Malcolm “Mac” Jewell was a mainstay of the Political Science Department at the University of Kentucky (UK) for 36 years. For that same period and even longer, he was one of the profession's leading researchers in explaining legislative behavior (particularly in the states) and how state political parties worked. Mac retired from UK in 1994 but continued being active in our profession. Around 2004, he began suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He died on February 24, 2010, in Fairfield, Connecticut.
Mac was born on March 4, 1928, in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, the only child of Charles Henry Jewell and Margaret Aimee Ballard. He grew up in Massachusetts. Having excelled in elementary and high school, he earned his undergraduate degree in political science at Harvard in 1949. The next year he earned an MA from Columbia. During the Korean War era, Mac served in the Air Force as an intelligence analyst and, upon discharge, did somewhat similar analyses for the CIA. In 1955, he entered the doctoral program in political science at Penn State University and received his degree in 1958.
That same year, Mac became an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky. He soon proved his research mettle and so rose rapidly in the professorial ranks, becoming a full professor in 1966. His first book, Senatorial Politics and Foreign Policy, appeared in 1962. Mac wrote, coauthored, or edited around 20 scholarly books in all. Some of his better known works are: Representation in State Legislatures (1982), Parties and Primaries: Nominating State Governors (1984), Legislative Leadership in the American States (1994), and Who Runs for the Legislature? (2000). Mac also coauthored two books widely used by undergraduates over three decades: The Legislative Process in the U.S. with Samuel Patterson, and Political Parties and Elections in the American States with David Olson. In 2001, Mac and his wife Sarah Morehouse produced a fourth edition of this book. Mac also contributed over a dozen chapters to edited books, largely focusing on state parties and legislatures.
But Mac was equally at home reporting research in the profession's journals. He published in the Journal of Politics several times, and the American Political Science Review and the American Journal of Political Science on occasion, along with other outlets including the Legislative Studies Quarterly and three law reviews. His earlier articles involved analyses of roll-call voting in Congress or state legislatures and the politics of Congressional committee assignments. By the mid-1970s, he was examining state legislators' perceptions of their political environment and traveling to Raleigh, Columbus, Santa Fe, and other state capitals to conduct interviews. In the next decade, Mac analyzed turnout and strategies in state gubernatorial primaries and, late in his career, his research emphasized gubernatorial primary election strategies and winners' ability to govern successfully.
Indeed, his fondness for journals was such that he edited two of them. In 1966, Mac—just eight years out of graduate school—was named editor of the Midwest Journal of Political Science, the predecessor to the American Journal of Political Science. At that time, the Midwest Journal was almost moribund, nine months behind schedule and having difficulty attracting first-rate submissions. In his four-year term, Mac brought the publication back to scholarly respectability, while also bringing it to a regular and on-time publication schedule. In the mid-1970s, he and Jerry Loewenberg from the University of Iowa founded the Legislative Studies Quarterly. Mac was its first editor (1976–82) and quickly built it into a respectable outlet for scholarly work.
For over 40 years, there were few major political science meetings where Mac was not present. And he was usually presenting a paper about legislative roles and behavior, party organization and effectiveness, reapportionment, constituent linkages, voting patterns in primaries, and other similar topics. And if he wasn't giving a paper, he was sure to be on a panel, maybe two. He received APSA's Frank J. Goodnow Award for service to “the community of teachers, researchers and public servants” in 1999. In 2003, Mac was honored with the APSA's State Politics and Policy Section's Career Achievement Award.
Mac gave more professional attention to the politics of his adopted state than do most political scientists. His Kentucky Politics (1968) became the standard reading for years for both professionals and citizens who wanted an overview of politics in the Blue Grass State. Two decades later, he and Penny Miller cowrote The Kentucky Legislature: Two Decades of Change (1988) and Political Parties and Primaries in Kentucky (1990). Before these books, Mac was the author of several law review articles and book chapters on the Kentucky General Assembly and gubernatorial leadership. He was also the driving force behind the creation of the Kentucky Political Science Association in 1962, served as its first president, and religiously attended its meetings. For some years in the 1960s and 1970s, he conducted a weekly radio program analyzing the legislature's activity during its sessions, and he was also an election-night commentator on statewide radio and television.
Mac was the steadiest of researchers. Many faculty members are balls of fire in their early careers, but then go into administration, focus on nonprofessional activities, pursue hobbies, or just plain burn out in mid-life. This was not Mac. From graduate school until his mind faded, he was constantly turning out books, articles, and papers. While service—such as acting as department chair or chair of the University Senate—slowed productivity down a bit, Mac never stopped generating and following up on research ideas, or collaborating on projects with colleagues and graduate students.
