Department of Government

Newsletter — June 2017

Contents

Greetings from the Chair 2

Faculty News 3

New Faculty Appointments 3

Accomplishments and Achievements 4

Augmentations 11

Student and Alumni Achievements 12

Dissertation Prizes 15

Graduate Placement 16

Twitter and blogs 17

Event Highlights 17

Happy Birthday Sid Verba! 18

Sidney, We Want Another Song! 19

Sidney Verba: Dayenu 20

Toast 21

Greetings 22

Department of Government

Newsletter

June 2017

Greetings from the Chair

Hello,

I am delighted to welcome you to the second bi-annual (almost) newsletter from the Department of Government. We have had fun collecting interesting pieces of news, ranging from two new departmental babies to publications and honors—and we hope you have fun reading them. We have a pretty impressive set of colleagues, students, and alumni, if I do say so myself.

It has, of course, been a busy and intense spring. In addition to the usual breakneck pace of teaching, advising, participating in committees, traveling, and attempting to do a little research and writing in the interstices, we have all been mesmerized by the political goings-on in the United States, Great Britain, France, North Korea, Syria, Brazil, and elsewhere. Whatever else one can say about the contemporary political environment, it is generating full employment for political scientists both inside and out of academia. It gives me some gratification even in this complex political moment to realize how many of us there are in various locations, and how well we have been taught and continue to absorb and disseminate ideas, values, and information.

I was pleased to hear from some of you after the first newsletter, so it would be great to hear more. Several people suggested some sort of mechanism for Gov Department PhD alumni to be directly in touch with one another. That is a great idea, and if any of you want to take it up and create that mechanism, please let me know. If we get no volunteers, we will try to spend some time this summer setting up an easy, maintenance-free way to connect you with one another (but see previous paragraph…).

Two stalwarts of the department’s staff are retiring this summer—Joanna Lindh and Diana Wojcik. We will greatly miss them, and their help and expertise, but we wish them the best in retirement. Some faculty retirements are also on the horizon, but luckily none right now.

Best to all,

Jennifer

govchair@fas.harvard.edu

Faculty News:

New Faculty Appointments

Katrina Forrester

o Katrina Forrester is a lecturer in political thought at Queen Mary University of London. In the summer 2017, she will become an assistant professor of Government and Social Studies. Katrina took her BA, MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge. During her PhD, she spent a year at Harvard University. In 2012-14, she held a Junior Research Fellowship at St John’s College, Cambridge, and in Spring 2015 she was a visiting scholar at NYU Gallatin. In Spring 2016 she was a program director for the intercollegiate MA in the History of Political Thought and Intellectual History. She will teach feminist theory and contemporary political philosophy; she has also written on climate change, American intellectual history, and pornography (in The New Yorker).

Katrina’s first book is Reinventing Morality: A History of American Political Thought since the 1950s (Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

Pia Raffler

Pia Raffler is a Fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization

and Governance and the Center for the Study of Democratic

Politics at Princeton University; she joins the Government

Department as an assistant professor in the fall of 2017. She

studies the political economy of local governance, in particular in

Sub-Saharan Africa. Her dissertation research focuses on

political oversight of bureaucrats and implications for public

service provision in local governments in Uganda. It has won the

Best Fieldwork Award and an honorable mention for Best

Graduate Student Paper on African Affairs from the American

Political Science Association. Pia uses experimental, quasi-

experimental and qualitative methods to measure causal effects

and seek to disentangle the underlying mechanisms. She holds a

Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University.

Pia will teach in the fields of political economy of development,

African politics, and experimental methods.

