"He intentionally kept his Alabama accent"

My name is Van Hamilton Barbeau and I had the pleasure of having Professor Lowi as my academic advisor at Cornell. Before applying to Cornell, I was enrolled in a summer program at Stanford University focused on giving high school students an in-depth look at the American political system.

I was a rising high school junior the summer of this program and I distinctly remember one of the books the program used as part of our instruction. The book was entitled We The People and was authored by Benjamin Ginsberg, Margaret Weir, and most importantly Theodore J. Lowi. I was obsessed with the book by the end of the first week of the program, so I decided to do some background research on the authors. The author that impressed me the most was Professor Lowi, and I quickly decided that I should apply to Cornell because I would have the opportunity to take some of Professor Lowi’s classes.

I followed through with my decision to apply to Cornell, and fortunately I was accepted. The second semester of my freshman year at Cornell, I had the chance to take Professor Lowi’s 100-level Government class. The class was everything I dreamed of and Professor Lowi was even more inspiring than the image of him I had conjured up in my mind.

Throughout the rest of my college career, I took a few more classes with Professor Lowi, and in my sophomore year I was beyond elated when I found out that Professor Lowi would be my academic advisor. Everything had come full circle: I applied to Cornell solely because of Professor Lowi, I got in; I had the chance to take classes with Professor Lowi, and now he was my academic advisor. I couldn’t have been happier.

In my last two years of college, I would find any excuse to go talk to Professor Lowi during office hours. Sometimes we would talk about Political Economy, and other times he would just tell me stories about his life. The story that marked me the most was the anecdote Professor Lowi told me about how he intentionally kept his Alabama accent because he wanted to prove that people from the South, even with their Southern accents, could become renowned experts in their fields. My family is from North Carolina and I always felt like I had to hide my Southern roots at Cornell because there was a latent acceptance that people from the South weren’t as smart, especially those with Southern accents.

Professor Lowi’s story has stayed with me and made me feel comfortable speaking with a Southern accent in social settings. I’m not quite there yet when it comes to professional settings, but once I get near the pinnacle of my career and have established myself as the best in my field, I know that I’ll revert to having the thickest North Carolina accent this side of the Mason-Dixon, and I’ll be thinking of Professor Lowi with every “y’all” I speak.

Van Hamilton Barbeau

College of Arts and Sciences

Cornell Class of 2011