Winfield Scott “Ed” Bollinger

Winfield Scott “Ed” Bollinger, a member of the political science department at the University of Toledo for 45 years, passed away on August 25, 2012, at the age of 76. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Ed spent his entire professional career at the University of Toledo. He was married to Genevieve Jackson Bollinger for 51 years, and they raised three children.

After a brief time at a seminary in upstate New York, Ed graduated from St. John's Preparatory School in 1953. Upon graduation, he went to work for General Electric. He received an associate degree in electrical engineering from the RCA Institute in 1955 and worked on an early warning detection team in Turkey and the Caribbean during the height of the Cold War. Upon his return, he attended Syracuse University, where he developed his interests in political science, public administration, and public law. He received a bachelor's degree in political science from Syracuse in 1963 and his doctoral degree in political science in 1969 through the Maxwell School of Public Affairs.

Ed joined the University of Toledo political science department in 1967, and he served on the faculty until his retirement, with emeritus status, in 2000. His emeritus citation reads in part:

Ed was an outstanding teacher. His courses in constitutional law were invariably oversubscribed and very well-received. His advanced courses in administrative law and the administration of criminal justice provided both undergraduate and graduate students with valuable insights into the administrative and judicial processes. His introductory courses in American national government were challenging and provocative, and his remarkable success in reaching and stimulating nonmajor undergraduates made him a role model for his colleagues.

In the 1970s, Ed took the initiative in the establishment and development of an ambitious and successful criminal justice program at the University of Toledo, and served as its director for almost two decades. The program was interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional, involving three colleges and several departments within the College of Arts and Sciences. It brought together academics from a range of disciplines, law enforcement practitioners, corrections officials, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges. The program's effectiveness was testimony to his administrative skills, and it made substantial contributions to the University and to the larger community.

Ed was an eloquent advocate for the principles of academic freedom, faculty rights, and faculty participation in university governance. These principles led him to assume a leadership position within the Toledo chapter of the American Association of University Professors and to play an instrumental role in the successful drive for collective bargaining at the University of Toledo. These efforts, while not always welcomed by administrators, transformed the University and have helped to protect and defend academic principles and the role and rights of the faculty.

Ed was an engaging and stimulating colleague. He combined strongly held and forcefully expressed convictions with humor and congeniality, and he made valuable contributions to the intellectual and interpersonal climate in the department of political science. His wit, irreverence, and skill as a raconteur served him and his colleagues well, making him a central figure in the department throughout his teaching career and after his official retirement. Something of a Renaissance man, Ed was a skilled artist and a talented musician. As a member of a faculty jazz quintet, his proficiency on the vibes and the harmonica enriched the cultural life of the University and the Toledo community.

Ed Bollinger was, in short, a fascinating and valuable and influential member of our community. He will be sorely missed.

—David S. Wilson, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of Toledo

Edward A. Goerner

Our friend and colleague Edward A. Goerner passed away on October 2, 2012. For more than a half century, as student and later as faculty member, Edward committed himself to and worked tirelessly for the growth of intellectual life at the University of Notre Dame.

As a student at Notre Dame from 1948 to 1952, Edward first became attracted to the intellectual life and its relationship to Catholicism. His mentors included renowned teacher Frank O'Malley, who introduced Edward to contemporary Catholic thought in his famous course on “Modern Catholic Writers.”

After graduation, and four years in the Navy, Edward went to graduate school in political science at the University of Chicago. There he also encountered great teachers such as Leo Strauss and Jerome Kerwin and became committed to the study of political philosophy. He wrote his dissertation on church and state under the direction of Kerwin, receiving his PhD in 1959.

His first appointment was at Yale in 1959. But when he received a call to return to Notre Dame, he did so in 1960. For the next 52 years he was a key figure in Notre Dame's growth as a university, the growth of the political science department in both its undergraduate and graduate dimensions, and as a tireless advocate of liberal education.

Edward was an integral part of the development of the department. He helped guide the department's growth from eight members to 48. He served long and wisely on the Committee on Appointments and Promotions, search committees, and as director of graduate studies. He was a mentor for young faculty, always ready to help them with research and teaching. He was a strong supporter of The Review of Politics, and served for many years as associate editor. On a college level, he founded and directed the Committee on Academic Progress, which provided top students with mentoring and steered them to the most challenging courses. He later founded and directed the small minor in philosophy, politics, and economics, which became the premier minor in the University.

One of the most revered teachers in Notre Dame history, in 1972 Edward was chosen winner of the Sheedy Excellence in Teaching Award, the annual award for the most outstanding teacher in the College of Arts and Letters. His courses were intense, focused, and intellectually rich. He regularly taught a large undergraduate course in political theory in which he had students read Hobbes's Leviathan, Rousseau's On the Social Contract, and Plato's Republic, and challenged them to engage these three demanding texts in critical conversation. The course seamlessly integrated the readings with lectures in which Goerner brought his formidable intellect to bear in interpreting the texts in light of perennial questions and current political realities. The course worked so well and on so many levels that his teaching assistants sometimes thought it was directed as much to their education as to that of the undergraduate students. He directed or was on the committees of scores of graduate students. He challenged them at every turn to articulate and defend their ideas and passed on his own combination of imaginative inquiry and exceptionally careful scholarship. At his death former students, from professors to deans and presidents of universities, to doctors and lawyers and members of the Federal Bench, all remembered him as a person who not only taught them, but changed their lives.