Accomplishments and Activities Daniele Allen

Danielle Allen, University Professor of Government, and her colleague Emily

Sneff announced a discovery of a previously unknown early handwritten

parchment of the Declaration deep within a provincial archive in Britain.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/arts/a-new-parchment-declaration-

of-independence-surfaces-head-scratching-ensues.html?_r=0

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/declaration-different-

from-any-copy-we-had-seen/

Timothy Colton

Professor Colton was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences

(Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen), Vienna, September–

December 2016, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor, National University

of Singapore, January–June 2017. He recently published Russia: What

Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, September 2016), and

Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet

Eurasia (Adelphi Books, International Institute for Strategic Studies, January

2017) (with Samuel Charap), as well as a special issue on “Russia Beyond

Putin,” Daedalus (spring 2017) and “Who Defects? Unpacking a Defection

Cascade from Russia's Dominant Party 2008–12,” American Political Science

Review (May 2017) (with Henry E. Hale).

Tim was awarded the Walter Channing Cabot Fellowship, Harvard

University, 2017, “for distinguished accomplishments in the fields of

literature, history, or art, broadly conceived,” with reference to Russia:

What Everyone Needs to Know.

Carlos E. Diaz Rosillo

Harvard government lecturer and Dunster House resident dean Carlos E.

Diaz Rosillo accepted a position in President-elect Donald Trump’s

administration to serve as the Director of Policy and Interagency

Coordination in the Office of the Senior Advisor to the President for Policy

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/1/19/diaz-rosillo-trump-

administration/

Jorge Dominguez

Professor Dominguez and his co-editors published a book Social Policies

and Decentralization in Cuba: Change in the Context of 21st Century Latin

America. Among many other elements, it “had also a brief description of

my being investigated by the US government for paying for coffee and

cookies in Cuba under the Bush administration without a prior specific

license for this purpose.”

Ryan Enos

Professor Enos received an award for his project on intergenerational

mobility from Russell Sage Foundation

https://www.russellsage.org/new-small-awards-intergenerational-mobility-

united-states

Do Public Works Programs Increase Intergenerational Mobility? Evidence

from the Works Administration

Enos will investigate the extent to which the state can facilitate

intergenerational mobility by studying the implementation of the Works

Progress Administration (WPA) between 1935-43. He hypothesizes that

increased individual-level participation in the WPA program and county-

level exposure to WPA spending should increase intergenerational mobility

at the individual and county levels, respectively. Enos will utilize a micro

and macro level research design. He will collect original data on WPA

participation; link them to the 1915 Iowa State Census records and the

1940 Federal Census. He will then use machine learning algorithms to

automate the record linkage process. At the county-level, Enos will use data

on WPA spending combined with data from the Equality of Opportunity

project. For causal identification, he will leverage age eligibility

discontinuities in individual-level WPA participation and topographical

features to produce exogenous variation in the individual propensity to sign

up for the WPA program and the county-level demand for WPA spending.

A former undergraduate made a gift to the Harvard GSE in Ryan’s honor

through the “Applaud an Educator Initiative.” Its goal was to recognize the

professor’s many contributions to her own education.

Ryan also finished his book “The Space Between Us: Social Geography and

Politics”; it will be published this fall by Cambridge University Press.

Jennifer Hochschild

Professor Hochschild posted two blogs - at the Brookings Institution on

“What happens next? A tour of social scientists’ predictions for the Trump

presidency” and at e-International Relations, on “What will Americans,

Britons, or Hungarians do in the name of nationalism?”

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/01/06/tour-of-trump-

predictions/

http://www.e-ir.info/2017/05/31/what-will-americans-britons-or-

hungarians-do-in-the-name-of-nationalism/

She was a Visiting Lecturer for Phi Beta Kappa in 2016-17, spending about

three days at each of eight colleges and universities. She taught classes,

met with terrific students and faculty across the social sciences (and

occasionally humanities), and gave a public lecture at each school.

Jennifer hosted the Cambridge-Harvard-Oxford workshop on “Inequality,

Politics, Policy, and Culture in the Post-industrial World”. The theme of the

meeting was “populism, old and new, left and right.” It brought together a

fantastic set of scholars on contemporary and historical manifestations of

populist politics; they came from the United States, Britain, and France.

Thanks to the Weatherhead Center and the HKS Weiner Center for support,

and to Ph.D. student Kaneesha Johnson for her intellectual and

organizational contributions.