Mac served the profession well. He is one of two persons to have been president of both the Midwest Political Science Association (1979–80) and the Southern Political Science Association (1980–81). Previously, he had served on the executive councils of both associations, and he also was on the APSA Council from 1979 to 1981. Throughout his career into the 1990s, Mac took leadership roles serving on program and ad hoc committees. The Southern Association created a monetary award in his honor for the best paper given by a graduate student at its annual meeting.
Mac most likely supervised more dissertations than any other member of the department, perhaps 25 in all. Many of his students studied Congressional or legislative behavior, gubernatorial leadership, or party leadership in the states. Several even studied legislative roles in India and Malaysia. Almost all of Mac's students remained in the profession teaching at universities as diverse as Duke, Boise State, and Australian National University. One, Don Fowler, followed a different career path, becoming a political operative and serving as chair of the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton years. In 1968, Mac received UK's Sang Award for outstanding contributions to graduate education. In 1982, Mac was chosen as the annual Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor by vote of the college faculty.
Mac was a central figure in UK's political science department. He was a brown-bag man and “presided” at conference room lunches for many years. Discussions were always easygoing, with topics ranging from who was doing what in political science to who was doing what in politics, in the university, or during the winter months, on the UK basketball team. He had a wry sense of humor and was also quite the punster—we all were subjected to both the groaners and clever ones. Mac and his wife invited colleagues and spouses to parties at their home regularly. And he played a mean first base on the department intramural softball team during the 1970s.
In 1969, he became department chair. It was the best of times and the worst of times. The campus was in upheaval over the Vietnam War and student demand for more “relevancy.” Reflecting these times, the department faculty was badly split over the nature of the discipline. Department meetings were frequent and contentious. Some chairs might have resigned, figuring the hassle wasn't worth it, but his old New England sense of duty kept Mac at his post. However, the early 1970s was also a time of sustained department building. It grew to 22 faculty positions (more than its present size), and Mac energetically led this growth in recruiting promising young scholars to our ranks. He also played a very active role in recruiting first-rate graduate students. His strong leadership, which built on that of his predecessor S. Sidney Ulmer, developed the UK political science department into a nationally visible research and graduate education program. Mac served a second term as chair in the mid-1980s. The later stint was more harmonious, but increased university regulations, policies, and paperwork subjected him to many more bureaucratic burdens.
He was also a major workhorse for UK. Presidents, provosts, and deans always thought of Mac when searching for capable committee chairs or members. He served on many college and campuswide search, promotion, and review committees, and a number of ad hoc committees. He was also elected to the University Senate with some regularity, chaired some of its committees, and served as Senate Chair in 1976–77. (In this capacity, he devised a perpetual academic calendar that I dubbed “the Jewellian Calendar” on the Senate floor.)
Mac was ever the civic-minded New Englander and took part in Lexington's community life. He was on the Fayette County Democratic Committee for some years and served on the Task Force that wrote a charter merging the city and county governments into the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government in 1972. Mac was one of the leaders in the successful campaign to win voter adoption of the charter. He later served on the commission to reapportion council districts following the 1980 census. Mac was a charter member of Trinity Hill Methodist Church, established as the city's southeast side expanded outward.
In 1952, Mac married Margaret Ann “Margie” Neal of Greencastle, Indiana. They had three children: David, Marilyn (Estes), and Laurie (Evans), all now living in or near Lexington. Margie died in April of 1990, and late in 1991, Mac married fellow political scientist Sarah McCally Morehouse, who taught at the University of Connecticut in Stamford. She survives him. After Mac's 1994 retirement, he and Sarah moved to Fairfield. They would return to Lexington with some regularity, and Mac would bring his bag lunch to the departmental conference room. Both Mac and Sarah continued their research activities during retirement, writing articles, giving papers, and going to meetings. Some of their work was collaborative.
This In Memoriam might give the impression that Mac's whole life was in the academy. While there is a bit of truth to this, he enjoyed his family immensely and devoted considerable time and energy to his wife, children, and grandchildren. He and two colleagues bought lakeside property in the Kentucky hills, where many a weekend was spent camping and sailboating. And in his later years, Mac and Sarah traveled abroad often; they particularly enjoyed time in England and France. But Malcolm E. Jewell was devoted to his profession and university—he was the political scientist par excellence.
