Alan L. Clem

Alan L. Clem, emeritus professor of political science at the University of South Dakota, died of a heart attack on April 11, 2016. He was 87. He is survived by his four sons (Andrew, Christopher, John, and Daniel), his daughter (Constance), his five grandchildren, and his two great grandsons. His wife, Mary, died in 2000.

Alan earned his BA in journalism and English from the University of Nebraska in 1950. While at Nebraska, he served as the editor of The Daily Nebraskan. In 1998, Alan was honored by the University of Nebraska when he received the College of Arts and Sciences Alumnus Achievement Award. Alan went on to earn his MA in European history from American University in 1957 and his PhD in political science, also from American, in 1960.

Alan came to the University of South Dakota (USD) in 1960 and spent his entire professional career at USD, retiring in 1996. His academic interests were varied, focusing on American national government, political parties and campaigns, legislative institutions, research methods, and political geography. While at USD, in addition to his work as a professor, Alan served as the director of the Governmental Research Bureau from 1964 to 1976 and chair of the department from 1976 to 1978.

In the classroom, Alan was a highly regarded teacher. He knew his subject matter, of course, but also knew how to make that subject matter interesting to students. Outside of the formal classroom, as director of the Governmental Research Bureau, Alan was a wonderful mentor to so many students, enabling them to make important contributions to many of the research projects the bureau undertook.

Alan was a very productive scholar and was known for his graceful writing style. He was the author of seven books/monographs, including five editions of his American government text, The Government We Deserve: Principles, Institutions, and Politics of American National Government, published by McGraw-Hill. In addition to his books and monographs, Alan was the author of many scholarly articles, focusing on issues of apportionment and the workings of legislative bodies.

Ever an active member of his profession, Alan served, for example, as a member of the National Council for Pi Sigma Alpha, as a member of the Executive Council of the Midwest Political Science Association, as a member of the editorial board of the American Journal of Political Science, and as a member of the Advisory Committee for State and Local Government Statistics, US Census Bureau. Alan was generous in sharing his expertise, serving, for example, for four years on the Vermillion City Council and also serving for many years as a commentator for area television stations on their election night coverage

Beyond his professional life, Alan was a loving husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He was an avid—and very good—golfer, winning the city golf championship in 1973. He loved sports and, in addition to cheering the USD Coyotes, was an enthusiastic fan of the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Chicago Cubs. Alan had a kind manner and a wry sense of humor. He was a mentor to many of us and a wonderful colleague and friend to all in the department. He is missed!

Lawrence J.R. Herson

Lawrence J.R. Herson, emeritus professor of political science at The Ohio State University, passed away in Columbus on January 20, 2016 at age 92.

Herson was a combat meteorologist in the South Pacific Theater during World War II, for which he was awarded a Bronze Star and six Battle Stars. After the war, he did his baccalaureate in Science and an MA in oriental philosophy (thesis on Confucius) at Northwestern. A brief stint at the Yale Divinity School led to a second MA in comparative religions, followed by his PhD from Yale in political science in 1955. He joined Ohio State University (OSU) that year, quickly rising through the ranks to become department chair in 1962. This was a time when, like many Big Ten schools, Ohio State was ready to begin the transition into a modern political science department; Herson successfully started this process at OSU, more than doubling the size of the faculty during his years as chair and buying the first computing equipment for the department. In 1969 he moved up to serve as dean of arts and sciences.

Herson’s research touched a variety of topics, from “China’s Imperial Bureaucracy” (Public Administration Review, 1957) to political tolerance in the United States (“Tolerance, Consensus, and the Democratic Creed,” Journal of Politics, 1975, with coauthor C. Richard Hofstetter), but his major foci were urban politics and political theory.