In June, Jennifer is presenting “Misinformation: Putting Trump’s Alternative

Facts into Context” at the Alumni Affairs and Development Summer All-

Staff Conference at Harvard University.

Jennifer was one of the dozen or so participants in a series of New York

Times’ Upshot columns, in which the reporters “asked experts across the

ideological spectrum . . . to rate news events for importance and

abnormality.” The first article in the series is at:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/27/upshot/whats-normal-

whats-important-a-ranking-of-20-events-in-the-trump-

administration.html?mcubz=0&_r=0

Torben Iversen

Professor Iversen was elected into the American Academy of Arts and

Sciences

https://www.amacad.org/content/news/pressReleases.aspx?pr=20274

He received the Rigmor and Carl Holst-Knudsens Science Prize - one of

Denmark's oldest awards, conferred annually by the University of Aarhus to

honor two researchers, across disciplines. It comes with a 100,000 kroner

cash prize.

Torben was awarded the BP Centennial Professorship in the Department of

Government at the London School of Economics for the academic year

2016-17.

Steven Levitsky

Professor Levitsky’s co-authored work with Professor Ziblatt was featured

in the New York Time’s article “Comey’s Firing Tests Strength of the

“Guardrails of Democracy”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/upshot/comeys-firing-tests-

strength-of-the-guardrails-of-democracy.html?_r=0

Paul E. Peterson

Paul E. Peterson published a Letter to the Editor in the Wall Street Journal

on “American Exceptionalism Isn’t a Modern Idea”. After all, Alexis de

Tocqueville concluded in the 1830s that “the situation of the Americans is

entirely exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will

ever be put in the same situation.”

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tu25hnvxepq48r1/05.02.17%20WSJ%20Amer

ican%20Exceptionalism%20Isn%E2%80%99t%20a%20Modern%20Idea.pdf?

dl=0

Michael Sandel

Speaking at the Law School, “Justice” professor Michael Sandel examined

the forces that lifted Donald Trump to the presidency: “To understand

Trump, learn from his voters: How Trump seized the moment.”

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/02/to-understand-trump-

learn-from-his-

voters/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaig

n=02.23.2017%20%281%29

Michael’s articles and interviews on what progressives can learn from

Brexit, the election of Trump, and the populist uprising include:

Interview at World Economic Forum, Davos:

https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-

meeting-2017/sessions/an-insight-an-idea-with-michael-sandel

Lecture at Harvard Law School:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/02/to-understand-

trump-learn-from-his-voters/

Article in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/01/theme

s-of-2016-progressive-parties-address-peoples-anger-in-2017

and others:

http://justiceharvard.org/news/

“Michael Sandel and Chinese Philosophy” was an international symposium

in Shanghai exploring points of contact between Sandel’s philosophy and

the Confucian and Daoist traditions:

http://english.ecnu.edu.cn/16/40/c1703a71232/page.htm

Michael also gave an invited address at the Supreme Court of Brazil

(Supremo Tribunal Federal) on “Public Ethics and Democracy” (begins at

37:15): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZiU6WnZkoI

Theda Skocpol

A new research project directed by Theda Skocpol along with Katherine

Swartz at the School of Public Health and Mary Waters in the Department

of Sociology aims to track civic, economic, and policy developments over

the next two to four years in eight non-big city counties located in four

states – North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Researchers

will repeatedly interview and keep in touch with, not only a cross-section of

everyday citizens, but also key local leaders – public officials, business

group leaders, hospital administrators, heads of political parties and civic

groups. As partisan divides sharpen and abrupt policy changes happen in

Washington, how do people in smaller cities and towns understand and act

on new challenges and opportunities – and who do they credit or blame for

unfolding shifts they like or find problematic? Key parts of the research will

focus especially in shifts in health care and education, the local economy,

movements around the two political parties, and relations between natives

and immigrants.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t1tb81sp5rvd2lo/Harvard%20Counties%20Pr

oject%20short%20description%20spring%202017.pdf?dl=0

Daniel Smith

Professor Smith was promoted to Associate Professor (beginning July 1,

2017)

Dan’s first book, Dynasties and Democracy, has been accepted for

publication by Stanford University Press. He is now working on a second

book project about electoral and legislative coalitions in Japan. He received

a Clark award from FAS to support his research.

