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June 14, 2010
On May 31, the Department of Political Science held a lunch for faculty and staff to celebrate the end of the academic year and to recognize three faculty members who are retiring: Don Forbes, Richard Simeon, and Peter Solomon. Three members of the faculty gave speeches to recognize each retiree, and these are reprinted below. We wish all of the departing faculty well and we look forward to hearing about their accomplishments of the post-retirement phase of their careers.
Clifford Orwin made the following remarks on Don Forbes’ retirement.
“It won’t surprise any of you to hear that I’ve known Don Forbes for a very long time, namely, as long as I’ve been here, he having been here even longer. My first recollection of him is rather embarrassing. On one of my very first days here, there was some sort of Department get-together at which my mentor, the late Allan Bloom, pointed out Don Forbes and Don Schwartz to me as two junior members of the Dept who would be among its pillars in the decades to come. I duly noted this edifying lesson: what I failed to register was which one was Don Forbes and which one was Don Schwartz. You might object that they don’t look that much alike, and you’d be right. You have to understand though that besides being generally shell-shocked at my introduction into the life of the Dept, I had just arrived from the south of the border where Donalds were relatively rare. I was bound to find the abundance of them here baffling. (Forbes and Schwartz weren’t the only ones to grace the old Dept of Political Economy: there were also Dewees and Moggeridge, to name just two more.) The upshot of this confusion was that I confidently introduced one of the Dons to another newbie as the other. Having partially repressed this uncomfortable memory, I can’t recall whether I introduced Forbes as Schwartz or Schwartz as Forbes, although I rather think that it was the former.
“If it was Don Forbes whose identity I mangled, that blunder didn’t prevent us from becoming good friends. There is no one in the Department who has been my close friend for longer.
“I like to think that there’s not much that’s idiosyncratic in my lively appreciation of Don, except perhaps this, that to me as an American he has always personified distinctively Canadian virtues. Don’s virtues are quiet virtues. You can be sure that he won’t call attention to them. His mind is coated with stealth, that same mysterious substance in which the Americans dip their latest warplanes. He too manages to elude detection until almost the moment of impact. My constant experience of Don is that there’s more to him than you suppose; his modesty having one again lulled you into underestimating him.
“Perhaps my defining experience of Don occurred not in Toronto but in Chicago in 1992. I was visiting there for the year, and assisted the aforementioned Bloom (who had left Toronto in 1979) in assembling a lecture series on cultural politics. We had quite a bit of money for it, and quickly filled all the slots but one with a cast of academic luminaries of the “Who’s Who in the New York Review of Books and TLS” variety. I suggested that we fill that lone remaining slot with Don, thereby practicing affirmative action on behalf of the celebrity challenged. Bloom readily concurred, and Don repaid us by demonstrating that in the world of celebrity lecture series as elsewhere you get what you pay for. Pay for a big name and you get a big name, pay for a good lecture and you get a good lecture. Don’s lecture, which reported on an early stage of his work on multiculturalism, was unequivocally and by a wide margin the best that we heard that year. In fact it made the others look silly. Rather than indulge the lordly habit of giving a lecture that has been given many times before, is of tangential relevance to the theme of the present series, and has not been adapted to the particular audience, and is delivered with no great enthusiasm, Don offered a performance that was magisterial in the best sense. It was clearly on topic and admirably suited to the interdisciplinary Chicago throng of faculty members and graduate students. There was nothing flashy about it – when has Don been known to do anything flashy? – but it was comprehensive, clear, coherent, and thoughtful. The graduate students in particular responded more positively to it than to any other of the lectures. Don could not have left a better impression of the quality of instruction at Toronto.
“Closer to home, Don has played an unusual role in the intellectual life of the Department. When he came to our then methodologically backward department ca. 1970 it was as the apostle of quantitative methods in political science. Don had completed his doctorate at Yale and that was what Yale was known for. New Haven was a noisy place in those days, as outbursts of gunfire vied with the equally loud crunching of numbers. Once here, however, Don discovered, perhaps to his own surprise, certainly to that of others, a deep and (as it proved) abiding interest in political theory. This was a field in which he had received little training. He responded to this development in a way that I’ve always regarded as exemplary. He could have abandoned the quantitative methods that he knew so well, to which, however, he remained attached, or he could simply have stuck with them, foregoing his development as a political theorist. Instead he resolved to find ways to combine the two. In some of his works, such as his book on the contact hypothesis, quantitative methods predominated; in others, such as his anthology of Canadian political thought, or, in the past few years, his articles and book on the thought of George Grant, the political theorist had the upper hand.
