Carol Barner-Barry
Carol Barner-Barry, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), died on July 21, 2015, of thyroid cancer. Carol was a valued member of the UMBC political science department from 1981 until she retired in 2007. Although Carol initially came to UMBC as a specialist in public administration and research methods, her research and teaching interests were broadly eclectic. This is reflected in the breadth of her publication and teaching records, which include books, articles, and courses taught in public administration, public law, research methods, Soviet politics, post-Soviet politics, political psychology, politics and the life sciences, and international negotiation.
Carol graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dickinson College in 1960. In 1961, Carol married Donald D. Barry, himself a political scientist and Soviet scholar. She accompanied him to the Soviet Union as part of a scholar exchange program. They were among the very first American scholars to experience life in the Soviet Union. Carol used this opportunity to study Russian and as a result of her immersion in the language and the culture, Carol became quite fluent in Russian. When the couple returned to the United States in 1962, Carol took a position as an administrative intern in the Legislative Research Office of the New York State Department of Civil Service. Carol’s supervisors encouraged her to consider graduate school. She took their advice. She was admitted to Syracuse University’s Maxwell School where she earned her masters and doctoral degrees in political science in 1964 and 1970, respectively.
Carol and Don’s daughter, Colleen, was born in 1970 and in 1971 the couple adopted their son, Brian. Once again, Carol accompanied her husband overseas this time with two toddlers when Don took leave from his faculty position at Lehigh University to serve as visiting professor in Boston University’s Overseas Graduate Program for the 1972–73 academic year. The family lived for one semester in West Berlin, and in Naples, Italy, for the second. After their year abroad, Carol and her family came back to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where Don returned to his faculty position in the political science department at Lehigh. For her part, Carol accepted a series of intermittent one-year appointments at Lehigh, including one as a research scientist at the Center for Social Research (1975–76). In 1977, Carol joined the political science department at Lehigh as assistant professor. It was also during these years that Carol began her eclectic and very productive research career.
Carol did pioneering scholarship on observational research methods. This work grew out of the hours she spent watching her children interact with other kids at playgrounds. She affectionately referred to it as “kiddy politics.” Beginning in 1977, Carol published eight articles and book chapters on the subject. As natural outgrowths of her kiddy politics research, Carol became interested in political psychology and “bio-politics.” Another series of articles and book chapters flowed from these interests. In addition, Carol enjoyed a series of successful research collaborations. With Don Barry, she coauthored the very successful textbook, Contemporary Soviet Politics (1978). It became the best-selling textbook on the subject and went into four editions, the last being published in 1991, the year the USSR collapsed. Carol and Don also wrote together several articles on the Soviet Union, as well as a supplement to the fourth edition of their book, Post Soviet Politics: The Fall of the Soviet Union and the Rise of the Successor States (1993). Working with Robert Rosenwein, Carol coauthored the book Psychological Perspectives on Politics (1985). And then in 1995 with her UMBC colleague, Cynthia Hody, she had her third coauthored book published, The Politics of Change: Transformations in the Former Soviet Union.
In 1981, Carol left Lehigh University to join the political science department at UMBC. When she joined the political science faculty at UMBC, she was the only woman in the department. By 1983, she had secured promotion with tenure, and in 1995 she was promoted to full professor. Not only did she teach an eclectic array of courses, from administrative law to political psychology to team-taught courses on international negotiation and Russian literature and politics, she brought innovative pedagogies to her classroom. Alumni from her legal reasoning course recall that she would walk into the class, peruse the students sitting around the table, and hand “the gavel” to one of them. She would then take a seat at the back of the room and wait. The students understood that it was their responsibility to prepare the case for the day and it was the gavel-toting student’s job to lead the discussion. Carol would only intervene to correct inaccuracies or to acknowledge particularly insightful observations. What veterans of the class remember (most of them now practicing attorneys) was that Carol would not rush the process in order to speed the class along; she allowed students the time to reason out legal puzzles on their own.
Carol was involved with numerous professional organizations. She was a founding member and the founding editor of the newsletter of the Women’s Caucus for Political Science (1969–1972). Other organizations in which she was actively involved include: the American Political Science Association, the International Political Science Association, the Society for the Advancement of Social Psychology, the International Association of Political Psychology, and the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences from which she received an award of appreciation for her service to the organization.
