology, sociology, philosophy, as well as government and history). He was the first professor dedicated solely to teaching in the field of government. He briefly served as Department Head after a separate department of government and history was formed in 1968. He retired from NMSU in 1986.
As a faculty member, he inspired many of his students with his passion for public service. One former student, Robert “Nick” Franklin, recalled, “Don wasn't a great lecturer but he was a great teacher. He challenged you; he brought in material that you wouldn't have otherwise considered. Throughout my career in government, business and law, I found I kept referring back to some of the ideas that he raised.” He added that Dr. Kreitzer's course on political parties and pressure groups in particular stuck with him. Franklin later became chairman of the New Mexico Democratic Party.
In the late 1990s, Nick Franklin established the Donald Kreitzer Endowed Fund for the Study of Politics, as well as scholarships for government majors and those in the law and society program. The two Kreitzer scholarships have been awarded every year since 2000. At Nick Franklin's invitation, Dr. Kreitzer was able to attend the scholarship awards luncheon at NMSU recognizing the student recipients in April 2011.
In his 1961 curriculum vitae, Dr. Kreitzer cited his main areas of study as local government, public administration, government and business, and political theory. At NMSU, he also taught courses in public law and American politics. He was a long time member of the American Political Science Association, as well as the Midwest Conference of Political Scientists and the American Society for Public Administration. He was also a member of the American Association of University Professors.
Dr. Kreitzer was committed to progressive causes throughout his life. During the Vietnam War, he was involved in anti-war and peace activities. He also supported civil rights; environmental protection; woman's healthcare, including the right to choose; and services for the homeless. He regularly donated to an orphanage in Juarez, Mexico, that serves the needs of severely disabled children. After his retirement from NMSU, Dr. Kreitzer remained active, hiking in the Organ Mountains, target shooting, and building his Spanish language fluency.
He is survived by his daughter Donna Jean and her husband John Hill of Las Cruces, his brother David Bruce and wife Georgette Kreitzer, his long-time friend and companion Mercy Gutierrez, and many friends.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Las Cruces Gospel Rescue Mission (www.lcgrm.org)or the Kreitzer scholarships through the NMSU Foundation (http://foundation.nmsu.edu or 575-646-6126). Those wishing to share their memories of Don Kreitzer are invited to contact Donna at 575-640-2105, or visit the website of the La Paz-Graham's Funeral Home, at www.lapaz-grahams.com.
Nancy V. Baker, Regents Professor, department of government New Mexico State University
Guillermo O'Donnell
Our dear friend and colleague Guillermo O'Donnell died November 29, 2011, in his native Buenos Aires at the age of 75, following a four-month battle against cancer.
O'Donnell was a giant in contemporary social science, known around the world for his unique intellectual creativity, his path-breaking originality, and his passion for democracies that function decently. His scholarly work on authoritarianism and democracy established his international reputation as a brilliant and seminal thinker.
Closer to home, he played a pivotal role in creating and developing the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. As Kellogg's first academic director, he defined an exciting research agenda for the Institute and built an outstanding program of visiting fellows. At the time of his death he was professor emeritus of political science at Notre Dame and senior fellow at the Kellogg Institute.
O'Donnell's scholarly contributions can be grouped into three phases. Early in his career, he worked primarily on the origins of authoritarianism in South America, especially in the region's more developed countries. First published in 1973, Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism was a seminal work in understanding the origins of modern authoritarianism in Latin America.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Guillermo recognized that this was a new kind of authoritarian rule. Again unlike his contemporaries, he also understood that this new pattern of authoritarian rule had profound theoretical implications for understanding the relationship between modernization and democracy. He subsequently wrote many important papers about the nature of authoritarianism in Latin America.
In a second phase, O'Donnell was the pioneer in anticipating the wave of transitions to democracy that began in Latin America in 1978. With remarkable prescience, when Latin America was at the zenith of authoritarian rule, he correctly and almost uniquely understood that many of the awful dictatorships then in power were likely to be transient. He studied internal contradictions within authoritarian regimes and then analyzed the wave of transitions to democracy that resulted in part from the tensions within authoritarianism that he had analyzed earlier. Once again, he opened a new research question, hugely important both theoretically and in the “real” world. His 1986 co-edited volume, Transitions From Authoritarian Rule (Johns Hopkins University Press) remains a classic. It is one of the most widely cited works in political science.
