Inis L. Claude, Jr.

On December 23, 2013 Inis L. Claude, Jr. died in Charlottesville, Virginia, at 91. A noted international relations theorist and international organization scholar, Claude spent most of his teaching career at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Virginia. At Virginia he held the Edward R. Stettinius Chair and, on his retirement, was named Professor Emeritus of Government and Foreign Affairs.

A native of Arkansas, Inis Claude graduated in 1942 from Hendrix College, thereupon enlisting in the United States Army, where he served in World War II in France and Germany. As a returning veteran, he took advantage of the GI Bill to fund studies in international relations at Harvard University, where he earned a master’s degree in 1947 and a PhD in 1949.

After defending his dissertation, Inis Claude taught at Harvard until 1956. Then, after a year at the University of Delaware, he settled onto the faculty at the University of Michigan, where he taught for 11 years. In 1969 Claude moved to a chaired position at the University of Virginia, teaching there for two decades until retiring in 1988. A gifted teacher, who won Virginia’s Distinguished Professor Award and was revered by classes and classes of students, Claude also gained a stellar international reputation for his written work. His doctoral dissertation won Harvard’s Chase Prize and when published as his first book, National Minorities: An International Problem (1955), was awarded honorable mention for the G. L. Beer Prize of the American Historical Association. His groundbreaking study of collective security, balance of power, and world government, titled Power and International Relations (1962), won the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award. Claude would eventually be referred to as one of the “forefathers” of international organization scholarship on the basis of articles such as his International Organization piece “Collective Legitimization as a Political Function of the United Nations” (1966), and books such as Swords Into Plowshares: The Progress and Problems of International Organization (1956), The Changing United Nations (1967), and States and the Global System (1988).

Over the years many in the international relations discipline hailed Inis Claude’s books and other writings. For instance, a review in Social Education termed Swords Into Plowshares, “an outstanding addition to the literature of the U.N. and international organizations ... comprehensive in content, compact in organization, and clear and crisp in style.” Another, in International Affairs, cited its “admirably clear reasoning, the good-natured annihilation of many comfortable clichés, profit in enhanced understanding of each continuing problem and the way to judge it.” An International Journal review of Power in International Relations captured the essence of much of Claude’s scholarship in calling that book “a stimulating and perceptive analysis of [the problems of the management of military power]. It is skeptical, modest in tone, well-written and leavened with wry humour.... [P]erhaps its singular value lies in its proof that one can analyze international relations intelligently without having to play games.” Reviewing that same work in Political Science Quarterly, Quincy Wright hoped that Claude’s lucid criticisms of the imprecision of leading political scientists in defining and using key terms would bring more rapid progress toward a better international relations discipline. Claude’s 1986 book, American Approaches to World Affairs, garnered additional high praise with a review in Choice terming him “one of the grand masters of traditional international relations microtheory.” Thomas Franck in Political Science Quarterly called American Approaches a “brilliant, iconoclastic tour de force.... [Claude’s analyses] are as unflinchingly incisive and painful as a sharp scalpel slicing through the unetherized body politic.... piercing analysis by a respected liberal internationalist.”

During his scholarly career Inis Claude was awarded Guggenheim, Fulbright, Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie Endowment fellowships. He lectured at a wide array of foreign institutions, including the London School of Economics, the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth, the National University of Mexico, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tamkang University in Taiwan, the Institute of Social Studies at The Hague, and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

Indeed, Inis Claude was extraordinarily active across the international relations discipline. Over the course of his career he published more than 40 book reviews. A consultant to the US Department of State, he served as a member of the board of editors of Political Science Quarterly for more than 20 years, International Organization and Orbis for 12 years each, the Journal of Conflict Resolution for nine years, and the American Journal of International Law for five years. He chaired the Committee on International Organization for the Social Science Research Council for seven years. He served as a member of the Board of Review and Development of the American Society of International Law for four years and a member of the Executive Committee of the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution for six years. He contributed to five reports of the Commission to Study the Organization of the Peace.