Herson’s signature article was “The Lost World of Municipal Government” (American Political Science Review, 1957). The article lamented that the study of city government during the first half of the twentieth century had focused on public administration, with the test for “good” government being the provision of services at the least possible cost. He argued the city is so much more than this:

He viewed the city as the carrier of the culture; the melting pot where the cultural diversity that created America shines brightest; the place where an unexpected and chance encounter is most possible; and the place where the American democratic experience plays out in its most immediate and visceral form. These functions do not always move linearly or easily, he emphasized, and urban dwellers often see politics in its most unattractive, but also its most creative, form, played out up-close and personal. He argued that to view municipal government as independent of this context is to fail to understand why services that cities provide sometimes work and sometimes do not, and why they sometimes even collide with what urban residents find most appealing about living in cities.

Herson’s book, The Urban Web (1990), written in collaboration with John Bolland, his former student, sought to rectify the lacuna in the literature that he noted in his “Lost World” essay. The Urban Web examined urban political processes within the much larger context of urban culture. Its very title was meant to convey the idea that the many components of urban life are interconnected, and that this interconnection creates the politics of the city. The Urban Web considered, for example, the tension between public and private space in the urban place; permeable boundaries between cities and their suburbs; and neighborhoods as lifestyle territories.

Herson’s major work in the field of political theory was his book, The Politics of Ideas (1990). The book was much more concerned with the ideas that shaped political thought in America than with the personalities that espoused them. He made the case that politics often leads to a clarification of values, and that philosophy is often invoked after the fact to justify political actions. Thus theory and philosophy lie between politics and policy, informing each (and being informed by each). Herson also used this palindromic formulation as a metaphor for the development of political theory (working from the inside out and the outside in). In this way, as in all of his scholarship, Herson paid great attention to politics as everyday acts, defining the politics of ideas as “the strategies and arguments that result in one idea (or set of ideas) coming to a position of dominance in political life” (p 1). And since, in his view, politics is affected by (and in turn affects) culture and lifestyles, the breadth of the politics of ideas (and hence scope of political theory) is quite large.

Herson was a renaissance man, widely read in an amazing span of fields. With lively wit and raconteur’s skill, he enchanted generations of graduate and undergraduate students at Ohio State. On his retirement, Larry used these talents in a second career as a cruise shipboard lecturer, which allowed him and his beloved wife Libby to continue sailing the world until he retired again in 2013. He amazed passengers with arcane stories about and insights into the exotic destinations the ship was visiting, always with his delightful, waggish sense of humor. His cruise experience took him back to the South Pacific where he had served in the war and led to his 2014 book with collaborator James E. Harf entitled The Wise World Traveler.

For Herson, everything was interconnected, and understanding these interrelationships gave great meaning to life. This is the essential part of his writings, his teaching, and the way he lived his life. He could see the virtues in everyone and would try to work out any differences between his colleagues. He provided encouragement, optimism, and support to both his colleagues and his students.

Larry Herson was elegant, gentle, gracious, and welcoming. He was well-traveled, loved culture and opera, erudite but without snobbery, twinkling in his humor. He is remembered for his command of language, memory for historical minutiae, wicked wit, recipe for dry sherry, art collection, and tango enthusiasm. He was eager to share his knowledge and experience with others in a way they could appreciate it. At the same time, he listened, remembered, and cared about other people. His life-long love of adventure was surpassed only by his love for his wife and travel companion of 65 years, Libby (Kormunda) Herson.

The Lawrence J.R. Herson Fund was established at Ohio State University by his former students and colleagues in 1999 to recognize the department’s outstanding political science majors, and he reveled in being able to present the awards personally.

Don Nakanishi

Don Nakanishi, director emeritus of the Asian American Studies Center, and professor emeritus in Asian American studies and education at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), passed away in Los Angeles unexpectedly on March 21, 2016. He was 66.

Don was a pioneer in the study of Asian American politics, and his career exemplified the role of the scholar-citizen. Many political scientists on US racial and ethnic politics owe a huge debt to Don for the trails he blazed. He was a pioneer in helping to establish the intellectual grounds of Asian American politics as the community has taken shape politically, from the 1970s to the present. He was one of the nation’s first Asian American politics scholars to be a member of the American Political Science Association.