“With Grant Don took up his greatest challenge. True, Grant was a Canadian thinker, and Don was well versed in Canadian thought. But Grant, for all his qualified deference to the Tory and Anglican traditions (and his equally qualified anti-Americanism) was a thinker open to a very wide world. Among his intellectual mentors were Pascal, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Simone Weil, Jacques Ellul, Leo Strauss, even the toxic French novelist Celine. This would seem to place him well beyond the ken of your typical empirical political scientist.
“Don not being typical, however, his work on Grant is masterful. Unlike many of Grant’s enemies, he has taken the trouble to engage sympathetically with his thought. Unlike many other of Grant’s admirers, he’s not afraid to call the old grouch’s bluff. Take up the book and you’ll kill two birds with one stone: you’ll learn why Grant’s worth reading, and why Don is.
“In keeping with the pleasantly schizoid character of his life since his discovery of political theory, Don has devoted equal time these past few years to his study of multiculturalism. His work on this question evinces the same subtlety, care, and moderation as his work on Grant; it also rests, of course, on an impeccable base of empirical political science.
“Subtle, careful and moderate: those terms are worth repeating. They explain why I’ve always found Don a valuable interlocutor on a wide range of subjects, and why he’s so often persuaded me that my own positions were callow or rash. They also explain why he has earned the respect of so many graduate students over the years, his, mine, and (I have no doubt) yours.
“I won’t prolong this eulogy any further, since fortunately Don isn’t dead. He’s very much alive, both physically and mentally, with more accomplishments ahead of him. Subtle, careful and moderate though he is, further praise might go to his head. So instead I’ll offer the following wish. We have benefitted from Don’s steady presence for forty years now: let’s drink to another twenty or thirty.”
Grace Skogstad provided the following remarks on Richard Simeon’s retirement.
“When David invited me to say a few words about Richard today, I was very pleased. I have known Richard a long time, and I’ve learned a lot from him. When you admire someone like Richard, you tend to observe him closely, read his stuff, and take lessons. So I thought I would share with you today a few lessons I’ve learned from Richard. Please bear in mind, though, that just because Richard is a great teacher, it doesn’t mean that I’ve been a good enough student to practice these lessons myself.
“The first lesson that I’ve learned from Richard is to drive an interesting car. When you’re young, it should be a fast European import; when you are older, it should be an environmentally friendly one. I agree that this doesn’t seem an obvious lesson to learn from someone who has an international reputation as a great scholar and who is much loved by his students. But bear with me.
“Among my earliest memories of Richard is the car he drove when he came to UBC as a Visiting Professor from Queen’s about 35 years ago or more. I had begun my PhD at UBC the year Richard arrived. Come May, Richard needed someone to drive his car from Vancouver to Montreal where the CPSA was being held in conjunction with IPSA. Another Richard (Richard Stubbs, who became husband) and I were only too happy to perform the task and we picked up the keys from RichardBSimeon–and off we drove: over the Rockies, across the beautiful prairies, through the Canadian Shield of northern Ontario and, finally, into Montreal. It was quite an adventure.
“What made it soBapart from the amazing transformations in geography along the way was the wonderment and excitement of car mechanics along the way. They had never seen such an interesting car. There they were, peering intently at what they discovered under the hood whenever we asked for the oil to be checked. They took one look, waved over the other station attendants, and kept staring. You see, the car was an Alfa Romeo – an Alfa Romeo! I have never since been in a car where my status was so much elevated by the car itself.
“When you are older, Richard’s lesson is to go for the environmentally friendly car. Richard and Mary Etta now silently purr around Toronto in their Prius. It’s true that they often surprise pedestrians who don’t hear the Prius coming and look startled when it pulls up to the intersection. And if you are worried about Richard and Mary Etta’s safety, don’t be. They bought their Prius when Toyota still knew how to make computers function as they are supposed to.
“The second lesson I’ve learned from Richard is ‘Teaching is a wonderful occupation but it is even better if you can get students to teach themselves.’ This lesson sounds like it casts Richard in a bad light. But it doesn’t.
“We all know what an extraordinary teacher Richard is. He is always thoroughly prepared, enthusiastic, inspires confidence in his students, and helps them to believe in themselves. I have always loved being on a PhD committee with Richard: he has an inordinate skill when it comes to helping students define a feasible project. And then, when the chapters roll in, he turns to them rapidly, making constructive comments, often turning awkward prose into—well, if not poetry—at least something that is literate. He is quite clearly a superb teacher and an excellent mentor to all his students. They all love him to bits and stay in touch with him for life.