Beginning in the late 1980s, O'Donnell's attention turned to the severe deficiencies of most democratic regimes, again with a primary focus on Latin America. While countless other individuals observed these same deficiencies, nobody matched his acuity in the theoretical analysis of new issues that revolve around these shortcomings. He coined many important concepts that remain at the core of analyses of contemporary democracy. For example, his concept “delegative democracy” refers to democratic regimes in which the president and congress are democratically elected, but in which mechanisms of accountability are fragile. He contributed seminal articles on accountability, the rule of law, and the relationship between the state and democracy. His article, “Democracy, Law and Comparative Politics” (Studies in Comparative International Development, Spring 2001), won the Luebbert Prize for the best article in comparative politics, awarded annually by the Comparative Politics section of the American Political Science Association.
As a scholar, O'Donnell always focused on great normative issues that confront contemporary humanity—how to build better democracies, how to ensure more effective rule of law and more even citizenship. In the last two decades, he achieved a judicious balance between criticizing the deficiencies of Latin American democracies while at the same time not indulging in facile criticisms that could fuel anti-democratic sentiment.
His scholarship won him wide recognition. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, O'Donnell won the 2003 Kalman Silvert Award for Lifetime Achievement, given every 18 months by the Latin American Studies Association. He was president of the International Political Science Association from 1988 to 1991, and also served as vice-president of the American Political Science Association from 1999 to 2000. In 2006, he won the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Political Science Association. He was the recipient of countless other fellowships and awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.
Indicative of the nearly global reach of O'Donnell's work, it has been translated into Korean, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, and of course, English. In recent years, several leading Latin American universities awarded him honorary PhDs.
Throughout his career, O'Donnell posed great new theoretical questions about tremendously important developments in the contemporary world. He was a deeply learned person who always drew upon the antecedent scholarship, yet one of his extraordinary gifts was recognizing new questions and new problems that had not hitherto been addressed. He stands as one of the most important thinkers about democracy and dictatorships in the history of political science.
Scott Mainwaring, Director, Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Eugene and Helen Conley Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame
Note: A version of this piece wil also run in the LASA Forum
John (“Jack”) Homer Schaar
John Homer Schaar, 83, died of cancer in Ben Lomond, California, on December 26, 2011. Jack was born on July 7, 1928, in Montoursville, PA, where he was raised on a farm in a Lutheran family. He was a political theorist and a legendary teacher at the University of California, Berkeley; U.C., Santa Cruz; and Deep Springs College. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from UCLA. In 1958 he came to Berkeley where he won two teaching awards and played a significant role in the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s. In 1970 he joined the faculty at UCSC, where he won a teaching award. His publications included Loyalty in America, Escape from Authority: the Perspectives of Erich Fromm, and Legitimacy in the Modern State (collected essays), and many articles. He was co-author, with Sheldon S. Wolin, of The Berkeley Rebellion and Beyond. His survivors include his wife, Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, his son, John Homer Schaar IV, and scores of former students who were deeply influenced by his teaching.
To know Schaar as a person and a thinker read the writing. It's almost all on the page. Those who want to understand his political outlook, his understanding of political theory, and his conception of what it means to teach political theory, should read the preface to Legitimacy in the Modern State. He says of his essays: “[T] guiding themes are authority, equality, justice, and citizenship-topics mainly, though not exclusively of political interest. Another motif, the bearing of the past on the present, runs throughout…Where I have offered programmatic suggestions, they are always toward smallness, variety, and conservation, and away from bigness, uniformity, and exploitation…. If I could I would join Henry Adams' party of Conservative Christian Anarchy….” An authority on American political thought, he had a special interest in John Winthrop, Tocqueville, Melville, Lincoln, Henry Adams, and William Faulkner.
Schaar's contribution to, and relationship with, American political science during the 1960s is discussed in Emily Hauptmann's article, “A Local History of “The Political,” Political Theory (2004).
Personal notes: I was in the 1973 UCSC class described below by Alan Acosta, and I share Alan's view of Schaar's influence. Schaar believed that he had an insufficient education in art, but there was much natural beauty in his life. He preferred the country to the city and mountains to the beach, even when he was at UCLA. He was an excellent woodworker and had a particular interest in dogs.