Don was born to Japanese American immigrant parents who were interned during World War II. Growing up in the predominantly Mexican American, working-class neighborhood of City Terrace in East Los Angeles, he was the first student from Roosevelt High School to attend Yale. During his senior year at Roosevelt, Don was chosen the “Boy Mayor” of Los Angeles and was elected as Student Body President, which would facilitate his lifelong interest in politics. During his first term in New Haven, his intellectual interest in examining the intersection of race and politics for Asian Americans was sparked by an unfortunate but pivotal interaction with his classmates. On December 7th, 1967, classmates came to his dorm room chanting “Bomb Pearl Harbor!” and began throwing water balloons at him (a ritual practiced at campuses around the country in that era). Don, uncertain what to make of the incident, went to the library to get Prejudice, War, and the Constitution (tenBroek, Barnhart, and Matson’s classic work), and began to educate himself on the history of Japanese Americans, and Asian America more broadly.

A lifetime of scholarship and activism was to follow. While at Yale, Don helped to establish a chapter of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano Aztlan (MEChA) with Mexican American students. As Don recalled to the Los Angeles Times in 2010 after his retirement, reflecting on having grown up in East Los Angeles during the student walkouts of the 1960s: “What makes me into an Asian American was getting an identity as a Chicano first.” In 1969, Don and Glen Omatsu helped to organize Asian American students and gather support for the repeal of the Emergency Detention Act (Title II) of the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950. Don also participated in efforts to support the grape boycott in 1970.

In 1971, toward the end of his Yale career, Don and Lowell Chun-Hoon founded Amerasia Journal, which would become the nation’s first major scholarly journal of Asian American studies. Shortly thereafter, Don, Lowell, and the journal moved to UCLA, although Don would return to the east coast for a short while, to earn a PhD in government from Harvard.

Don’s formal association with UCLA began in 1974, when he began working part-time for the Asian American Studies Center. He was appointed an acting assistant professor in political science at UCLA, and in 1982 received an appointment as an assistant professor in education and Asian American studies. When he came up for tenure four years later, he became embroiled in an intense, high-profile three-year battle with ramifications far beyond his own career.

Don was denied in his initial application for tenure. From the beginning, it was clear that the review was marked by irregularities. As evidence of racial and other bias mounted, Don enlisted the aid of attorney Dale Minami, who recently helped lead a team of pro bono attorneys to successfully overturn the wartime convictions of Japanese Americans. As evidence from the case mounted, it became clear that one issue was the very legitimacy of Asian American studies. Undergraduate and graduate students rallied in support of Don, as did Asian American community groups and individuals outside of the university community. These groups would eventually garner the support of key members of the California State Legislature who withheld state funding from UCLA in support of Nakanishi’s tenure. Finally, in 1989, after a final strong positive vote from the Graduate School of Education, he was granted tenure. His tenure allowed him to establish the fields of Asian American studies and Asian American politics. And Don made all of his days as a tenured faculty member count, by building and creating a sense of intellectual and scholarly community in these fields. Today, four generations of teachers, professors, and community leaders who have taught tens of thousands of young people about the racialization and politicization of Asian Americans in the United States can be traced to Don Nakanishi’s original vision and the classes he and his students started at Yale, UCLA, and across the country.

Don’s scholarship was pathbreaking and visionary. He published over a hundred articles, edited books, and reports. He is widely credited as being the first to show that Asian American registration and voting rates were low, despite relatively high overall socioeconomic status. He also was one of the first to emphasize the need to consider what is today called transnationalism in the study of Asian Americans, observing that linkages between country of origin and country of residence could be important in shaping political behavior and attitudes. For example, in a groundbreaking essay titled “Minorities and International Politics,” published in 1976, Nakanishi argued that a distinct politics was developing among Asian immigrant communities in the United States, one informed by their experiences with discrimination and legal exclusion in the United States, as well as by international politics. In 2001, he coedited with Andrew Aoki a PS symposium on Asian Pacific American politics, the first such work to appear in a political science journal.

