Department History Report
Department History Project Underway
by Crawford Young, Professor Emeritus
(From Fall, 2002 Newsletter)
A generous gift from Emeritus Professor Clara Penniman has catalyzed plans for preparation of a history of the department. A number of emeritus faculty will take part in the project, under the direction of Crawford Young, with the active assistance of Booth Fowler and Leon Epstein. The project builds upon earlier interests in historical preservation by the late Llewellyn Pfankuchen and Booth Fowler, who began assembling materials three decades ago. An early product of these efforts was a brochure published in 1975 providing biographical information on our doctoral alumni from 1896 to 1975.
Centennial sensibilities might have been expected to revive the project, but the prodding of the Penniman gift was essential to relaunching the history. Paradoxically, one of the first discoveries is that the precise dating of the departmental birth is elusive. A course on “civil polity” was taught from the 1849 creation of the University, initially by the President, and one finds archival references to a “department of political science” as early as 1888; however, at the time the term “department” lacked clear administrative meaning. A key step was the recruitment of Richard T. Ely from Johns Hopkins in 1892, who was enticed in part by the creation of a “School of Economics, Political Science, and History” under his directorship. The official history of the University, written by Merle Curti and Vernon Carstenson, declares without supporting evidence that the Department was created in 1901. The formal date, however, appears to be January 1904, when the Board of Regents approved a proposal from President Charles Van Hise and the College of Letters and Science to create a Department of Political Science.
Still, the first doctorate was awarded in 1896, to Samuel Spalding, with a second to Paul Reinsch in 1898. Both became founding members of the embryonic Department. Reinsch swiftly achieved prominence as an international relations specialist, putting us on the national map, and playing an important role in the creation of the American Political Science Association. He was named Ambassador to China by President Wilson in 1913, resigning in 1919 over his disappointment at the treatment of China at the Versailles peace conference. He returned to Wisconsin to run (unsuccessfully) for the U.S. Senate on the Democratic ticket in 1920, and died in 1923. In addition to a chronological narrative covering the first century,for the postwar era of departmental scholarship we plan chapters by Charles Jones on American politics, Booth Fowler on political theory, David Tarr on international relations, Crawford Young on comparative politics, and Don Kettl on public administration. Jack Dennis will explore the behavioral revolution and its impact on the Department, and Richard Merelman will draw upon his forthcoming book on the Yale Political Science Department and the rise of pluralist theory for comparative exploration of intellectual currents and influences in our Department. The book length volume will explore our past in various other spheres: its role in state policy, university governance, and national professional associations, for example, and will build upon and update the Pfankuchen directory.
Rich material is available for this project. Several early luminaries (Reinsch, Frederic Ogg, John Gaus) left extensive papers. A dozen oral history interviews of long-serving faculty exist, and more will be completed. The project will take least two years to complete.