Edward's intellectual focus kept alive the questions raised in his early work, Peter and Caesar, a book regularly rediscovered by succeeding generations of scholars in the field. There he showed the contrast, (but not necessarily the opposition) between the transcendent experience in Greek Philosophy and the Christian experience of Incarnation. His scholarship also focused on questions of natural right and natural law, the naturalness of politics, and the central role of prudence.

Edward was devoted to Father Hesburgh's ideal of building a great Catholic university. During his whole career he encountered students whose families tended to see going to University as career training, rather than as a search for Truth. He helped introduce them to the life of the mind as both a noble life and also as great “fun,” a word he often used to describe what he was doing. He sent countless students on to graduate degrees at elite universities. In all of this he conducted himself with an inimitable fusion of intellectual seriousness, light-heartedness, and grace. In the classroom, in office hours, and often at his dinner table with his family, he nurtured students and convinced them that there were no limits to what they could aspire to, that they could be partners in the search for knowledge.

Edward was a central figure in the department, the college, and the University. He is too soon gone. He will be remembered, and he will be missed.

—John Roos, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame

Note: A similar In Memoriam piece is published in The Review of Politics.

Michael J. Horan

Professor Michael J. Horan passed away unexpectedly on August 16, 2012. For 37 years University of Wyoming students had the privilege of taking various courses from a consummate professional. Over the years he influenced generations of UW students and, in the process, generations of the Wyoming legal community through his courses on constitutional law and seminars on a wide variety of subjects involving the influence of law on American society. Throughout his classes, Mike demonstrated to students the wide impact government and particularly the judiciary have on American society.

Although members of the faculty knew Mike for his wit and sense of humor, his students knew him for his formal manner in the classroom and the high standards he set. Sometimes the best insights into our colleagues come by eavesdropping on conversations among students. A frequent topic of conversation among political science students was the challenge faced in taking one of Mike's classes. The week of a Horan test—especially the dreaded “Constitution test” with its many detailed questions about the provisions of the US Constitution—was nonpareil for watching students fret, panic, cram, and finally breathe long sighs of relief when the test was behind them. Most of UW political science faculty members had the experience of students informing us that they would miss a class because Mike was giving a test and they needed the extra study time. Our colleague Ken Griffin spoke for all of us when he remarked, “I always wondered how to instill that sense of fear in my students.”

But if the costs of taking a Mike Horan class were high for students, so were the rewards. Students frequently commented on the challenging nature of Mike's classes, the open classroom environment he fostered, and the objectivity he brought to classroom discussions. Mike set high standards for his students, but they were no higher than the standards he set for himself. Most days found him searching newspapers (and later the Internet) for the latest rulings of the US Supreme Court and lower American courts, looking for groundbreaking decisions and new cases to incorporate into his classes as applications of classic cases. All of this was presented to students with an ease and grace that belied the effort. It is not surprising that Mike was among first recipients of UW's John P. Ellbogen Meritorious Classroom Teaching Award and the recipient of a host of other honors, including College of Arts and Sciences “Top Twenty Teachers,” Mortar Board “Top Prof,” UW Circle of Omicron Delta Kappa's Outstanding Faculty Member, UW Alumni Association's Outstanding Faculty Award, and others. Mike concluded his career as the first recipient of the UW's Ellbogen Lifetime Teaching Award and, after his retirement in 2004, Mike was honored with the College of Arts and Sciences' Outstanding Former Faculty Award.

His students were not the only members of the UW community influenced by Mike. New faculty members in political science quickly learned that he was a valuable resource, someone who could answer questions about the United States and Wyoming Constitutions, could help explore ways of handling a troublesome class, and always ready to discuss pedagogical issues. Mike's door was open to his colleagues as well as his students.

A consummate professor, Mike also made numerous scholarly contributions. He was one of the leading authorities—perhaps the leading authority—on the development and principles of the Wyoming Constitution. Justices of the Wyoming Supreme Court might be more familiar with specific provisions of the document, but no one had a greater understanding of the concepts of law and democracy reflected in the state's constitution. Mike also made a lasting contribution to political science scholarship through his studies of judicial selection. Shortly after he arrived at UW, the Wyoming Constitution was amended to have judges on the state's courts chosen through the merit selection and retention process modeled after the Missouri Plan. Although a few other states had similar procedures for selecting judges, much about this process remained a mystery. One aspect of this process about which little was known at the time was how voters behaved when asked to decide whether a judge should remain in office. The mystery did not last long, however, as Mike teamed with Ken Griffin to produce a series of articles on judicial retention elections published in UW College of Law's Land and Water Law Review and several distinguished social science journals. Mike's interest in the topic remained over the years; one of the last master's theses he directed examined whether a judge's sentencing practices changed as the retention vote nears. On several occasions Mike shared his expertise on the American legal system on treks abroad. He was a visiting professor at Sophia University (Japan), visiting professor at the University of Swansea (Wales), and a member of USIA-supported delegations visiting Saratov State University in Russia and Heilongjong Province in the People's Republic of China for intellectual exchanges on facets of the American governmental system.

Mike was born October 25, 1938, in Trenton, New Jersey, to James and Mary (Moran) Horan. He graduated from Georgetown University, first with a bachelor's degree from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) and later with a doctorate in political science. While serving as a captain in the US Army's military intelligence division at Fort Hood, Texas, Mike met and married Ann, his beloved wife of 45 years. He is survived by Ann; their children David, Mark, and Susan; and one grandchild. Upon Mike's retirement, the University of Wyoming Foundation established the Michael and Ann Horan Endowment for Student Success to foster the study of public law.

B. Oliver Walter, University of Wyoming

James D. King, University of Wyoming