Harry S. Hall, emeritus professor of political science, died at the age of 86 from natural causes on October 4, 2008.
Harry was born on May 8, 1922, and grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, where his father was a local minister. He received his AB in social science and philosophy from Harvard University in 1943 and his MA and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago in 1953 and 1961 respectively. He and his wife, Jean, worked at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica in the late 1940s before he went to graduate school at UCLA and the University of Chicago. After receiving his Ph.D., he taught for several years at Temple University in Philadelphia before joining the California State University, Los Angeles, department of political science in 1965.
At CSULA, he taught courses in American politics, public policy, and public administration, serving as both department chair and the director of public administration programs before he retired. He originated courses such as Power in Washington and The Nuclear Age, as well as serving as one of the organizers of the upper-division theme on the latter topic. He was a well-known and knowledgeable advisor.
He also authored Congressional Attitudes toward Science and Scientists: A Study of Legislative Reactions to Atomic Energy and the Political Participation of Scientists (Arno Press, 1979), as well as several articles and convention papers in the area of American politics. He had book reviews published in several political science journals.
In the CSU, he was one of the founding organizers of the CSU Social Science Research and Instructional Council and the federated membership for the CSU, the first in the nation, in the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. He also served on the Advisory Board for International Policy of the CSU and the Executive Committee of the Academic Council of CSU International Programs. He was a longtime member of the Academic Senate and numerous committees at all levels. He was the vice president and a member of the executive committee of the campus American Association of University Professors chapter.
During the early years of their marriage in the 1950s, Harry and Jean lived in the Chicago area while Harry pursued graduate work at the University of Chicago and Jean worked at the Argonne National Laboratory. Before coming to Cal State LA, Harry taught at Temple University in Philadelphia with Charles McCoy. One of their students was Alan Wolfe.
Alan says that he learned from Harry for the first time what it means to do research. According to Alan, “He shared his note cards with us from the work he had done with Selznick. It opened my mind to all kinds of new possibilities. He was also generous with his time and very helpful to me in numerous ways.” Harry and Charles encouraged Alan to get a doctorate, which he did in 1967 from the University of Pennsylvania.
Harry came to CSULA in 1965 and was elected chair of the political science department in fall 1967. As chair he started a practice of welcoming new faculty and their families to a dinner and a swim at his home in Alhambra before school started in late September. Later when Harry and Jean moved to Arcadia, he and Jean frequently hosted meetings, dinner parties, and departmental gatherings at their home.
In 1969 Harry hired Alan Wolfe for the summer quarter. At that time Alan was co-chair of the recently formed Caucus for a New Political Science. Alan's presence in Los Angeles led to a number of CSULA political science faculty becoming leaders in the Caucus for a New Political Science. Harry's hiring of Alan was hailed by most of the new members of the department as a progressive step, but for some of the older members it represented a step in the wrong direction. All agreed that it had a significant impact on the department and the college for many years.
Harry came to CSULA as an enthusiastic proponent of Philip Selznick's approach to political sociology, a course that Harry enjoyed teaching. Both Selznick and Harry were strongly interested in organizational behavior. Subsequently, Irving Janis's Group Think (1972) had a strong impact on Harry's thinking and political analysis.
Janis's framework resonated with Harry and Jean's experiences at RAND. It also fit the behavior he observed among elite decision makers in the twentieth century in the area of nuclear policy in particular and more generally on the American political scene. Harry saw the impact of group think in the Vietnam War decision making as well as in Watergate and its aftermath. Consequently, Harry was attracted to dissident political leaders and presidential candidates such as Barry Commoner and Ralph Nader.
Harry and his wife, Jean, enjoyed good food and wine, which undoubtedly contributed to frequent requests for them to host department gatherings. They were gracious hosts, and both had a good sense of humor. Harry loved jokes, including self-deprecating shots such as convoluted instructions for assembling a reel-to-reel tape recorder that he read at his retirement in lieu of the recorder itself.
Because Harry did not like to drive the freeways, years before GPS he became an ace at finding expeditious surface routes to a host of locations far and near to his home. While traffic backed up for miles on the freeways, Harry scooted home on the roads less traveled. If you were lucky and had a chance to follow him from campus to his home, you learned alternative routes that you never imagined existed.
Loyalty was one of Harry's strongest virtues. He maintained relationships such as those with Alan Wolfe and his University of Chicago peers for years. At CSULA while other faculty sought the privacy of separate offices, Harry and I remained the only political science faculty who shared an office after the department moved from the third floor of King Hall in the 1970s to the fifth floor of Engineering and Technology. We remained officemates until Harry's retirement in 1990.
Although Harry was justifiably proud of his long service with the university, his children, Carolyn and Brian, were his pride and joy. Harry's knowledge of dysfunctional organizational environments guaranteed that he and Jean were active participants in the Arcadia schools and in the gymnastics groups in which Carolyn starred. Harry and Jean were thrilled by Carolyn's successful dancing career and enjoyed traveling to see her perform. No parents could have been prouder and happier at the wedding of their daughter than Harry and Jean were at the wedding of Carolyn and Kelly. The joyous reception on the beautiful grounds of the Pasadena Historical Society is a fond memory for all those who attended.
Last December after losing Jean, the love of his life, in June 2007, Harry sent out a message that provided updates on both his children. Brian was working at Pasadena City College Library as a circulation supervisor while getting his master's degree in Library and Information Science. Carolyn just finished her first semester of a master's program in Marine Science at State University New York, Stony Brook, on Long Island. His message also indicated that Brian was living with him and that Carolyn was visiting regularly. It is clear that Harry was as proud of their loyalty as he was of their accomplishments.