As a theorist, Schaar drew from Machiavelli's writings, but he was not much of a Machiavellian. He reported that he was influenced by radicals he met in the Army, but was kicked out of the Young Communist League because he would not support Henry Wallace for president. In his essay, “Power and Purity,” he described excuses people give for avoiding political participation: “The second escape route from the political dilemma is the high pass of moral purity. Politics are dirty and the state is a fraud, but I am clean, my aims honorable…In public life, we are thrown together with many others whom we do not choose and cannot know. Some of those will be fools and some will be wicked. Only a fool would be honest with a fool; fools must be treated according to their folly.” As a college sophomore, I was shocked to read those lines. How could my respected teacher advocate dishonesty? How could he call people “fools”? I rushed to the podium after the next lecture and cried out, “Why did you write that people can be dishonest, that only a fool would be honest with a fool”?
“I wrote that line to drive you crazy.”
About three years later Schaar was being recruited, among several others, to fill a suddenly vacant seat on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. It was perfect because he did not have to run for election. I became his campaign manager, and I was certain that his appointment would be the beginning of America's political transformation. By a stroke of good luck, a family friend was high up in Governor Jerry Brown's cabinet and I called him to lobby for Schaar's appointment. He said that they could not appoint Schaar because he would not commit himself to running for re-election.
I went back to Schaar. “They say you won't run for office at the end of your term.”
“That's right, Josh. I may not like it.”
“Just tell them that you will run and then see if you like it.”
“I can't do that. It would be lying.”
What follows are testaments from friends, colleagues, and students—gathered haphazardly—which I present in loose chronological order. I wish that I could have solicited contributions from his friends Michael Rogin, Francis Carney, and Wilson Carey McWilliams, all departed.
Josh Miller
In 1956 Jack and I were privates in the First Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Battalion, an absurd and useless poor relation of the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. He was one of a number of PhDs in the outfit, which served as a dumping ground for draftees the army couldn't figure what else to do with. One of them was the battalion fireman, who spent his nights stoking the coal furnaces in the battalion's old wooden barracks. Jack and I were spared that, being married men living off post.
One day Jack asked me if I had ever heard of a writer named Agatha Christie. He had just finished a curious book by her which revolved around a murder. Evidently the idea with books of this type, he told me, was to figure out who the murderer was. It was so damned complicated and ingenious, though, that he had been baffled right up till the last page. He bet me a large sum for a private in 1956 — five dollars, maybe — if I could figure out whodunit by page so-and-so. I had never been able to figure out a whodunit before, but this was real money. So I dog-eared pages and underlined and made out charts, and finally won the bet.
Shortly afterward I was transferred out and we went our separate ways (I to write murder mysteries, among other things). Several weeks ago I was thinking about doing a piece on the sad and willful destruction of California's public school system, once the finest in the history of the world, and thought of Jack again. Back at Fort Bragg he had told me the story of how he graduated from a small Pennsylvania high school and headed penniless for California, where he had understood it was possible to go to college for little or no tuition. My memory was that he found an abandoned trailer in a canyon somewhere, enrolled as a freshman, and came out many years later with his doctorate. I found Jack on the web and telephoned to refresh my memory but nobody answered. Now I know why.
A wonderful, funny, brilliant guy. I wish there hadn't been 3,000 miles between us all these years.
Jerry Doolittle
John ‘Jack’ Schaar, a long-time contributor to Deep Springs' academic program, passed away on December 26, 2011. Jack was a political theorist at University of California, Berkeley when he first taught at Deep Springs in 1969. He soon began co-teaching introductory summer seminars along with Deep Springs' president Randall Reid, returning frequently to lead summer sessions after Reid moved on. His commitment to Deep Springs over forty years of teaching helped develop the summer seminar into a course that today plays a central role in Deep Springs' curriculum.
Jack's work at the college established the summer seminar's current form as an interdisciplinary team-taught course. His seminars focused on themes of community, authority, and the relationship between society and nature, themes that Jack thought were particularly important in the context of the Deep Springs program. In later years Jack worked closely at Deep Springs with long-term faculty members David and Sharon Schuman, and introduced several of his former students to the Deep Springs' visiting faculty rolls—among them Doug Lummis, Richard Gibbs (now Richard Mahon), and, most influentially, Jeff Lustig.