Carol’s last book was the only one she wrote as a sole author. True to form, Carol’s last book was on a subject that she had not previously researched. Contemporary Paganism: Minority Religions in Majoritarian America was published in 2005, two years before she retired. Even after she retired in 2007, Carol remained professionally active. She became certified in mediation and worked as a volunteer mediator at the Howard County Mediation and Conflict Resolution Center based at Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland. She worked at the Center as mediator and workshop facilitator until declining health made it impossible for her to continue to serve in these capacities.
A memorial service was held for Carol on what would have been her 77th birthday, September 26, 2015. The service was held at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia in Columbia, Maryland.
—Cynthia Hody, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Kenneth L. Deutsch
Professor Kenneth L. Deutsch, age 69, died Monday, March 16, 2015 at his residence. He was born March 22, 1945 in Bronx, New York, the son of Morris and Estelle Rosen Deutsch. Ken received his bachelor’s degree from St. John’s University, master’s and PhD from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, all in political science. He served SUNY-Geneseo’s department of political science for almost 42 years, since September 1973. Prior to teaching at Geneseo, Ken Deutsch taught as a lecturer at San Francis College, Maine, and Behrend College of the Pennsylvania State University, Erie, Pennsylvania. He was chair of the Geneseo political science department 1979–1984; he was promoted to full professor in 1984. Among other professional activities, he received a Fulbright award for teaching and research in India at the Universities of Rajasthan and M. S. Baroda. He also received the distinguished SUNY Chancellor’s award for excellence in research/scholarship in 2004. His areas of expertise were political theory, constitutional law, and comparative political systems. He was the author of many books and publications, including two books with his former student Joseph R. Fornieri.
Deutsch was surely an institution at Geneseo: known for his high standards, intellectual rigor, riveting lecture style, “no nonsense” approach to teaching, and his passionate devotion to his students and to teaching. He embodied the life of a teacher-scholar. Some students viewed their enrollment in a “Deutsch class” as transformative. Many maintained that they were significantly better prepared for the rigors of challenging law school classes by having completed—and some would say survived—a class with Professor Deutsch. Ken Deutsch was well aware of his reputation among students, though he never entertained for a second the notion to compromise with regard to whether his courses would be challenging and substantive. He knew his personality, at least his personality as a professor, was “old school.” He told students that his class was one they might regard as a “cold shower.” However, many students often found they were greatly improved as a result of their time in a course with Ken Deutsch, admiring his commitment, standards, rigor, and knowledge.
In addition to informally guiding many Geneseo students to law school, Deutsch also served as adviser to the Legal Affairs Club, coordinator for the Legal Studies minor, and developed the Outstanding Student in Legal Studies Award.
During his 42 years at Geneseo, Deutsch taught courses on normative and historical political theory, constitutional rights and liberties, civil liberties and the judicial process, religion and political theory, democratic theory and liberal education, interdisciplinary humanities courses on the “great books,” Leo Strauss’s political thought, comparative civil liberties, freedom of expression, constitutional law, world religions, political leadership, and Machiavelli.
Deutsch was an established scholar on political theory. What follows are a few of his publications: Political Obligation and Civil Disobedience (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1972); coauthor, Constitutional Rights and Student Life (West Publishing, 1979); coeditor and coauthor, Political Thought in Modern India (India Sage, 1986); coeditor and coauthor, The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective (SUNY Press, 1987); coauthor and coeditor, Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker (Rowman and Littlefield, 1994.); coauthor and coeditor, Leo Strauss, The Straussians and the Study of the American Regime (Rowman and Littlefield, 1999); “Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin: The Influence of Three German-Speaking Émigrés on American Political Thought,” in The Political Science Review, 2000; Lincoln’s American Dream, coedited with Joseph Fornieri (Brassey’s Publishers, 2005); An Invitation to Political Thought, with Joseph Fornieri (Thomson Learning Publishers, 2008); coauthored and coedited, The Dilemmas of American Conservatism, (University Press of Kentucky, 2010); coauthored and coedited, The Renewal of American Statesmanship (University Press of Kentucky, forthcoming).
Deutsch served as general editor of a series of books on “Provocations: Political Thought and Contemporary Issues,” for the University Press of Kentucky as well as general editor of a series of books on “Twentieth Century Political Thinkers” for Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
A great conversationalist, Ken had friends from many walks of life. Some of his personal interests included Italian opera, international cuisine, and film. His devoted Catholic faith informed not only his personal life, but his scholarly inquiry and dedication to teaching.