Throughout his career, Don was the model of a scholar as well as an active citizen. In 1976, he started collecting information on Asian Pacific Americans serving in elected and appointed positions nationwide. In 1995, with the assistance of James Lai, it became the series known as the National Asian Pacific American Political Almanac, which has become an invaluable resource for citizens, scholars, practitioners, and the media. President Clinton appointed him to the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund Board of Directors, and he served on many other boards, including those of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance, Japanese American National Museum, and Asian American Justice Center.

Don took on many other important leadership roles. He served as president of the Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS) from 1983 to 1985. From 1990 to 2010, he was director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center (AASC), the most prominent such center in the country. During this period, under his leadership, the national and international profile of the AASC gained greater prominence through his fund-raising, recruitment and subsequent tenure of AASC faculty members, and creation of endowed chairs. In 1995, he was one of the founding members of the APSA Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, and received its lifetime achievement award upon his retirement in 2009.

Don received numerous other awards for his scholarly achievements and public service, including the National Community Leadership Award from the Asian Pacific Institute for Congressional Studies in 2007, the Yale Medal from Yale University in 2008, and the inaugural Engaged Scholar Award from the AAAS in 2009.

Don’s passing was a grave loss for the general study of US racial and ethnic politics, and specifically for the field of Asian American politics. He was a key supporter of junior scholars in his field, known for his generous approach to mentorship. Over the past 40 years, many in the field of Asian American politics have been touched by the special combination of intellectual leadership and personal kindness he embodied. He regularly communicated with and encouraged a large and ever-growing cadre of young scholars, he coauthored with junior faculty, and he wrote thousands of letters for students and faculty at every stage of their careers. Adding to his remarkable support of individual scholars, he nurtured and grew a new field. And because of his trailblazing scholarship, those of us who study Asian American politics have never been intellectually alone or isolated. We always had Don Nakanishi, and we still have the community that he made possible. While his presence will be greatly missed, his legacy that inspired a countless number of scholars continues to live on.

James L. Sundquist

James L. Sundquist was an outstanding writer, analyst, and observer of American politics. He combined experience in government with astute insights as a senior fellow and author at the Brookings Institution. He made major contributions to the understanding of American party systems, federalism, and congressional politics, among other areas. His books helped bring political history and contemporary politics alive for several generations of university students. He passed away on February 17, 2016 in Arlington, Virginia at the age of 100 years.

Sundquist was born on October 16, 1915, in West Point, Utah. He was the son of Swedish immigrants Frank Viktor Sundquist and Freda (Carlson) Sundquist. He grew up on a farm near the Salt Lake and attended Weber College, Northwestern University, and the University of Utah. He earned an MS in public administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in 1941.

After graduation, he moved to the Washington, DC, area and took positions first as an efficiency expert in the Bureau of the Budget and Office of Defense Mobilization and later as a speech writer on the White House staff. He became successively top aides to Democratic National Committee chairman Stephen Mitchell, New York Governor W. Averell Harriman, and Senator Joseph Clark. For two years, he served ably as deputy undersecretary of agriculture.

In 1965, he joined the Brookings Institution as senior fellow of governmental studies and later served as director of the program. A prolific author, he wrote important books and numerous articles on many aspects of American politics. All of his colleagues found him to be a warm and kind colleague who gave generously of his time to help other people.

Stephen Hess served with Sundquist in the early years and recalled him this way: “Thinking of Jim Sundquist, for me, is a cherished opportunity to recall a remarkable group of colleagues who were the Governmental Studies program at Brookings during the 1970s into the mid-1980s, when Jim retired. Gil Steiner was the program’s director when I came aboard in 1972; Jim succeeded him in 1976; and passed the directorship on to Martha Derthick in 1979.”

According to Hess, “what is obvious from all three is the lucidity with which they treated language. Gil, Jim, and Martha cared deeply about how society is governed, how well our institutions work, and wanted those who worked with them to contribute to a clearer understanding of how things happen in Washington and why they happen the way they do. Perhaps there is still wisdom in these ancient tomes.”