Jack was a lively and beloved teacher. Students remember Jack for his beautiful, intricate lectures on a wide variety of topics and texts; for his witty, probing engagement with students, and for his twin commitments to careful thought about issues in politics and to deliberate action in improving the lot of humanity. Outside the classroom, Jack frequently shared his devotion to hiking and rock climbing in the desert and the Sierras with other community members.
Jack will be long remembered and greatly missed at Deep Springs.
David Neidorf and the Deep Springs College News
Jack Schaar was one of a group of four teachers who taught my first summer seminar at Deep Springs. With his unbelievably slow talking, his deep voice, and his meditative gestures (will he tamp his pipe this time with the severed finger?) he left an enormous impression on a 17 year old boy that has never left. A couple years later I went out to visit Hanna and him at Ben Lomond to get advice on what to do with my life and I can remember moments as vividly as if there were yesterday.
After we ate a wonderful meal, he sat down in an arm chair, with Hanna in another, and he lit a pipe, and signaled me to speak, giving me his absolute attention, which kind of stunned me with its quiet intensity. No adult of such standing had ever listened to me with such concentration. I tried to get in everything, and probably spoke as super fast as he spoke super slow. He paused for a moment, took his pipe out of his mouth, and said: “Could you parse the question?” Copying his gestures (as I'd seen so often happen with others—I could feel the emulation as if was an emulsion), I found myself sitting silently for a full minute before I spoke again, and then spoke in a manner slower and more deliberate than I ever had before. I was proud, happy and hopeful. After which he paused, and then said, “Could you parse it again?”
Michael Pollak
When I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley in the 1960s and co-led the Free Speech Movement in 1964 Jack was one of our important and wonderful faculty supporters. Generous, wise, witty and sometimes sardonic he was a wonder to me, a wide-eyed 20-year old, then member of the Communist Party, undergraduate. His course on American Political Thought was taught to 1,000 students at a time in Wheeler Auditorium, and despite the size his lectures were amazing. He taught me crucial lessons about political freedom and its deeper meanings that I have ever held dear. In the late 1970s when I returned to graduate school in the History of Consciousness Program at UCSC, Jack gave me great support and encouragement. I cherish him, and treasure his memory.
Bettina Aptheker
As a graduate student when I told Jack Schaar my ideas it was like performing for the best critical audience. He would listen with a wondering skepticism that threatened laughter or enthusiasm. It exhilarated and frightened. Many of my best revisions—even recognition of profound error—were inspired by his silences. Much of the hardest work I've done was in response to his queries and demurs. Those experiences with Jack—a mad rush to tell him what I just discovered, the effort to make the idea clearer, the recognition that I might be right and the understanding that I had a lot of work to do—were the core of my graduate education. I learned from him an expectation of craftsmanship.
I cannot truly miss him because he listens still to my wildest thoughts and expects me to get to work. But it would be so good to talk to him again.
Larry Spence
During the Loma Prieta earthquake Jack was in his office - survived the avalanche of books by going under the desk, thus avoiding the headline “Scholar killed by his work.” One still hears that great voice: “Arthur F. Bentley was a muddlehead….”
Tracy B. Strong
Sad news and a great loss. This one time physics major wandered ever so long ago into Jack Schaar's intro American politics course, heard his magnificent lecture voice, and that was it … a re-born (would-be) political theorist.
Michael Mosher
In the mid-1960s I was both a teaching assistant and a research assistant for Jack. After each of his lectures on American political thought the TAs met with him for a discussion, initiated and led by Carey McWilliams. My most vivid memory is that, for the first 20 minutes or so, Jack would lay with his head in his arms on the table, thoroughly exhausted by the energy and passion he had just put into his lecture. After that brief respite, he would join the discussion. He instantly became the model none of us could ever quite emulate. Later, as his RA—at the time he was finishing his classic essay, “Some Ways of Thinking about Equality”—I saw a darker side of Jack: his propensity to treat library books as his own. I would periodically check books out for him on my card. At the start of spring term, when Jack was on leave, I suffered the revenge of the librarians: they held back my registration because of overdue books in my name that he had not returned. This was an opportunity they couldn't resist. No (remembering the times library staffers had fled in tears from his office after asking for books long overdue), we don't want just those books, we want lots and lots of other overdue books and you have a key to his office and he is not there. I really needed to register. Accompanied by two librarians with boxes and a hand truck, I gave up two cubic feet.
