Century of political science marked at UW-Madison

A century of teaching the art and science of politics at UW–Madison will be celebrated this month, as the Department of Political Science looks both to its past and ahead to the future.

“Political science is a relatively new field of study, and Wisconsin was one of the first public universities in the nation to create its own department,” says Mark Beissinger, department chair. “It has a long record of training students who have risen to political prominence.”

Vice President Dick Cheney, for instance, did his doctoral work in the department, completing all requirements, except for a dissertation.

Other noted alumni include: former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger; U.S. Rep. David Obey; Tom Loftus, former state Assembly speaker and past U.S. ambassador to Norway; Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz; former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist; ABC Nightline correspondent Chris Bury; and former U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky.

In addition, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl graduated with degrees in American Institutions – a now defunct major that was a hybrid of political science and history.

The department’s centennial will be marked by two days of panel discussions on March 26-27, featuring many prominent alumni.

Obey will be addressing a luncheon sponsored by the political science honor fraternity, Pi Sigma Alpha, on March 27. Festivities will be capped by a gala dinner that evening featuring a keynote speech by U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold at the Concourse Hotel, 1 W. Dayton St., at 6:30 p.m. A list of other events is included below.

Cost for the two-day conference and dinner is $100 per person, and registration can be made online at www.uwalumni.com/polisci100 until March 5.

The department has more than 11,000 living alumni, and its nearly 1,100 majors make it the largest major within the College of Letters and Science.

“We have educated generations of Wisconsin citizens about our country, our state and our world,” Beissinger says.

Teaching is at the core of the department’s mission. “What’s attracted students is the consistent, high-quality teaching in the department, as well as the research that goes on,” Beissinger says, noting that the department’s average score on students’ teaching evaluations has been 4.42 on a 5-point scale.

Since the founding of the university, political science has been a work in progress, according to M. Crawford Young, an emeritus professor preparing a book-length history of the department.

Although the department was created by the College of Letters and Science and the Board of Regents in 1904, Young says the foundation of political science at UW–Madison was built much earlier.

John Lathrop, appointed as the university’s first president in 1848, was also a professor of “civil polity,” a course that he regularly taught. A more organized approach to political science came in 1892, with the creation of the School of Economics, Political Science and History.

That school awarded the first doctorates in political science to Samuel Sperling in 1896 and Paul Reinsch in 1898, and both went on to teach in the newly formed department. Reinsch became a central figure, building the school’s reputation for international studies.

Reinsch, an expert in East Asian affairs, was instrumental in organizing the American Political Science Association and went on to become U.S. ambassador to China in President Woodrow Wilson’s administration.

“Many of the outstanding scholars of American political science have made the department their intellectual home,” Beissinger says.

One of the most distinguished faculty members was Frederic A. Ogg, a member of the department for 34 years, a president of the American Political Science Association and editor of the American Political Science Review from 1926-1949. His text in American government was a seminal work that went through 12 editions.

Others included John Gaus, an influential expert in public administration and American politics in the 1930s and 1940s; David Fellman, hired in the 1950s to teach constitutional law; Henry Hart, a regional planning expert; John Armstrong, a Soviet affairs scholar; Leon Epstein, who taught British and American politics; William Young, who was founding chair of the Center for Development, a program that trains international student in public administration; and Clara Penniman, an expert in public administration and policy, and the 1968 creator of what is now the La Follette School of Public Affairs.

Young, whose work is funded largely through a gift from Penniman, says his history project draws on archival information as a well as a number of oral histories.

“There is great value in having current faculty have a sense of the intellectual heritage of the department and how it came to be what it is,” says Young. “There has been a tremendous diversity of thought, and the department has never signed onto a succession of fads.”

Beissinger says the department faces a promising future, with strong recent faculty hires and new initiatives, such as a Center for the Study of Politics. The center is intended to house the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which has done path-breaking analysis of campaign advertising and spending in 100 media markets nationwide.

“One of our strong traditions has been behavioral, with survey work, and quantitative work,” Beissinger says. “And while American politics has been a strength for us, we have great faculty in the areas of comparative politics and international studies.”

Full schedule of conference events

The two-day conference will also bring together faculty, students, alumni and emeritus faculty to examine political issues, the 2004 elections and the department’s history.

Beginning on Friday, March 26, at 1 p.m. in the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St., the department will honor Penniman, now a professor emerita who will soon turn 90. Young will then lead a discussion of the department’s history, followed by a roundtable discussion from 2:45-4:15 p.m. on “Wisconsin and the Discipline of Political Science” and a panel from 4:15-5:45 p.m. on “Wisconsin Political Science in Perspective.”

Starting at 8 a.m. Saturday, March 27, a series of tours and panel discussions will look at contemporary politics and the future of the department.

Here is the schedule:

8-9:15 a.m.: Bagels and coffee tour of Newslab, a new research center and home to the Wisconsin Advertising Project, widely cited in the media as the source of record on issues of campaign advertising and finance.

9:15-10:45 a.m.: Panel on “Toward the 2004 Elections,” chaired by Professor John Coleman and including Eloise Anderson, director of the Program for the American Family of the Claremont Institute; Washington, D.C. lawyer Robert Barnett, senior debate adviser to the Democratic Party; Madison lobbyist William McCoshen, former chief of staff to ex-Gov. Tommy G. Thompson; Madison attorney Mike Wittenwyler, a specialist on campaign finance issues and Professor Byron Shafer.

10:45 a.m-12:15 p.m.: Panel on “The Role of the Media in Politics,” chaired by Professor Virginia Sapiro, and including CBS national correspondent Rita Braver, ABC Nightline correspondent Chris Bury, Journal Communications president Douglas Kiel, Lawrence Lyttle of Paramount Pictures and Associate Professor Ken Goldstein.

1:30-3 p.m.: Panel on “American Foreign Policy in a Post 9/11 World,” chaired by Professor Ed Friedman, and including Tom Loftus, special adviser to the director general of the World Health Organization; J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Africa Program; Robert H. Trice Jr., vice president for development at the Lockheed Martin Corp., and professor Michael Barnett.

3:15-4:15 p.m.: New faculty showcase, “The Future of Wisconsin Political Science,” moderated by Professor David Weimer and including recent faculty additions Joe Soss, Kathy Cramer Walsh, Jon Pevehouse and Hawley Fogg-Davis.

4:15-5:45 p.m.: Panel on “Governing the American City,” chaired by Professor Graham Wilson and including former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, Dallas Mayor Laura Miller and Professor Dennis Dresang.

For more information on the conference, contact Elizabeth Smith, (608) 263-1793 or esmith@polisci.wisc.edu.