Jim Snyder

Professor Snyder recently published three articles and two book chapters;

several of his co-authors are current or former Harvard PhD. Students. One

article won the Hicks-Tinbergen Award for the best article published in the

Journal of the European Economics Association for 2015-16

https://gov.harvard.edu/news/prof-james-snyder%E2%80%99s-paper-

balanced-us-press-has-been-awarded-2016-hicks-tinbergen-award

Jim delivered the keynote address at the NICEP Political Economy

Conference, Nottingham UK, June 2016

https://nicep.nottingham.ac.uk/inaugural-conference/

He also gave the keynote address at the Barcelona GSE Summer Forum,

Barcelona Spain, June 2017 http://www.barcelonagse.eu/summer-forum

Dustin Tingley

Professor Tingley was invited to serve on the Editorial Committee of

the Annual Review of Political Science.

http://www.annualreviews.org/journal/polisci

Dustin’s recent publications can be found here,

https://scholar.harvard.edu/dtingley/publications:

Daniel Ziblatt

Professor Ziblatt published—“Conservative Parties and the Birth of

Democracy (Cambridge University Press):

How do democracies form and what makes them die? Daniel Ziblatt revisits

this timely and classic question in a wide-ranging historical narrative that

traces the evolution of modern political democracy in Europe from its

modest beginnings in 1830s Britain to Adolf Hitler's 1933 seizure of power

in Weimar Germany. Based on rich historical and quantitative evidence, the

book offers a major reinterpretation of European history and the question

of how stable political democracy is achieved. The barriers to inclusive

political rule, Ziblatt finds, were not inevitably overcome by unstoppable

tides of socioeconomic change, a simple triumph of a growing middle class,

or even by working class collective action. Instead, political democracy's

fate surprisingly hinged on how conservative political parties - the historical

defenders of power, wealth, and privilege - recast themselves and coped

with the rise of their own radical right. With striking modern parallels, the

book has vital implications for today's new and old democracies under

siege.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0521172993/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF

8&qid=1489940545&sr=8-

1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=ziblatt&dpPl=1&dpID=513yTjcRb

XL&ref=plSrch

Many current or former Government Department faculty and students participated in a book in honor

of David Mayhew, Governing in a Polarized Age: Elections, Parties, and Political Representation. The

editors were Alan Gerber and Eric Schickler; authors included Stephen Ansolabehere, Katherine Levine

Einstein, John Mark Hansen, Jennifer Hochschild, Maxwell Palmer, James Snyder, and Benjamin Schneer.

Augmentations

We’ve had two new babies in the department this year.

Congratulations to the families of Professor Ryan Enos and Professor Dustin

Tingley on the arrival of their new baby girls!

Get ready for laughter, big noise and lots of hugs!

Student and Alumni Achievements

Becca Goldstein

Hye Young You

Becca Goldstein, PhD student

Becca together with Hye Young You, PhD ’14, published an article, “Cities

as Lobbyists” In the American Journal of Political Science:

Although almost all scholarship on lobbying focuses on the lobbying

activities of corporations, state and local governments make up over 10%

of all of the federal lobbying disclosure reports that have been statutorily

mandated since 1998. Becca and Hye’s paper analyzes a novel data set of

over 13,000 of these reports submitted by large cities from 1998 to 2012;

they find that cities that lobby the most are politically liberal cities

situated in politically conservative states. Additionally, using the existence

of a direct flight from the city to Washington, D.C. as an instrumental

variable, they show that a 10% increase in lobbying spending increases the

awarded dollar amount of earmarks and Recovery Act grants by 10.2%

and 4.7%, respectively.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12306/full