Eldon J. Eisenac
Just now I'm remembering an evening with Jack around a hunting-campfire with Jack, Walter Smith, and also Jack's son Johnny. A bottle of wine was open, and as usual the conversation was all over the place: the day's hunt, of course—we were on the California coast hunting wild pigs…
But the conversation also included books, and the stuff that was in them. I'd been saving a question for Jack: “Jack, in the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, William Blake clearly—and beautifully—contrasts innocence with experience. But we also, often, contrast innocence with guilt, and rightfully so. But does that also mean that experience is guilt?” He didn't pause for so much as a breath: “Yes Dean. Experience is guilt.” I will never forget that; indeed, I have occasion to remember it fairly often. It still resonates, as does the life of the man.
Dean Metcalf
It's quite impressive reading through the comments of those who were influenced by Jack in relatively recent years, as well as hearing from those who, like me, first met him in Berkeley in the 1960s and had our most extended involvements in Santa Cruz in the 1970'. There were later visits at 5-10 year intervals, sometimes with Hanna, where we would catch up on friends and colleagues and the Berkeley School. We'd share updates on Dewey, Nicholson Baker, Leonard Cohen's “Democracy.” When I'd provide particulars of his status on the web as a “futurist,” Jack would talk about his dog, Old Ludd. These were important benchmarks in my life that I am sad to see are now ended. I am awed by the extent in time and scope of others whose lives he also touched.
Peter Miller
[This piece was written almost a year ago to nominate Schaar for a teaching award at UCSC.-JM]
I remember so distinctly the first time I walked into Politics 104—American Political Thought—on a chilly winter morning in 1973. The class was offered at 8 or 8:30—an ungodly hour for 19- and 20-year-olds—and yet the Stevenson classroom was packed to the rafters. I was new to Santa Cruz and I thought to myself, what's all the fuss about? And then Schaar began talking—about the Puritans, about Jefferson and Madison, about community and liberalism—and I, like everyone else in the room, sat spellbound. It is not hyperbole to say that, at that very moment in time, my understanding of the world began to change.
The scholarship, humanity and teaching prowess of John H. Schaar unalterably influenced generations of Politics students who have gone on to have significant influence in the world. The intellectual and political engagement of Mr. Schaar's students was unparalleled at Santa Cruz during the early years. His lectures were legendary, mixing the eloquence and nuance of a classical philosopher, the wit and wisdom of a country preacher and the passion of a true scholar. His lectures—on community, authority, liberty, democracy and political action—have informed my thinking and decision-making for my entire adult life.
I know I am not alone in the transformation I experienced over the next couple of years. My friends from that period—who are now college professors, political activists, doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, journalists—each of us draw on the intellectual foundations we built hearing those lectures and fighting it out in the discussion sections that accompanied those classes. And we would not be the people we are today without that experience.
For his original and uncompromising scholarship, for his devotion to the founding vision of Santa Cruz, for his commitment to the vocation of teaching and loyalty to his students and, finally, for his unapologetic and often acerbic views on the ways of the academy, it is my pleasure and honor to nominate John Schaar for the Distinguished Social Sciences Emeriti Faculty Award.
Alan Acosta
John Schaar will be missed. I remember fondly the exciting discussions resulting from his classes in Classical and Modern Political Theory, and American Political Thought. And I cherish one particular well-lubricated meeting with the man himself, at the late Cooper House in downtown Santa Cruz, at the end of the academic year in 1975, with a group of friends. A different time, a different place, and still relevant in 2012.Thank you.
Richard Milicov
I was a student of Jack's as an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz in the 1990s. His classes were genuinely transformative: challenging, distinctive, disorienting, refreshing. I am now a professor of political theory myself and I doubt whether I would have started down this path were it not for Jack's influence and example.