Deutsch is survived by a sister, Bonnie Mund of Queens, New York, the families who loved him, the Fornieris, Caplans and Saunders, and many dear friends. A funeral for Kenneth Deutsch was held Wednesday, March 25, 2015, at St. Mary’s Church, 4 Avon Rd. in Geneseo, with Father Edward Dillon officiating. A private Celebration of Professor Deutsch’s Life was held in June 14 at Sweet Brier in Geneseo, New York.
—Jeffrey W. Koch, State University of New York at Geneseo
Milton Greenberg
Milton Greenberg, esteemed teacher, scholar, administrator, and philanthropist, passed away on August 27, 2015, at the age of 88.
After receiving an undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College and graduate degrees at the University of Wisconsin, Greenberg went on to become a renowned professor and scholar. He taught at the University of Tennessee and Western Michigan University before joining the faculty at American University’s School of Public Affairs. He was active in the APSA and the American Association of University Professors.
As an accomplished author, Greenberg cowrote the American Political Dictionary, which was first published in 1962 and was updated and reissued 10 times over the subsequent 40 years. A veteran of World War II who received his degrees under the GI Bill, Greenberg became a foremost expert on the topic and authored The GI Bill: The Law That Changed America in 1997. The work was accompanied by a PBS documentary of the same name, featuring Greenberg alongside Harry Belafonte, Art Buchwald, and Bob Dole, among others. Greenberg also frequently contributed to the Chronicle of Higher Education, for which he wrote the article, “How the GI Bill Changed Higher Education,” in 2004 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bill.
Greenberg was equally active in higher education as an administrator, holding a number of positions throughout his career. Most notably, he served as the provost and vice president for academic affairs at American University from 1980 to 1993 and as interim president from 1991 to 1992. Prior to joining American University, he served as a department head at Western Michigan University, dean of the University College of Arts and Sciences at Illinois State University, and vice president for academic affairs at Roosevelt University. He also served as chair of the National Council of Chief Academic Officers.
Following his retirement from American University in 1997 as professor emeritus of government, Greenberg continued to contribute to the profession. He became a consultant to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation and a consultant and administrative liaison to the Institute for Constitutional History, which was established by the Supreme Court Historical Society. In addition, until this year, he was a regular contributor to major higher education publications and The Washington Post.
Greenberg was an active benefactor of American University through his philanthropy and engagement in the campus community. He and his wife established the Milton and Sonia Greenberg Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award. The annual award recognizes AU faculty members who have made a significant contribution to research-based analyses of teaching practices or curricular design.
Greenberg also furthered his support of teaching through the Greenberg PhD Seminars for Effective Teaching, which complement the PhD academic experience by emphasizing classroom techniques and professional development. Additional programming made possible by the Milton and Sonia Greenberg Endowment includes travel funds for doctoral candidates attending conferences dedicated to the study of college teaching and a new initiative to work with graduate students interested in teaching at a community college.
These programs perhaps best represent Milton Greenberg’s career and his legacy: At the core of a professor’s duties will always be teaching, preparing students and the next generation of faculty to excel both within higher education and in their subsequent careers. “College and university teaching represents more than expertise in a scholarly discipline,” he once said. “It means that you are privileged to be part of an extended community that constitutes one of the most important professions in the world.”
The entire American University community joins me in mourning the loss of Milton Greenberg. While he will be sorely missed, we are fortunate to have had him as part of the AU family for more than three decades, and we take solace knowing that his far-reaching impact will be felt by generations to come.
Milton Greenberg is survived by his wife, Sonia Brown Greenberg, and two daughters, Anne Greenberg Bookin and Nancy Greenberg.
—Neil Kerwin, President, American University
Richard Ernest Morgan
Richard Ernest Morgan, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Constitutional Law at Bowdoin College, died on November 13, 2014, at the age of 77. A graduate of Bowdoin, class of 1959, he earned his MA in public law and government at Columbia University, served on active duty as a first lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve from 1963 to 1965, and completed his PhD, at Columbia in 1967. He was then appointed assistant professor at Columbia and was named a Fellow in Law and Government at Harvard Law School for 1968–1969. The following year he joined the Bowdoin faculty, where he taught for the remaining 45 years of his life, teaching his last class until four weeks before he died.