Alisha C. Holland

Alisha C. Holland, PhD ’14, Assistant Professor in the Politics

Department at Princeton University

Her article “Forbearance” received the 2017 Heinz I. Eulau award for

the best article published in the APSR during the previous year

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-

core/content/view/3BE0D1D5085F962CE168D8891519AC60/S0003055

416000083a.pdf/forbearance.pdf

Gabrielle Malina

Gabrielle Malina, PhD student

Gabrielle’s articles in the New York Times and the Atlantic discussed the

dataset that she had compiled with Eitan Hersh, PhD ’11 (currently Assistant

Professor of Political Science at Yale). It links American clergy across forty

Judeo-Christian denominations to their voting files, giving us their party

affiliation and turnout, along with basic demographic information. The Times

article was a descriptive look at their data on clergy's political affiliations and

demographic trends. The Atlantic summarized their findings, putting into

perspective the main result that American pastors are even more polarized

than their congregations. That is important, but perhaps distressing, finding to

those who would prefer religion and politics to remain separate spheres.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/12/upshot/the-politics-of-

americas-religious-leaders.html?src=twr&_r=1

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/churches-and-

partisanship/530013/?utm_source=atlfb

Melissa Sand

Melissa Sand, Harvard University researcher, PhD student was identified in a

Los Angeles Times article on “seven science stories we can't wait to follow in

2017”:

“Rallying support for economic fairness? A new study tosses some fresh

experimental findings: Among the affluent people a clear reminder of

others’ poverty does not induce a show of generosity”

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-income-inequality-

psychology-20170109-story.html

Shanna Weitz

Shanna Weitz, PhD student

Shanna Weitz co-authored an article on “Challenging Group-based

Segregation and Isolation: Whether and Why.”

It will be published in a book on A Shared Future, through the auspices of

Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Tess Wise

Shauna Shames

Tess Wise, PhD student and Shauna Shames, PhD ‘14

Tess Wise (a consummate methodologist) and Shauna Shames (gender expert

and now at Rutgers University, Camden) worked for several years on the

problems of gender-linked trends, patterns, and culture/hegemony as seen

through the use of complex statistical methodologies in political science. Their

findings appear in “Gender, Diversity, and Methods in Political Science: A

Theory of Selection and Survival Biases” in PS: Political Science and Politics

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-

politics/article/gender-diversity-and-methods-in-political-science-a-theory-of-

selection-and-survival-biases/9AB3B75F3F6E47C3650ECFFB4872E69F

Tess also received a research award from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing

Studies.

Jinyan Zang

Jinyan Zang, PhD student

Jinyan was a 2017 recipient of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New

Americans https://www.pdsoros.org/meet-the-fellows/jinyan-zang

Dissertation Prizes

The Edward M. Chase Prize for the best dissertation

on a subject relating to the promotion of world

peace was awarded to Tae-Yeoun Keum for “Plato

and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought.”

The two Senator Charles Sumner Prizes for the best

dissertations “from the legal, political, historical,

economic, social, or ethnic approach, dealing with

any means or measures tending toward the

prevention of war and the establishment of

universal peace” were awarded to Volha Charnysh

for “Migration, Diversity, and Economic

Development: Post-WWII Displacement in Poland”

and Mike Hankinson for “Why is Housing So Hard to

Build? Four Papers on the Collective Action Problem

of Spatial Proximity.”

The Robert Noxon Toppan prize for the best

dissertation upon a subject of political science is

shared by Jonathan Bruno for “Democracy Beyond

Disclosure: Secrecy, Transparency, and the Logic of

Self-Government” and

Sole Prillaman for “Why Women Mobilize:

Dissecting and Dismantling India’s Gender Gap in

Political Participation”

Yue “Iza” Ding has been selected as the recipient of

the 2017 Virginia M. Walsh Dissertation Award from

the Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics

(STEP) section of the American Political Science

Association for “Invisible Sky, Visible State:

Environmental Governance and Political Support in

China.”

