Faculty

Emmet Larkin

Emmet Larkin, professor emeritus of history, died on March 19 at the age of 84. Larkin was one of the nation's leading scholars of Irish history. Larkin did extensive archival work in Britain, Ireland, and Rome and is remembered for his objectivity in analyzing the influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland. "His analysis relied on an intense study of correspondence among ecclesiastics in Ireland and in Rome, as well as politicians in both Ireland and Britain," said David Miller, PhD'68, professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University and Larkin's former student. "Perhaps the most compelling outcome of his research is his argument that in 1884 the hierarchy came to terms with Irish nationalism in what he describes as an 'informal concordat.' This finding opened a new way of understanding church-state relationships a generation later in a new nation-state." Miller also described Larkin as having "the ideal attributes for an adviser of a graduate student seeking a career in the academic world—he was both demanding and supportive." Read the complete obituary.

Peter Novick

Peter Novick, a University of Chicago historian whose specialty was the study of history itself, or historiography, died February 17 at the age of 77. Novick, professor emeritus of history, explored how different views of the past can shape the retelling of history and establish narratives that have a power of their own. Novick's interest in how the past is talked, thought, and written about led to two landmark books: That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge University Press, 1988) and The Holocaust in American Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999). "That Noble Dream dissected and deflated the 'myth,' as Peter called it, of scientific objectivity that had legitimated the institutionalization of history in the American university from the late 19th century on," said Jan Goldstein, the Norman and Edna Freehling Professor of History. "The Holocaust in American Life developed the even more iconoclastic thesis that a segment of American Jewry had enlisted the Holocaust remembrance as a way of preventing their thoroughgoing assimilation into the American mainstream," Goldstein continued. "What is remarkable about these two books is that in them, Peter trained his powerful intellect on two salient aspects of his own identity: his professional identity as a historian and his cultural identity as a secular American Jew. "While Peter had chosen these topics for intensely personal reasons, his personal involvement never compromised the rigor of his research and analysis," according to Goldstein. "That he was deeply ambivalent about both academic history and Jewishness only raised the stakes. Written in a crystalline prose that appears effortless, the books are stunning works of history-cum-cultural commentary and, from the vantage point of their author, acts of moral courage." A memorial service was held in Bond Chapel on May 22. Read the complete obituary.  

Alumni

Fred C. Iklé

Fred C. Iklé, AM'48, PhD'50 (Sociology), died November 10 in Bethesda, MD. He was 87. Iklé held federal appointments, including director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under Presidents Nixon and Ford and undersecretary of defense for policy during both Reagan administrations. He received the 1987 Distinguished Public Service Medal from the Department of Defense. In 1988 Iklé joined the Center for Strategic and International Studies as a distinguished scholar. Also holding positions with Harvard's Center for International Affairs and the RAND Corporation, he published several books, most recently Annihilation from Within: The Ultimate Threat to Nations (Columbia University Press, 2006). An obituary published in the Wall Street Journal stated, "The Cold War ended with a glorious whimper 20 years ago, which means that too few young Americans will have heard of the contributions of Fred Iklé. The far-seeing defense strategist was one of those who helped win that long twilight struggle, as it was once known, without a US-Soviet nuclear exchange."

Michael Mussa

Describing Mussa's contributions as a faculty member, Booth emeritus professor Robert Aliber told Laura M. Browning, AM'06, "Mike was brilliant—and fearless, always ready to challenge his older colleagues and to provide guidance to MBA and PhD students. His technical competence was superb, but he was one of the few with these skills who had a strong sense of relevance. Mike had a keen sense of policy, and how ambitious one might be in advancing policy reforms. He was remarkable in his understanding of public finance, monetary theory and policy, international trade and international money. Few matched his breadth as a one-person department."

James Q. WIlson

James Q. Wilson, AM'57, PhD'59 (Political Science), died March 2 in Boston. He was 80. Pioneer of the "broken windows" theory that eliminating markers of community decay such as vandalism would create safer neighborhoods, Wilson received the 2003 Presidential Medal of Freedom. After 25 years at Harvard, Wilson joined UCLA's Anderson School of Management and later Pepperdine University. Adviser to many politicians and police officials, he wrote or cowrote several books, including American Government: Institutions and Policies (D. C. Heath, 1980) and Crime and Human Nature (Simon & Schuster, 1985). Given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Political Science Association, Wilson also received the 2006 UChicago Alumni Association Alumni Medal. In 2011 the American Enterprise Institute created a chair named in Wilson's honor. An obituary in the Wall Street Journal described Wilson as a quintessential political scientist: "Jim Wilson liked to get things right, which as far as we can remember he always was. Wilson was indeed a political scientist, and in the old-fashioned sense: he only concluded what the evidence allowed, and he applied this method to politics, broadly defined as the choices we make about how we govern ourselves. Over his career, as the modern university grew more and more obscurantist and irrelevant, Wilson's scholarship—on everything from poverty to crime to bureaucracy to morals—moved public policy and changed America for the better."