Morgan’s early work examined the Supreme Court’s emerging jurisprudence concerning religion. Conservative by temperament, Morgan looked askance at the Court’s supposition that its doctrine of strict separation would resolve religious conflict, and in fact he could see that the Court’s nationalization of the Establishment Clause would ensure endless legal struggle. His two books on the subject, The Politics of Religious Conflict: Church and State in America (Pegasus, 1968) and The Supreme Court and Religion (Macmillan, 1972) paid particular attention to the role of interest groups in Religion Clause litigation and proved an early contribution to the political science literature on the politics of litigation.
After several textbooks and readers coauthored with his Bowdoin colleagues, Morgan published Domestic Intelligence: Monitoring Dissent in America (University of Texas, 1980), a project initiated by the Twentieth Century Fund. The book foresaw many of the issues that would seize national attention after revelations about NSA surveillance in 2013. Morgan even offered some warnings about the NSA itself, along with more general admonitions about government overreaching. At the same time, he cautioned against expecting courts to resolve inevitable tensions between privacy and security without better guidance from Congress.
Morgan’s skepticism about the course of Supreme Court jurisprudence and its effect on the American polity is on display in Disabling America: The “Rights Industry” in Our Time (Basic, 1984), perhaps his most important book. Disabling America both continued a rich intellectual tradition of commentary on the Supreme Court and raised important new questions about the causes and consequences of judicial activism. Like Robert McCloskey, Morgan was a wonderful writer who could make complex judicial doctrine understandable to the non-lawyer without distorting it. Like Alexander Bickel, his writing was cautiously conservative but not doctrinaire, learned but not corrupted by the pedantry of law reviews. At the same time, Morgan was among the first to explore the foundation of what he called “the rights industry,” the informal alliance of advocacy groups, academics, trial lawyers, and their admirers in the press that sustained judicial activism long after the Warren Court had faded into history. The book was prescient in its warning of the decline of what we now call “social capital.” Morgan saw the problem and the way courts had contributed to it long before Robert Putnam had given the phenomenon a name. Throughout the book Morgan shows a deep appreciation of the difficulties and dilemmas of governing in a constitutional democracy.
Across his career and especially in his later years, Morgan was an eloquent essayist, publishing in The New Leader, Political Science Quarterly, Commentary, City Journal (where he was for many years a contributing editor), and the Claremont Review of Books. Two themes stand out in these essays. First, Morgan worried that Brown v. Board of Education would serve as a model for other interest groups whose grievances were not of the same magnitude, and second, that an undue reliance on the courts to resolve social and political conflict would undermine the civic virtue necessary to sustain republican self-government. In April 2008, Morgan was invited to address the Supreme Court Historical Society in the Supreme Court Chambers in Washington, DC. When asked for his response to the invitation he replied, “If I can say something that will raise some eyebrows, I will consider that my time has been well spent.” He was introduced by Chief Justice John Roberts, whose eyebrows were certainly raised as he noted that Morgan’s most recent work focused on “Resisting Judicial Supremacy.” Morgan defined constitutional resistance as “the peaceable and provisional withholding of compliance with outrageous court decisions by aggrieved parties and especially by those similarly situated, in an effort to ‘test’ the court’s action in the wider political arena.” While recognizing the challenge this posed to the legal value of finality, he thought resistance had to recommend it that it was deeply rooted in the American political tradition, did not require tinkering with the structure of American institutions, was a republican response that sought to broaden political debate, and claimed to strengthen the rule of law, not subvert it. “Ultimately,” Morgan wrote, “it comes down to this: for a public policy to be legitimate, its supporters should be able to point to the day it commanded a real majority; pointing to the day it was defended successfully against its opponents won’t do.”
Over his scholarly career, Morgan served in a number of public service positions; notably, he was appointed in 1985 to a two-year term as chair of the Maine Advisory Committee of the US Commission on Civil Rights. With Gary Jacobson he edited a book series for Rowman and Littlefield, codirected a number of Liberty Fund colloquia with James Stoner, and served as president of the New England Political Science Association. NEPSA paid tribute to his scholarly work with a memorial panel at its 2015 meeting in New Haven.
In announcing Morgan’s death, the dean of faculty at Bowdoin hailed him as “a generous colleague and a dedicated teacher who valued the quality of an intellectual argument, regardless of the political perspective from which it arose.… Faculty and former students invariably pointed to his gentlemanly demeanor, his wry sense of humor, the clarity of his reasoning, and the precision and accessibility of his writings. An ‘old school’ professor, he did not use voicemail or e-mail; students could write him a note, speak with him after class, or climb to the top of the Hubbard Hall tower to see him during office hours…. Although he would describe himself as consistently conservative in his personal political views, there was no political orthodoxy imposed on the students in his classes. He had a nuanced perspective that came from a deep understanding of history, legal precedents, and possible ‘real-world’ consequences of judicial decisions.” He served three terms as chair of Bowdoin’s department of government and legal studies and was for many years the treasurer of Bowdoin’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.