Graduate Placement

The department has an excellent record of graduate placement. Recent PhD’s have obtained positions

at leading universities and colleges, and at leading organizations in government, nonprofits, and

industry. These are the placement results so far, for 2016-17:

LAST FIRST SUBFIELD PLACEMENT

Alfaro Adriana Theory TT, ITAM Mexico

Charnysh Volha Comp/IR TT, MIT

Clough Emily Comp TT, Northeastern

Dasgupta Aditya Comp TT, UC Merced

Gidron Noam Comp TT, Hebrew University

Hankinson Michael Amer Post-Doc at Oberlin

Harpham John Theory TT, Middlebury College

Javed Jeffrey Comp 2yr post-doc at Michigan

Keum Tae-Yeoun Theory 4yr post-doc at Oxford

Khosla Madhav Theory Harvard Society of Fellows

Lall Ranjit IR Post-Doc, Princeton

Pamuk Zeynep Theory Post-Doc, Oxford

Prillaman Soledad Comp/Methods TT, Stanford

Rios Viridiana Comp TT, Purdue

Sands Melissa Amer/Methods TT, UC Merced

Zacka Bernardo Theory TT, MIT

Follow us on Twitter and check out our blog postings:

Muhammet Bas, Associate Professor Twitter: @muhammet_a_bas

Ryan Enos, Associate Professor Twitter: @RyanDEnos

Jacob Hoerger, PhD student https://medium.com/@jacobhoerger

Tyler Jost, PhD student Twitter: @tcjost

Joshua Kertzer, Assistant Professor Twitter: @jkertzer

Gary King, Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor Twitter: @KingGary

Christopher Lucas, PhD student Twitter: @cd_lucas

Daniel Smith, Assistant Professor Twitter: @smith_harvard

Event Highlights

On March 7th the Government Department held the second Faculty panel to discuss

The Trump presidency: the first 100 days

Participants were Daniel Carpenter, Ryan Enos, Jennifer Hochschild, Iain Johnston, Harvey Mansfield,

Theda Skocpol, Daniel Ziblatt

The video recording can be found here:

https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/Dh8eV/fi-930ac12c-1233-47be-b80f-e21eaee15683/fv-d3919c4f-

6109-4302-8c4f-1bef36b208df/20170307-Gov_Dept_Panel-First_100_Days.mp4

And, last but not least…

On June 3, Professor Verba’s family and friends gathered together to wish him a happy

birthday!

The festivities broke out into song and poetry:

Sidney, We Want Another Song!

Words and music by Allen Feinstein

Premiere performance by Andrea Campbell

Sure he wrote a hundred books

And led the whole profession

But if you ask him to be frank

He’ll give you a confession

He’s pretty good at Poli Sci

That judgment is empirical

But he really would have made a mark

If his job let him be lyrical

So while he’s still in his prime

We’d love to hear him rhyme…

Imagine how he would floor us

If we all could sing The Unheavenly Chorus

Sidney, we want another song!

Just think of all our jollity

If we could raise our Voice and Equality

Sidney, we want another song!

Instead of reading all that esoterica

Wouldn’t it be neat

If you could find a beat

in Participation in America?

Something where we could sing along

Sidney, we want another song!

He’d deserve to be a gloater

Harmonizing with The Changing American Voter

Sidney, we want another song!

We won’t mask our attraction

Humming Private Roots of Public Action

Sidney, we want another song!

Let’s end this somber mood you had us in

Sit down and write

Then reunite

With your quintet from James Madison*

We’ll never have to figure what went wrong

Sidney, we want another song!

So before he becomes a centenarian

We want more tunes from the Harvard Librarian

Happy 85th!—You’ve made us wait too

long

Sidney, we want another song—

Sidney, we want another song!

*(James Madison High School alums Ruth Bader

Ginsburg, Charles Schumer, Bernie Sanders,

Carole King, and Sidney Verba)

Sidney Verba: Dayenu! (Congratulations from Robert and Rosemary Putnam)

June 3, 2017

Rosemary: If he had only pleased his parents as the brightest boy in his graduating class at

James Madison High School, dayenu.

Bob: If he had been the brightest boy at James Madison High, and not gone to Harvard

College, dayenu.

If he’d gone to Harvard College and had not in his sophomore summer seduced the cutest, smartest

camp counselor, dayenu.