One of Sundquist’s earliest books was his 1968 volume titled Politics and Policy (Brookings Institution Press). It explored policymaking on key national issues during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. Taking advantage of the tremendous changes that took place from the 1950s to 1960s, Sundquist explored how policy change unfolds and the role of interest groups, public opinion, and party politics in those developments. For anyone interested in understanding US social policy, Sundquist provided keen analysis of the Great Society program, poverty alleviation, education, the environment, and social services.

In 1969 he published Making Federalism Work (Brookings Institution Press), which looked at the changing nature of relations between the states and the federal government, and ways to improve effectiveness. Appearing around the time that president Richard Nixon was starting to put in place innovative programs on revenue-sharing and bloc grants, the book attracted considerable attention and showed Jim at his best. He had the ability to assess structural reforms and gauge their possible impact on politics and policymaking.

His volume on The Dynamics of the Party System (Brookings Institution Press 1973) provided path-breaking research on the role of electoral realignments in American history. Jim combined the astuteness of a political scientist with the carefulness of a historian to write a book that was read widely on college campuses and in Washington power circles. In it, he talked about the roles cross-cutting developments such as the Civil War in the 1860s, the Great Depression in the 1930s, and race in the 1960s in electoral change. He explained how skillful leaders could use these issues to breakdown old alignments and reshape party coalitions. It is a book that remains quite relevant to politics today.

Sundquist wrote The Decline and Resurgence of Congress, (Brookings Institution Press 1981) following the previous decade’s sharp confrontations between the executive and legislative branches of government. Published at a time when collisions over war powers, budget authority, and the Watergate scandal were still fresh in the minds of political leaders, Sundquist came away with “grounds for optimism” but also “cause for foreboding” about trends in legislative-executive relations. This study stirred him to begin contemplating possible constitutional revisions, however difficult to adopt.

By 1986 those ruminations resulted in the book Constitutional Reform and Effective Government (Brookings Institution Press), a revised version of which was published six years later. Therein Sundquist proposed several “ideal” amendments to the Constitution. One notably high on his list included the concept of four-year terms for House members—a possible remedy for the perpetual campaigning and mid-term reversals that can contribute to political gridlock.

In 1993 Sundquist edited a volume title Beyond Gridlock? Prospects for Governance in the Clinton Years—and After (Brookings Institution Press) which partly speculated that, now under unified party control, less contentious governance might ensue. Shortly thereafter, however, that prospect dimmed amid new clashes with Congress. Sundquist’s earlier assessment, regarding institutional reforms aimed at restoring “effective government,” seemed again well ahead of its time.

In 2003, Sundquist wrote a memoir of his life titled Deseret Boy: Memories of a Utah Childhood (The Printed Page). He noted that residents of his small farming town were identified “not by geographical location but by voluntary association” (p 23). The Mormon Church was the most influential establishment in the area and he described his feelings being there in the 1920s. He explains how growing up on a farm instilled in him the virtues of hard work and persistence that would mark the rest of his life. He learned to read at an early age and education opened up opportunities for him when his family moved to the bigger city of Odgen.

In his personal life, Sundquist was blessed with warm family relationships. In 1937, while working for the Salt Lake Tribune, he married Beth Ritchie of Salt Lake. They would have 45 wonderful years together until her untimely death in 1982. After she passed away, Jim married Geraldine (Gerry) Coote, the widow of close friend and Maxwell School classmate Wendell Coote. Upon Jim’s retirement in 1985, Gerry and he traveled the world, and enjoyed theater and opera together.

Jim was an avid sports fan, an enthusiastic tennis player, and a whiz at bridge and cribbage. In his final years, according to his family, the loss of mobility kept him homebound, but to the end he followed local and national political events with close attention. None of those who knew him was surprised at his persistent interest in and insight about American politics.

Kenneth C. Williams

Kenneth C. Williams, professor of political science at Michigan State University, passed away April 25, 2016 at his residence in Lansing, Michigan at age 59. Ken was born January 26, 1957, in Flint, Michigan, the son of Elijah and Julia Williams. He received his undergraduate degree in political science from Bowling Green State University in 1979, a master of public administration from University of Texas at El Paso in 1982, and a PhD in government from the University of Texas, Austin in 1988.