An upland bird hunter and fly fisherman, Morgan was a registered Maine Guide who was equally at home in the woods and mountains as he was in the classroom. He was a member of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, Ducks Unlimited, Trout Unlimited, the Ruffed Grouse Society, and the National Rifle Association. He was a member of St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Portland and served for a time on its vestry. Following an Anglican requiem in the Bowdoin College Chapel, Morgan was laid to rest in Pine Grove Cemetery, Brunswick, Maine. He is survived by his wife and colleague, Jean M. Yarbrough, two stepsons, James Y. Stern and John F. S. Stern, their wives, and three young grandchildren. (He also left behind his beloved Brittany spaniels, Topsy and Sammie, his constant companions in the woods and mountains of Maine.) His wit, warmth, generosity, and steadfastness are greatly missed by all who knew him.
—James R. Stoner, Jr., Louisiana State University
—R. Shep Melnick, Boston College
—Jeremy Rabkin, George Mason University Law School
—Michael Uhlmann, Claremont Graduate University
—Jean Yarbrough, Bowdoin College
Norman H. Nie
Political science has lost a prominent scholar, innovative entrepreneur, and enormous personality. Norman H. Nie passed away at his home in Sun Valley, Idaho, on April 2, 2015, with family and friends at his side. He was 72 years old. A memorial service celebrating his life was held on September 28, 2015, at Bond Chapel at the University of Chicago.
Nie leaves an extraordinary legacy as an influential social scientist and analytics pioneer. Beyond his important intellectual contributions, Nie helped revolutionize the way scholars collect and analyze data. As cocreator of SPSS, an early software package for statistical analysis, Nie helped build the infrastructure for empirical social science research. As cofounder of the survey firm Knowledge Networks, Nie again changed research practice by developing a platform for conducting probability-based online surveys. The impact of both of these innovations has been felt far beyond the disciplinary boundaries of political science.
Norman Nie was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 1, 1943. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1964 from Washington University in St. Louis, and he earned his PhD in political science from Stanford in 1970. Nie joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1968, earned tenure in 1972, became a full professor in 1977, and twice served as chair of the political science department. After 30 years at the University of Chicago, Nie returned to his graduate school alma mater in 1998 to form the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society (SIQSS), an interdisciplinary institute devoted to the pursuit and sponsorship of high-quality empirical social science research about the nature of society and social change.
Nie authored many articles and award-winning books and was a renowned expert on the topics of public opinion, voting behavior, citizen participation and the Internet’s effects on culture. His first book, Participation in America (1972), written with Sidney Verba, won the Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book in US national politics. The Changing American Voter, coauthored with Sidney Verba and John Petrocik, followed in 1976. This classic work was among the first to make the case that political and campaign context could change the nature of voter decision making, with issues becoming more or less relevant depending on the political environment. The book received the Woodrow Wilson Award for the best book published in political science. Two years later, Nie coauthored a work of comparative politics with Sidney Verba and Jae-on Kim, Participation and Political Equality (1978). Nie was again the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Award for his 1996 book, Education and Democratic Citizenship in America, coauthored with Jane Junn and Kenneth Stehlik-Barry. Nie also coauthored The Hard Count: The Political and Social Challenges of Census Mobilization (2006), with Sunshine Hillygus, Ken Prewitt, and Heili Pals. Throughout his academic career, Nie viewed himself as a social scientist more than a political scientist and cultivated collaborations with sociologists, economists, statisticians, and others outside the field of political science. In 2006, Nie was awarded a lifetime achievement award from the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers, and three years later he was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
While simultaneously establishing a productive academic career, Nie built a second career as a successful entrepreneur. In 1968, motivated by the need to analyze data for his dissertation, Nie and two programmers, Tex Hull and Dale Bent, invented a computer software package to automate statistical analysis. Their software, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), fundamentally changed the way social scientists managed and analyzed data. Nie served as CEO from the company’s founding in 1975 until 1992. After stepping down as CEO, Nie continued as chair of the board of SPSS until 2008. Not long after, IBM purchased SPSS for $1.2 billion. When he returned to Stanford in 1998, Nie and political scientist Doug Rivers founded the Internet survey research firm Knowledge Networks, an industry leader for online research that was acquired by GfK in 2011. He later served as the CEO of Revolution Analytics, a commercial software company for R programming language, and served on the boards of numerous high technology firms.