If he’d seduced that camp counselor and she’d not turned out to be a world-class expert on Rameau,

dayenu.

If she’d become a Rameau expert and they had not co-parented three wonderful daughters and two

exceptional grandchildren, dayenu.

If the two of them had not co-parented such talented off-spring, and he had not written the

foundational volume on experimental political science half a century before experiments became

fashionable, dayenu.

If he’d founded experimental political science, but not become a protégé of one of the best political

scientists of the 20th century, dayenu.

If he’d become a protégé of Gabriel Almond, but they had not co-authored The Civic Culture, which

(through an accidental encounter at Blackwells in Oxford) introduced me to political science, dayenu.

If he’d written the Civic Culture, but hadn’t won every top honor in the world for social science, dayenu.

If he’d won every top honor in the world for social science, but hadn’t been named by M Magazine one

of the best-dressed professors in America, dayenu.

If he had been celebrated for his tweediest attire, but hadn’t been a phenomenal mentor and teacher to

hundreds of students and colleagues over more than half a century, dayenu.

If he’d been a phenomenal mentor, and not read my doctoral dissertation and suggested that it be cut

by one-third (quoting Sen. Aikens’ incisive advice on how to get out of Vietnam: “by boat”), dayenu.

If he had enabled Bob to publish his first book, but hadn’t recruited us to Harvard by taking us to the

best cannoli shop in the North End, dayenu.

If he had recruited us to Harvard, and hadn’t been Mr. Fix-It for Harvard’s most difficult administrative

problems for three decades, dayenu.

If he had fixed all of Harvard’s problems, but not put new emphasis on sexual harassment, dayenu.

If he had highlighted sexual harassment, but hadn’t become one of the most creative librarians in the

world, dayenu.

If he had become one of the world’s top librarians, but didn’t have the best sense of humor this side of

the Catskills, dayenu.

And if he had been the Al Franken of political science, but hadn’t, with Cynthia, hosted the largest,

longest running seder in the North East – Dayenu!

Toast from Kay L. Schlozman (J. Joseph Moakley Professor, Department of Political Science, Boston

College)

Four score and five years ago Morris and Recci Verba brought forth on this continent, a political

scientist, conceived in Brooklyn, and dedicated to the proposition that all participants are created

equal.

Now we are engaged in a great methodological war, testing whether that political scientist, or any

political scientist who cannot code in R, can long endure. We are met in an elegant Cambridge

apartment. We have come to celebrate a wise and witty colleague who has devoted his life that the

discipline might prosper. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot appreciate -- we cannot celebrate -- we cannot adulate -- this man.

The academic world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget the

many things Sid did here. It is for us his colleagues and collaborators, rather, to be dedicated here to

the unfinished work which Sidney so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the

great task remaining before us -- that we here highly resolve that Sidney’s numerous scholarly inquiries

shall not have been conducted in vain -- that this nation’s democracy, under Trump, shall have a new

birth of academic scrutiny -- and that analysis of government of the people, by the profession, for the

people, shall not perish from the earth.

Greetings from Jeff Frieden

Jeff Frieden

June 2017

Sid and I lived in Brooklyn in very different epochs

Separated by decades and 120 blocks

For him a Dodger championship was nothing but a dream

For me a god-awful Yankee team made me want to scream

When I left UC for Harvard my chair Lenny Binder

Took me aside one day and gave me a reminder

If you need advice you can rely on my friend Sid

Stick with Sid Verba and you'll always wear diamonds, kid

We've been colleagues 20 years and if some sentiment is allowed

I can truly say that one of the things of which I am most proud

Is that I’d like to believe I can call Sid Verba a personal friend

Even as quite deservedly he heads off to his own garden tend

Hegel wrote, “The Owl of Minerva flies at twilight”

By which dictum he meant, I think, to highlight hindsight

But when it comes to wisdom and political insight

None can hold a candle to this quiet Brooklynite

The Owl of Minerva

Ain't got nothin’ on Sid Verba