“But Richard is also someone who believes that students—at least graduate students—have the wherewithal to teach themselves and that they will learn more when they take on that responsibility. And here is how I learned about Richard’s interesting pedagogical methods.
“This year, a group of Richard’s students in the MA Research Seminar wrote Richard to say that they were just a tad bit disappointed that there was no graduate course offered on Canadian federalism at U of T. Here they were in the midst of scholars like himself and David Cameron, known around the world for their expertise in federalism and yet they would graduate without having taken a course on federalism from either of them.
“You know Richard; he takes students’ concerns seriously. So Richard wrote David, myself and Graham and said surely we can do something for these students. I don’t know about the others, but I was suitably whipped into shape: if Richard, encumbered as he already was with three separate course preparations was willing to take on this additional responsibility, how could I not? I would look like a complete slacker. I also knew that with Richard about to retire, this was likely to be the last opportunity I had to teach with him. I hadn’t done so in the 19 years we have been here together at U of T.
“But Richard was even smarter than getting his colleagues to squirm. He suggested to the students that they take charge. Come up with a course outline. He put them in touch with faculty elsewhere to get their course outlines, and, sure enough, the students came up with a terrific course outline, we made a few suggestions, and once launched, the students proved an excellent group, leading the weekly discussions, getting their papers in a timely fashion, doing very well all told. Course evaluations confirmed the soundness of Richard’s judgment: students described this course as one of the best they’d taken.
“The third lesson I’ve learned from Richard is ‘Genius may be to modesty as water is to chocolate but the two can sometimes co-exist in splendid harmony.’
“We all know what an enormous intellect is Richard’s. Fellow of the Royal Society. Three times – let me repeat that, not once, not twice, but three times – invited to Harvard University as the William Lyon Mackenzie King Professor of Canadian Studies. I think this must be a record for Harvard. Richard is also an award-winning author. His book, Federal-Provincial Diplomacy was awarded the Martha Derthick Award in 2005 by the Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations section of APSA. The prize jury quite fittingly described it as `a classic whose influence stretches far beyond Canada’s borders.’
“Richard has written a lot of books and articles since Federal-Provincial Diplomacy, but that book illustrated his remarkable capacity to weave together what we now call rational, historical and sociological concepts of institutionalism —well before social scientists defined them as such. Like so much of his scholarship, this book reached across different research traditions to uncover and connect a wide range of causal mechanisms at work in Canadian federal-provincial relations.
“What strikes me about Richard’s scholarship is that he takes very seriously the social scientist’s obligation to tackle thorny empirical puzzles. This sort of research has real practical relevance for public policy practitioners, and the rigor with which Richard practices it helps to explain why he is much sought after not only by Canadian governments but organizations like the Club of Madrid and the Forum of the Federations. They call on his expertise on federalism and constitutionalism to help them figure out real conundrums around managing tensions in divided societies.
“It is a very, very impressive record, and a lesser talented person could be forgiven for being envious, even a bit jealous. But these baser emotions don’t surface with Richard because he is so modest, so ready to praise others, always willing to lend a helping hand, to share his insights through co-authorship. No one can resent his many accomplishments.
“There are many other lessons, but I will stop with a fourth and final lesson that I’ve learned well and often practice. It is this: Politics is endlessly fascinating and especially so when discussed over a meal and glass of wine with friends like Richard and MaryEtta.
“Your ongoing conversations with all of us, Richard, have enriched our lives and helped us understand not only Canada much better but many other countries as well. Thank you for your inspiration as a scholar and teacher. Thank you for your friendship.”
Jeffrey Kopstein made the following remarks on Peter Solomon’s retirement.
“It is a genuine pleasure and honor to say a few words about Peter Solomon. As David Cameron has said, it’s a bit silly to think of Peter retiring. He’s teaching I-don’t-know-how-many courses next year, advising half a dozen dissertations, running back and forth to, and around Russia and Ukraine repairing their battered legal systems, and he continues to publish at a prodigious rate.
“I have to be honest. I found preparing these remarks daunting. So I did what any good scholar would do: I googled the phrase “speeches to give at a retirement party.” Predictably, I found the website www.retirementspeeches.com. It gave me several pieces of advice. The first thing it tells you to do is “Open with general greeting and recognition of any special guests. You will want to recognize family members of the honoree as you begin.” According to Frank Magazine, however, at UofT Political Science we’re all related to each other, so this is not a practical suggestion since there are 62 of us.