In addition to his business and research accomplishments, Nie mentored hundreds of student during his career. He will be remembered for his immense generosity, fierce loyalty, and intellectual vibrancy. At his memorial service, several of his former students spoke about the profound influence Nie had on their lives. Working with him could be difficult—he expected success on seemingly impossible tasks—but he also motivated and inspired academic and personal achievements. He had insanely high expectations but also complete confidence those expectations could be met. As Pamela Narins explained, “He challenged you to be smarter than you thought you were.”
Even after being diagnosed with lung cancer, Norman refused to slow down. He continued both business and intellectual pursuits, launching a new company to offer private air travel into his beloved Sun Valley and initiating a new research project with several of his former students. He also continued to enjoy his favorite pleasures: fine meals, beautiful music, heated political arguments, and tennis.
Until the very end, Norman Nie lived a full life. As he liked to say, he fit 100 years into 70.
Norman Nie is survived by his wife of 51 years, Carol P. Nie, daughters Anne Nie and Lara Slotwiner-Nie and son-in-law Peter Slotwiner-Nie; granddaughters Sophia Slotwiner-Nie and Helena Slotwiner-Nie; and many grateful students and colleagues.
—D. Sunshine Hillygus, Duke University
—Jane Junn, University of Southern California
Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott
It is with great sadness that the Women’s Caucus for Political Science must announce the death of Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott, past WCPS president and American Political Science Association vice president, who died on Sunday, November 1, 2015. Joanna was a prolific scholar and teacher whose many accomplishments include serving on both of the APSA nominating committees that finally broke the glass ceiling in the APSA, giving us both Theda Skocpol and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph as presidents.
Joanna always considered herself a “Jersey Girl” and the article she wrote for the APSA Mentoring column described herself as that, despite the fact that she was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and spent more of her adult life in Southern California and Michigan. After WWII Joanna’s parents moved from Arkansas to New York City and lived there for four years before they, like so many other New Yorkers, crossed the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey, settling in River Edge in 1949. Thus Joanna found her home and her “Jersey attitude”: tough, questioning, probing intellectually, and fearless in speaking truth to power.
It was in New Jersey that Joanna met her future husband, Doug Scott, in the local high school in 1959. Even before writing became her life’s work, it was writing that brought Doug to her. As one of their high school’s newspaper editors, Joanna regularly wrote columns which spoke of more than the usual fare for high school papers. This led to a major collision with the high school principal. Joanna attended—and then published an extensive essay on—the 1959–60 Soviet Exhibit and the famous “Kitchen Debate” between vice president Richard Nixon and premier Nikita Khrushchev at the New York Coliseum. Some parents complained that Joanna’s coverage was “unpatriotic.” But if Joanna’s feistiness, her ability to speak truth to power even at age 16, got her into hot water with the authorities, her fearlessness attracted followers, then as now, and led to Doug’s asking her out on their first date. They were married in 1965 and recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2015.
Joanna graduated from Barnard College New York with a BA in political science. This was followed by an MA in political science from Columbia University and a PhD from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland. Joanna began her career as professor of political science at California State University, Long Beach, and then moved to Eastern Michigan University, where she served as department head. At both universities she was a strong supporter of the academic unions and organized labor more broadly.
Joanna was a tireless supporter of equality for women and other minorities, recently speaking out strongly against what she considered class bias in the APSA, arguing that the APSA needs to do far more to include the some 40% of its members who work in non-Research 1 institutions. Her extraordinary abilities and leadership led to her being asked to serve on numerous APSA committees, and culminated in her election as vice president of APSA and as President of the Women’s Caucus.
