Suchergebnisse

On January 19, 2008, long-time APSA member and Damon Wells Professor
Emeritus of political science at Yale University H. (Holt) Bradford
Westerfield died from complications of Parkinson's disease in Watch
Hill, Rhode Island. He was 79. Douglas Martin's obituary in the
January 27 issue of The New York Times provided a full account of
his illustrious career, the details of which do not need to be
repeated here. The APSA archives would not, however, have included
the fact that over four decades of teaching at Yale, from 1957 when
he joined the faculty as an assistant professor of international
relations until his retirement in 2001, Professor Westerfield's
largely undergraduate classes attracted some 10,000 students. Those
classes included President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney,
Senators John Kerry and Joseph I. Lieberman, and other public
officials who "… cited his influence in framing their approach to
public policy. Mr. Cheney repeatedly said Dr. Westerfield helped
shape his hard-line approach to foreign policy. But an article in
The Nation in 2004," noted Martin, "reported that Dr. Westerfield
came to regret the hard-nosed lessons Mr. Cheney said he had
learned. Dr. Westerfield explained that his own politics had become
much more dovish since."

For years journal articles from the natural sciences have been
characterized by multiple authors, reflecting the collaborative
nature of the research. The articles have also conformed to a
professional norm in giving credit to the authors and, at least
implicitly, indicating their relative contributions. Although such
collaborative research has grown significantly in political science,
the discipline is still wrestling with any standard to indicate who
gets credit and the nature of multiple authors' relative
contributions. This is an issue with which political scientists from
the most junior to the most senior continue to deal.

There is no surefire mechanism to balance the incoming flow of political science doctoral candidates with the availability of tenure-track positions upon graduation. With as many as 15% of such doctoral graduates leaving academe, it would appear time for the campus to begin mentoring its students with a seasoned understanding of the non-academic career options. A sampling of former APSA Congressional Fellow political science doctorates indicates a variety of such non-academic applied political science positions for which the graduate work was a benefit.

There is no surefire mechanism to balance the incoming flow of political science doctoral candidates with the availability of tenure-track positions upon graduation. With as many as 15% of such doctoral graduates leaving academe, it would appear time for the campus to begin mentoring its students with a seasoned understanding of the non-academic career options. A sampling of former APSA Congressional Fellow political science doctorates indicates a variety of such non-academic applied political science positions for which the graduate work was a benefit. Adapted from the source document.