A few recollections I've had since I heard the news that he'd passed away:
His American Political Thought class was legendary at UCSC. The running joke on campus was both funny and apt: Schaar's American Political Thought class is two quarters long and it never gets past the Puritans!
I took a wonderful, small Literature & Politics seminar with him. We sat around a table at Oakes College and talked, really talked, about some of the best books I've ever read. Then Jack would take a smoking break and we'd talk some more. Since then, I've never read Twain, Faulkner, Didion, or Pynchon without thinking of the time we spent in that room together.
I was lucky enough to visit Jack at home in Ben Lomond a few times and remember the pleasure of drinking whiskey at his kitchen table.
I will remember Jack's voice most of all. Both what he expressed: thoughtful, iconoclastic ruminations on what it means to be a citizen, and more profoundly, a person…and how he expressed it: in that unhurried, careful, and absolutely inimitable tone and style. It saddens me to think that his voice will not be heard again.
Ella Myers
I also had a class with Prof. Schaar circa 1993, American Political Thought, lots of discussions on the Puritans as I recall. I remember going to his office hours to ask him a question and he took his coffee mug, opened the window (I think his office was on the third floor at Kresge), and tossed the contents of his coffee mug out that window without so much as looking down. He must have seen the startled look on my face, and he said, I have only hit someone once. I am deeply appreciative for his passion and insight; he is one of the reasons why I teach political science and political theory.
Jeremy Busacca
I am sorry to learn about the death of Jack Schaar. His students were always so devoted to him. I knew him a bit, and enjoyed the exchanges with him. Over the years I have been informed and touched by his engagements with equality of opportunity and patriotism I also heard him give a couple of lectures. That is where I got a sense of the charisma with which he was widely reputed to fill the classroom three times a week. Many of us rest on the shoulders of theorists like him. We will miss the man, the intellect and the charisma.
William Connolly
For political theorists like me, Jack Schaar has been one of the vital presences of the last half-century. He and his wife Hanna Pitkin, along with Sheldon Wolin and Michael Rogin, helped define the “Berkeley School” of political theory. Though I seem to know more people than I count who were touched by his teaching or writing, it's a shame that even more people don't know about him and his work.
Corey Robin
RIP Jack Schaar, and thank you.
Patchen Markell
Bruce A. Wallin
On December 29, 2011, Bruce A. Wallin died after a six-month battle with cancer. Bruce was an associate professor in political science and was on the faculty at Northeastern University for the past 21 years. An expert in budgeting and finance, he was an outstanding teacher at Northeastern and his earlier academic posts, the University of Wisconsin, Madison and California State, Fullerton. Bruce earned a Bachelor's degree at Princeton in 1970 and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983.
Born in upstate New York in 1948, Bruce moved with his parents and sister to St. Paul, Minnesota where he finished high school. A star student bound for the Ivy League, Bruce also was an All-State basketball player. Sports would be an important part of Bruce's life, whether on the basketball court in high school, the rugby field in college, or in the stands at Northeastern cheering others on. This competitive spirit was part of Bruce's life. He was always in the game to win. A quote that he kept taped in his office captures the spirit: “If you cannot win, make the one ahead of you break the record.”
Bruce began his academic studies in 1966 at Princeton. Graduating four years later, he remained in the area and worked for eighteen months as a special assistant to the Mayor of Trenton. Throughout his career, Bruce would stay connected to the world of politics and public service. Seeking a return to academia, he crossed the country to begin graduate studies at Berkeley. He quickly became a student of Aaron Wildavsky and began a lifetime friendship with Wildavsky and his wife. Bruce's interest in urban finance and intergovernmental relations flourished with Wildavsky as his mentor. His dissertation focused on the impact of federal revenue sharing on America's cities. This work was later updated and published in 1998 as From Revenue Sharing to Deficit Sharing: General Revenue Sharing and Cities (Georgetown University Press). In 1999, this book received the Best Book in Urban Politics Award from the Urban Politics section of APSA.
The Berkeley years were very important for Bruce. He followed California politics and watched closely as the state headed into Proposition 13 in 1978 and then dealt with the aftermath. Bruce wrote about this at various points in his academic career and would, on a regular basis, attend the annual conference of the Western Political Science Association to participate in a panel on state budgeting. While in Berkeley, Bruce co-authored a book chapter with Wildavsky that appeared in Speaking Truth to Power, and he co-edited Taxation: Myths and Realities, with George Break.