Joanna’s research focused on Hannah Arendt, a German émigré and political theorist. Joanna was fascinated by this Jewish scholar/public intellectual who began her academic journey writing her doctoral dissertation on St. Augustine and capped it off by reporting on the trial of Adolph Eichmann. Joanna and Judith Chelius Star published a completely corrected and revised English translation of Arendt’s dissertation (Love and Saint Augustine, University of Chicago Press, 1998), making this important early work by Arendt fully accessible for the American audience for the first time. In this volume, we see how Hannah Arendt began her scholarly career with an exploration of Saint Augustine’s concept of caritas, or neighborly love, written under the direction of Karl Jaspers and the influence of Martin Heidegger. After her German academic life came to a halt in 1933, Arendt carried her dissertation into exile in France, and years later took the same battered and stained copy to New York. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, as she was completing or reworking her most influential studies of political life, Arendt was simultaneously annotating and revising her dissertation on Augustine, amplifying its argument with terms and concepts she was using in her political works of the same period. As Scott and Star made clear, the dissertation became a bridge over which Arendt traveled back and forth between 1929 Heidelberg and 1960s New York, carrying with her Augustine’s question about the possibility of social life in an age of rapid political and moral change.
Their work on Arendt includes both Arendt’s own substantial revisions and provides additional notes based on letters, contracts, and other documents as well as the recollections of Arendt’s friends and colleagues during her later years. It is capped with a long introductory analysis of how this work was formative in Arendt’s reporting, writing and thinking about events such as the Holocaust in the 20th century. Their work is recognized as critical in establishing Arendt’s place in American scholarship.
Throughout her career, Joanna continued her love of Arendt, writing journal articles and essays on Arendt, focusing on her identity not just as a Jewish émigré but also as a modernist, a journalist, and ultimately an American.
Joanna was devoted to her family. Friends who met her regularly at the APSA were always struck by her ability to have composed a life that included career, a great marriage, and wonderful ties to her mother—who died only a few years before Joanna—and with her beloved children: Adam (an artist at the Chicago Art Institute) and Aemilia (writer/actor).
The family is requesting that in lieu of flowers, contributions be sent to any medical center that treats myeloma research or cancer research more generally.
We shall miss Joanna, her fiery spirit, her inspired leadership, and her devotion to good causes.
—Kristen Renwick Monroe, for the Women’s Caucus for Political Science
Peter W. Schramm
Peter W. Schramm died August 16, 2015. He was born in Gyor, Hungary, in 1946 and came to the United States as a refugee with his family after the failure of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. The immigrant boy learned English, helped at his parents’ restaurant, and went to school, eventually earning a BA from California State University Northridge in History in 1971; an MA in government from Claremont Graduate School in 1975; an MA in international history from The London School of Economics in 1976; and a PhD in government from Claremont Graduate School in 1980. He was the founding president of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, served in the Reagan administration as the director of the Center for International Education in the United States Department of Education, went back to Hungary as an election observer, and beginning in 1987, served as associate director, executive director, and senior fellow of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University in Ohio.
A friend once called Peter “the facilitator of being.” It was an apt description. His extraordinary capacity for friendship, his restless energy, and his wonder at the good and beautiful in human life made him the occasion of many good things for his friends, his students, and his country. Peter caused things to happen, whether 30 years ago when he established the Claremont Institute’s panels at the annual APSA Annual Meeting (for the last decade rated highest in attendance of all related groups sponsoring panels) or, above all, at Ashland University, where he built the Ashbrook Scholars program into one of the best undergraduate liberal arts programs in the country and an MA program for high school teachers of American history and government unique in its quality and its reach across the United States.
At Claremont, Peter was a student of Harry V. Jaffa. In the course of his career, Peter distinguished himself among Jaffa’s students by his devotion to Jaffa’s effort to revive the study and practice of statesmanship. Peter did this in various ways, some already noted. He also studied and taught Lincoln for years, an effort that became an ongoing meditation with students and friends on the principles of American government, and the inscrutable ways of man and God. Considering himself above all a student, he drew people into his effort to understand. This way of teaching, charming yet demanding, affected his students deeply, to which numbers of them testified after Peter’s death. His students and now, in some cases, the students of his students are taking their places in America’s civic life.
In addition to the time Peter spent with students, he spoke regularly to civic associations and political organizations, to his neighbors in Ashland, and to people he met in his travels, some by motorcycle, around the country. He talked to the civic and political groups not so much to tell them things, though he did tell them things and had much to tell, but for the same reason he talked to all the people he met: to learn about his beloved adopted country and fellow citizens. What he learned—delighting, amazing, sometimes perplexing him—he carried back to share with his friends and students. With his fellow citizens, as with his students and friends, he was proud of their virtues, understanding of their vices.
