Colleagues, friends and students were saddened to hear of Professor James Barros’ sudden passing on November 9, 1993. Although plagued by ill health in recent years, he had continued the painstakingly thorough research that was his hallmark.

At the time of his death he and Richard Gregor had completed all but the last few details of Double Deception: Stalin, Hitler and the Invasion of Russia. The book is scheduled for publication later this year.

The quintessential New Yorker, he received undergraduate and graduate degrees in international affairs from Columbia University. His formal education was supplemented with field experience, working for the US State Department in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Ceylon.

After several years teaching at Dartmouth College and at Columbia’s Barnard College, Jim became one of the first political scientists on the faculty of Erindale College. His courses on international relations, particularly his International Law course, became popular with students, who appreciated his formidable knowledge of international organizations and processes, his challenging style and his uncompromising standards.

Jim Barros was already an established scholar when he came to Toronto, having published three books on the League of Nations, The Corfu Incident of 1923, The Aland Islands Question, and Betrayal from Within: Joseph Avenol, Secretary General of the League of Nations. At U of T, he continued his work on the League of Nations with a book on its role in the Ethiopian crisis, and he also became a leading authority on the United Nations. In addition to editing volumes on the UN and on the international law of pollution, which were translated into several languages, he produced a study of Trygve Lie’s career as UN Secretary General and was at work on a book on Dag Hammarskjold when he died.

Jim Barros, however, was far more than a scholar of international repute. He reveled in argument and in confrontation, giving – and expecting – no quarter on political or academic issues. His 1987 book, No Sense of Evil: The Espionage Case of E. Herbert Norman, generated great controversy with its investigation of treason and cover-up at the highest levels of the Canadian government.

No one who knew him could be neutral about Jim Barros. By times provocative, charming and audacious, he developed many fast friendships at the University of Toronto and left a generation of students with indelible memories of a committed scholar and teacher.