In 1978, while working on his dissertation, Bruce returned to government as an analyst at the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in Washington, DC. He became an ardent supporter of the ACIR and its important work in intergovernmental relations. In 1985–86 Bruce would return to the ACIR as a senior research analyst. He worked on a variety of publications prior to the demise of the organization.
Prior to Northeastern, Bruce had academic appointments at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, from 1980 to 1985, and at California State University, Fullerton, from 1986-1990. At both universities he continued his scholarship in public finance and budgeting, and he also developed his teaching skills. While at Wisconsin, Bruce was a faculty associate in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research and held a joint appointment in the Robert M. LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs.
At Northeastern University Bruce's career blossomed. He developed a research agenda that combined theory and practice; he became an outstanding teacher; and he provided important service to the university community. In scholarship, Bruce wrote for both academic and policymaker audiences. His articles appeared in the Public Administration Review, Publius, and Public Budgeting and Finance. For the last journal, he served as a symposium editor for a special edition devoted to tax and expenditure limitations and the lessons of California's Proposition 13. His work also was supported by and distributed through a number of policy and research organizations, including the Brookings Institution, Urban Institute, Twentieth Century Fund, Economic Policy institute, National Tax Association, Center for the Study of the States (SUNY, Albany), Multi-State Tax Commission, Quebec Provincial Commission on Fiscal Imbalance, Massachusetts Municipal Association, Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (Cambridge, Massachusetts).
Bruce was an outstanding teacher. Twice, he received Northeastern University's prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award. His classes were legendary. He made budgeting come alive; students wanted to take his budgeting class. Of particular note, he developed a budget deficit simulation that students would comment on 10 and 20 years later. Sharing his experiences, Bruce wrote about the simulation in PS: Political Science and Politics in 2005. Bruce truly loved teaching. He was helping to shape the future. He touched the lives of many students, not only in his classroom, but well beyond. Bruce kept in touch with many students, helping them to find internships and jobs. Each year he worked with students to apply for the Truman Scholarship and celebrated their accomplishments regardless of how far they made it in the competition.
For Bruce, teaching and scholarship went beyond the Northeastern campus. Beginning in 1989, he developed a strong relationship with Meiji University in Japan. Twice, he was a visiting scholar there and developed a close partnership between Meiji and Northeastern. As part of that partnership, Bruce led 20 to 30 Northeastern students during the summer to Meiji in what Northeastern calls a Dialogue of Civilization. Northeastern students met Meiji students as they learned about Japanese politics and culture. Reversing the process, in the last three years Bruce facilitated visits by Japanese students to the Northeastern campus. In fact, Bruce made it possible for students from both sides of the Pacific to truly interact and to understand each other's cultures and societies. In addition to his work in Japan, Bruce was a Fulbright scholar at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic in 2001. He taught a class on public administration and conducted research in public budgeting and finance.
Bruce played an important role in the Northeastern community. Within the department, he served as head undergraduate advisor and an important member of the public administration faculty. Outside the department, he served on the university's Faculty Senate three different times and played an important role in shaping the university's budget. He chaired the Faculty Senate's Financial Affairs Committee and served on the University Committee on Funding Priorities. In these venues, Bruce developed a reputation as someone who “called it like he sees it.” Using the title of a Wildavsky book, Bruce did not shy away from “speaking truth to power.” Whether a top-level administrator or department colleague, Bruce would let you know what he thought. As he taught his students, questioning authority or the “accepted wisdom” is a role we all should play.
Bruce also was very devoted to his family, particularly his daughters Anne and Eva. For the last 15 years of his life they were always at the center of his world. Unfortunately, he will not share their experiences as they become young women and enter the world on their own, but his hopes and prayers are certainly with them.
In memory of Bruce, the department is accepting donations that will be awarded as student scholarships in the late spring. Contributions will be accepted to the Northeastern University Political Science Gift Fund, noting in memory of Bruce Wallin, and sent to: Northeastern University, University Advancement, 118 CU, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115.
John Portz, Northeastern University
Michael Tolley, Northeastern University
Kosaku Dairokuno, Meiji University