“The second piece of advice from www.retirementspeeches.com is: “Tell a story about the retiree and his work habits. The story should relate in some positive way to others in the organization.” Peter Solomon’s career at UofT spans 40 years. He is the author of six books, the editor of another seven, and has published several dozen articles, many of which are classics in the field. He has taught thousands of undergraduates and graduate students and advised dozens of PhDs. He has received pretty much every fellowship worth having in comparative, Soviet and post-Soviet politics, including a Guggenheim fellowship and an SSHRC-MCRI. Both of these grants spawned his book, Soviet Criminal Justice Under Stalin, (Cambridge University Press, 1996), a towering achievement that has been repeatedly recognized in the field as such. Both before that book and after that, Peter wrote other, highly influential books and articles on the legal profession, criminologists, the role of judges and courts in post-Soviet contexts, and even a significant study of Canada. This corpus of work argued for the centrality of the judiciary and law in understanding the basis of order even in dictatorships or countries with weakly developed traditions of democratic rule, but at the same time maintained that understanding the place of law in these countries required a great deal of scholarly effort and ingenuity. This line of thought shaped the thinking of a generation of political scientists and historians. I should add: Peter’s reputation in among the historians is just as strong as among the political scientists—long before any discussion of interdisciplinarity, Peter just did it without talking about it or trumpeting it. This bent toward interdisciplinarity made Peter the perfect director of CREES.
Peter seamlessly made the transition from thinking about law under communism, to law under post communism. This work, undertaken over the past 20 years, contains the simple but profound observation: the other elements of democracy do not amount to much in the absence of the rule of law. Instituting the rule of law, Peter reminds us, is no mean feat and the post-communist experience of judicial change raises fascinating historical and comparative questions about the universality or particularity of our own historical experience, our own achievements, and of course our own shortcomings.
“But there’s another side to Peter Solomon. Peter’s scholarly commitments and achievements have been matched by an engagement with the real world. For years now he has been deeply involved in helping Russia and Ukraine reconstruct and reform their judiciaries. The practical fruits have been judicial partnerships between Canada and Russia and Ukraine, a program led by Peter that pairs judges and other legal professionals with their Canadian counterparts. All comparativists know how hard it is to be taken seriously in the very countries one purports to know. But Peter is regularly received in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation with much fanfare and the in the Russian Academy of Sciences as an honored guest; his work is frequently translated into Russian, and his expertise is sought out by governments and NGOs around the world.
“I would be remiss if I did not highlight Peter Solomon’s signal contribution as a mentor, not only at UofT, but also in the broader academy. His support for younger scholars is legendary, and as much as his research has inspired their respect, his generous encouragement has secured their life-long affection. It has certainly secured mine. Let me give just one example. For seven years starting in 1988, Peter held here at U of T a Carnegie-funded two-week-long workshop for promising young graduate students from all over North America. Alumni of these seminars went on to obtain positions at Harvard, Columbia, University of Washington, and at many others institutions. One, a very insecure graduate student from Berkeley, even went on to become a professor at the University of Toronto in political science. Yes, I met Peter 23 years ago when he invited me to the first of these workshops here in Toronto. After the workshop I stuck around Toronto to do an independent study with Peter. Peter’s mentorship and his continued encouragement over the years is something he undertook with a generosity of spirit that I would like to acknowledge in public. I now understand that Peter provided me not only with a scholarly model but a personal model to emulate. For that, and much more, I shall always be grateful.
“The last piece of advice tha twww.retirementspeeches.com provides is: “Work in some lighter comments to say how much the person will be missed but how happy everyone is for the retiree as he or she embarks on a new life.” I have to say the following in response to this suggestion: nonsense. Peter’s not embarking on a new life; I want Peter to continue with the life that he’s on. I want to hear that booming, laughing voice in the hallways of the Munk School for many years to come; I want to continue to read his articles and books, and I want him to read mine. Peter Solomon makes us better scholars than we are, and I don’t think there’s much more you can ask from a colleague than that. So rather than retirement, let’s celebrate how fortunate we all are that Peter Solomon made his career here at the University of Toronto. We’re all richer for it. His generosity of spirit, his keen intellect, his dedication to his students, his thoughtful advice, and his enthusiasm for the scholarly enterprise is something worth celebrating at any time.”