Ken’s talent for game theory and experimental political science emerged at the University of Texas and drew the attention of noted scholars Mel Hinich, Peter Ordeshook, Mat McCubbins, Benjamin Page, and Brian Roberts. Ken joined in collaborative game theoretically based experimental research with Ken Collier, Richard McKelvey, and Peter Ordeshook. As an early researcher designing complicated, computer-based voter and candidate simulations, Ken mastered the art of programming the first Macintosh personal computers and lugging them and the needed printers around campus as well as the art of recruiting and managing student subjects. These experiments yielded two important early experimental studies of the effects of information asymmetries on voters’ abilities to choose optimally in elections—“Retrospective Voting: An Experimental Study” and “The Rationally Uninformed Electorate: Some Experimental Evidence.” It was during this time that Ken became close friends with Collier, serving as academic and personal confidant and eventually performing as Collier’s best man at his wedding. Building on this joint work, Ken explored in future experiments the effects of campaign advertising and information costs in two subsequent sole-authored papers.

Ken’s first academic position began at Michigan State University in 1988 as assistant professor of political science. Michigan State was to remain his main academic home for his career. He was promoted to associate professor in 1995 and full professor in 2002. Ken spent two years away from MSU: From 1991 to 1992 he served as a post-doctoral fellow at the department of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and from 1995 to 1996 as a visiting associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. While at MSU, Ken taught graduate and undergraduate courses in game theory, methodology, and American politics as well as a specialized course examining minority politics. Reggie Sheehan arrived a few years after Ken, and in the 1990s they taught the London study abroad program and developed a close and ongoing friendship. Ken was an avid supporter of study abroad, and his students loved traveling abroad with him as evidenced by the number of social media postings responding to word of his passing and many expressing he was one of the best instructors they had at Michigan State University. The program alternated among faculty in the department, and when it began to see a decline in the early 2000s and was having budget issues, the Office of Study Abroad ask Ken and Sheehan to teach the program again in 2005 to reinvigorate it. It was the summer of the London terrorist attacks and both Ken and Sheehan had their families in London. Ken took a strong leadership role in the crisis and managing the needs of the students.

During the 1990s, the department of political science saw an influx of 11 new assistant professors along with Ken. It was a time of excitement in the department with competition among the young faculty to publish in American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Politics. There was a close bonding among the young faculty and Ken was instrumental in creating a sense of community among the up-and-coming scholars. He organized department basketball games and hosted dinner parties for the non-tenured faculty. Sheehan remembers Ken being the person who would stop by your office and invite you to lunch with a group he had organized. Even though all of those scholars have moved on to other places, they vouch that Ken was one of the most collegial people they ever met and he was always supportive of other faculty progressing through the tenure stream. In general, Ken epitomized what a scholar and colleague should be in an academic environment.

Ken very quickly made his mark among the small but active group of political scientists then conducting game theoretic incentivized laboratory experiments on political science research questions. From graduate school, Ken was a committed member of the Economic Science Association, which is the primary association for experimentalists who conduct these types of experiments in the social sciences generally as well as being a regular and keen participant at APSA and MPSA. Ken was on the Executive Board of MPSA from 1997 to 2000 and the editorial board of AJPS from 1998 to 2001 and again in 2015–2016. Ken served on the Organized Sections Committee from 1998 to 2000 at APSA, was Division Chair for Formal Theory at the 2006 APSA meetings and for Experimental Methods at the 2012 APSA meetings.

