"Ted Lowi was one of my earliest mentors in political science"

Ted Lowi co-taught my first class in American politics with Benjamin Ginsberg in what must have been the spring of 1985 semester. He was the more gregarious of the two professors, although in time I came to agree much more with the cynical and anarchistic critiques of Dr. Ginsberg than with Lowi’s relatively optimistic and moderate recommendations.

When I graduated summa in government in the spring of 1988, Lowi was the master of ceremonies at the presentation with my honors mentor, Jeremy Rabkin. When Dr. Lowi announced my name and award, he almost shouted the word “summa” as a way to congratulate me. The accompanying gift card for books funded further reading in political theory and constitutional law (Dworkin and Bork, if my memory serves me correctly).

Later, while a grad student in political science at Yale, I participated in a career seminar he led for PhD candidates at the American Political Science Association meeting in, I think, DC. At the beginning of the session, he asked us to go around the table and introduce ourselves, and when I mentioned that I was at Yale and had gotten my AB from Cornell, he sat up and applauded.

Even later, as a young assistant professor at Central Michigan University in the late 1990s, I was myself teaching intro to American politics but selected Susan Welch's textbook over Lowi’s because the Welch reading was much more critical of the whole American system and spent more time discussing race and gender.

The local publisher’s rep for Lowi’s press found out about my treason, however, and induced him to e-mail me about my poor judgment. Lowi and I discussed the matter for several go-rounds by e-mail, but he was ultimately unable to convince me to adopt his primer and was also unwilling to revise it to suit, say, the spirit of Leon Trotsky. But he did graciously put me in touch with his International Political Science Association buddy Rainer Eisfeld, who worked at the University of Osnabrueck, Germany. I was about to leave the US for an extended research stay in Osnabrueck, so Eisfeld took me out for dinner upon my arrival in Deutschland and showed me around the town and university. Much later, I did use parts of Lowi’s liberalism book for my Pepperdine course on urban politics (especially his discussion of racial segregation in the South).

Ted Lowi was one of my earliest mentors in political science, and the example of his morally committed teaching, research, and personal life continues to inspire me.

Joel S. Fetzer

Cornell Class of 1988

Frank R. Seaver Professor of Social Science and Professor of Political Science

Pepperdine University