Peter’s love of the good and beautiful extended to literature and music. He loved, and loved to share, the sounds of good words and good songs. It extended beyond the borders of the United States to English and Russian literature, to Cuban cigars, and well-aged Scotch. He savored the world that he met in his travels abroad and the humans who wandered through it. To watch World Cup matches with him was to be treated to a running commentary on the ways of nations and the fate of man. Humorous, exaggerated, yet ultimately compelling, his observations became a lesson in politics, one finally realized, as insightful as any one had received, based in open-eyed experience of the world. As always with Peter, the lesson became an invitation to open one’s eyes with him.
All that Peter accomplished was animated by his conviction that political freedom and liberal education were inseparable and that both were made possible by and ultimately were meant to preserve the mysterious freedom of the human mind.
While making their silent nighttime walk past armed border guards with their 9-year-old son and his little sister, Peter’s mother and father could not have dreamed what would one day be said of their son on the floor of the United States Congress by a representative of the American people. Speaking for the Record, Representative Bob Gibbs from Ohio’s seventh Congressional district said on July 9, 2015: “Thank you, Dr. Schramm, for adopting America as your home and teaching so many young minds to keep the flame of freedom burning.”
Howard J. Wiarda
Howard J. Wiarda, the Dean Rusk Professor of International Relations in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia and formerly the Leonard J. Horowitz Professor of Iberian and Latin American Studies at University of Massachusetts at Amherst died on September 12, 2015, just 2 months shy of his 76th birthday.
After an illustrious career at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (where he still holds the unbroken record of becoming the youngest full professor at age 33 in the department of political science), Wiarda became the founding head in 2003 of the newly created department of international affairs, one of three departments of the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia.
Wiarda was one of the most prominent scholars in the field of comparative politics and foreign policy. His accomplishments are too many to list but they ranged from serving as lead consultant (1983–84) to the National Bipartisan (Kissinger) Commission on Central America to being a Thornton D. Hooper Fellow in International Security Affairs (1987–88) at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He joined the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 1992, becoming a senior associate. In 2000 he was appointed Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
He served by appointment of the President of the United States on the Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice. He was a consultant and adviser to four presidents and a variety of private foundations, business firms, and agencies of the United States government, including the Department of Defense, the National Defense University, and the Center for Hemispheric Studies.
Wiarda received grants from numerous foundations and programs, including the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright Program (four awards), the Social Science Research Council, the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institutes of Health, Pew Foundation, and the Twentieth Century Fund. He was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. In 1988 he served on vice president George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy advisory team. In 2012 he was inducted into the Order of Columbus by president Leonel Fernández of the Dominican Republic, his former student, for a “lifetime of service to and writing about the Dominican Republic.”
His colleagues as well as his students loved his sense of humor, his wit, and his energy. He was a scholar who believed in field work, in traveling, interviewing, and interacting with the subjects of his studies. In his wide ranging travels he was searching for all and sundry, ranging from peasants in Peru, to dictators and guerrilla leaders in Central America, to taxi drivers in Turkey. Back at home, he loved to regale his junior colleagues and his students about his encounters in a smart and funny way and always with great relevance to the most pressing academic questions of the day.
He was an incredibly perceptive observer with a keen sense of the political. Wiarda’s mind was sharp as a knife, and even into his mid-seventies he displayed an exemplary work ethic that would make the Puritans blush. He was an original thinker with a wonderful ability to convey complex issues in a simple way. As a gifted writer and a serious scholar, he turned his observations in the field into very respected academic works that still inform generations of students today.
Wiarda was the author and coauthor of over 100 books, many of them translated into several languages, and editor of more than 300 scholarly articles, book chapters, op eds, and congressional testimony. Among his many books are The Dominican Republic: Nation in Transition (Pall Mall Press, 1969); Politics in Iberia: The Political Systems of Spain and Portugal (Harper Collins, 1992); Corporatism and Comparative Politics (Routledge, 1996); New Directions in Comparative Politics (Westview Press, 2002, Third Edition); The Soul of Latin America (Yale Press, 2003); Divided America on the World Stage: Broken Government and Foreign Policy (Potomac Books, 2009).
Wiarda died in his 51st year of university teaching. He is survived by his wife Iêda Siqueira Wiarda, herself a professional political scientist who taught at U-Mass and who also held the position of research specialist at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and taught at the department of political science at the University of Georgia; and three children, five grandchildren, and many nephews and nieces. He also leaves many close friends and former students in Amherst, Athens, Cambridge, Washington, and elsewhere who will miss him greatly.
—From his friends and colleagues in the School of Public and International Affairs at The University of Georgia, and the department of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
—Sheldon Goldman, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
—Markus Crepaz, University of Georgia
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