Inis Claude continued many scholarly activities deep into his retirement. He published more than two dozen articles in this phase of his life, including two particularly influential works in Review of International Studies: “The Balance of Power Revisited” (1989) and “The Tension Between Principle and Pragmatism in International Relations” (1993). During this period he served for significant periods as members of the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia and of the Board of Advisers to the President of the Naval War College, while providing occasional lectures and much counsel to scholars, practitioners, and many of his former students. Although he had initially concentrated on minority rights, the organization of international life, and the concept of power, Claude in retirement turned his attention to the shape of the post-Cold War world and to what he termed “the new interventionism” in international affairs. Among his honors and awards the Hebrew University of Jerusalem selected Claude in 1993 to deliver the prestigious Samuel Paley Lectures in American Culture and Civilization, an honor he shared with such past luminaries as Robert Frost, Seymour Martin Lipset, C. Vann Woodward, and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. In 1994 a group of his former students and past colleagues published a Festschrift, titled Community, Diversity, And a New World Order: Essays in Honor of Inis L. Claude, Jr., highlighted by his own “Valedictory, Mea Culpa, and Testament,” offering reflections on his career. In 2012 Nejat Dogan published an intellectual biography titled Pragmatic Liberal Approach to World Order: The Scholarship of Inis L. Claude, Jr. (Lanham: University Press of America).

In 1943 I.L., as many of his contemporaries knew him, wed his college sweetheart, Marie Stapleton, and in the course of their long marriage the pair raised two daughters and a son and eventually enjoyed three grandchildren and a great-grandson. For many years Inis and Marie relished their weekly hikes on the Appalachian and other trials in the Blue Ridge Mountains west of Charlottesville. A middle infielder as a boy, Inis Claude loved baseball and gardening, birds, and wild flowers. In retirement, he learned to make latch-hook rugs. Among a host of community activities, Inis volunteered to read for the Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic for many years.

Those of us who had the exceeding good fortune to know Inis Claude personally recall a man who was unfailingly thoughtful, cheerful, and gracious. By his example, he promoted civility in all his interactions. Inis listened attentively and read carefully. He had an enviably analytical and curious mind. His criticism was penetrating and eminently fair and often delivered with a light touch. As a story teller, Inis could make us laugh; as an intellect, he could make us think. A man of rare insight on an enormous array of subjects, Inis Claude constantly stimulated deep thought. He inspired so many of those he touched, whether in his writings, his counsel, or his personal relations. For many, he served as the very model of a scholar and teacher, a husband and father, a colleague and neighbor, and a true, honest, and affectionate friend. Inis Claude’s warmth and his wisdom will never be replicated, and the political science discipline has suffered a marked loss with his passing.

Thomas S. Langston (1960–2014)

Respected teacher and scholar, beloved mentor, dear colleague and friend Tom Langston, professor of political science at Tulane University, passed away on the evening of April 14, 2014 after an extended illness. Prof. Langston began his career at Tulane in 1989, attaining the rank of Professor of Political Science in 2003 and thrice serving as department chair. A distinguished scholar in the field of American politics, Tom’s research focused on U.S. presidency studies, American political development, and civil-military relations. He was the author of numerous academic books, including With Reverence and Contempt: How Americans Think about Their President from 1995, Uneasy Balance: Civil-Military Relations in Peacetime America from 2003 and Ideologues and Presidents in an updated reissue scheduled for 2014. He was active in both the American Political Science Association and the Southern Political Science Association, serving as a board member of the Presidency Research Group of the former. At the time of his death, Tom was actively serving as series editor for Transaction Publishers’ American Presidents series and feature editor for Presidential Studies Quarterly’s “Historical Presidency” feature.

Among the affiliations of which Tom was most proud was his participation as Program Director and Adjunct Professor in Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business partnership with Zhejiang University and its Chukochen Honors College and Graduate Institute of Business, on the Zhejiang Advanced Placement Program Summer Enrichment Experience. This partnership, and Tom’s relationship with it, also included a several-years engagement of teaching “Introduction to Western Civilization and Society” for Tulane-bound Chinese students in Hangzhou. He further participated in the Freeman School’s Pre-Executive MBA Program for Chinese Managers, again as Program Director and Adjunct Professor.

In addition to his affinity as a “China hand,” Tom was a devotee of running, cycling and competitive “Iron Man” trials. For many years he taught the popular course “Adventure, Discipline, Obsession: A Running Conversation,” a class on running and endurance training, conducted while running through a variety of New Orleans neighborhoods. Among his many and varied athletic endeavors were marathon and half-marathon races, including New Orleans’ own Crescent City Classic. Most recently, Tom had participated in early 2013 in the famous two-hundred-mile Death Valley bike ride. He inspired several colleagues to join him for long bike tours on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans, and enjoyed cycling in the Arizona mountains as well as along the levee of the Mississippi River.

He is remembered by all of us at Tulane for his wry sense of humor and unflappable good sense and matter-of-factness. He will be greatly missed by his students, colleagues, co-workers, and friends. Tom is survived by his wife Mary and his children, daughter Jessica and son Taylor.