It was at these meetings in the early and mid 1990s that Ken and Rebecca Morton met and subsequently began their collaborative research, when Morton was at the University of Iowa. It was Ken’s idea to study the effects of sequential voting in a world with information asymmetries as in presidential primaries leading to their joint paper in the APSR “Information Asymmetries and Simultaneous versus Sequential Voting” and their University of Michigan book Learning by Voting: Sequential Choices in Presidential Primaries and Other Elections. In these experiments Morton and Ken showed how differences in information between early and later voters can affect the identity of the winning candidate and the extent that early voters’ preferences can be more influential than those of later voters when voting is sequential. During this time Ken also worked on other experimental projects solo and with Sugato Dasgupta, a PhD student of his from MSU, as well as Kirk Randazzo, and Sheehan. He also wrote his one nonexperimental paper with Jeffrey Hill on private bills in Congress, which was published in the AJPS.

While working on sequential voting, Ken and Morton were approached by Michigan to coauthor a textbook on experimental political science in a new methods series then being devised by Michael Alvarez and Neal Beck and signed a contract to do so. Ken and Morton also brought into the project Kathleen McGraw at Ohio State University. But other endeavors by the authors intervened and although some preliminary chapters were composed, the book manuscript languished. The methods series was moved to Cambridge in the early 2000’s and the authors were released from the contract. Although a new contract was offered by Cambridge for the series, at that point given the advances in experimental political science over the years, Ken and Morton wished to expand the reach and depth of the book beyond the earlier plan and limitations imposed by the series and McGraw had decided to drop out of the project (although her influence and contributions can be seen in the final product, particularly the chapters on ethics and motivating and choosing subjects). Around 2006, then, Ken and Morton began to write what was to become a much broader and more expansive manuscript on experimental research in general, Experimental Political Science and the Study of Causality: From Nature to the Lab, which was published by Cambridge in 2010 and received the award of the “Best Experimental Book Published in 2010” from the APSA Experimental Research Section.

Ken found he enjoyed writing the book so much that he decided to write a related book on behavioral game theory, Introduction to Game Theory: A Behavioral Approach, which was published by Oxford in 2012 and internationally in 2013. Ken also served as a guest editor for the journal Games in 2013 and was an editorial board member on the journal from 2012 to 2014.

At his death, Ken was working on joint research with Anna Bassi at the University of North Carolina (who had previously collaborated on a joint paper with Ken and Morton on the role of identity and incentives in voting games, published in the Journal of Politics in 2011). Ken and Bassi further analyzed the importance of incentives in political science experiments in a paper in the journal Games in 2014. The findings of the JOP and Games papers show how pivotal financial incentives are to control and induce individual preferences and ultimately evaluate the theory under study. The collaborators found that although rational and strategic behavior decreases as the complexity of the task increases, standard financial incentives are enough to induce equilibrium behavior even in fairly complex tasks. However, when subjects engage in a simple task and they are not incentivized, they appear to not value their task and pay little attention to their performance. Bassi and Ken were in the process of working on a larger project building on their research on identity and matching with the goal of submitting an NSF proposal this summer. It is incredible loss to the discipline of political science for Ken not to have had the opportunity to develop this and other new ideas he had further.

In general, Ken was an excellent coauthor and collaborator, highly creative. Both of his substantive projects with Morton began as his ideas and built on questions he suggested as interesting. He was an easy person to spend time with and a most enjoyable companion. Once during their collaboration Morton visited him while he was teaching in London, England, in a summer program with her then 16-year-old daughter Renda (after a long trip involving much interaction with other academic colleagues and coauthors across Europe). Renda still remembers her stay at Ken’s fondly as the most relaxed and comfortable of all the interactions she had. Sheehan recalls his children enjoying spending summer 2005 in London with Ken, his daughter Katie and wife Marcia. They were a wonderful family and it was clear Katie and Marcia were the light of his life.

Ken is survived by his wife Marcie and his 12-year-old daughter Katherine “Katie” of East Lansing, Michigan; parents, Elijah and Julia both of Flint; brothers, Gregory of Atlanta, Georgia and Reginald of Punta Gorda, Florida; niece, Mariah; nephews, Julien (Andrea), Jarren and Kellen; great-niece, Jai; a host of other relatives and friends. If you wish to make a contribution for the benefit of his daughter, Katherine Cowley Williams (Date of Birth 9/12/2003), you may do so through Michigan State University Federal Credit Union.