I must echo what Patrick said in his eloquent remembrance of Hayward Alker.
In German, your PhD adviser is your Doctor-Father (I'll let PTJ do the translation), so I suppose that would make Alker my Doctor-Grand Father. He was the adviser for both my Chair and a mentor in my department not on my committee. My work on language and International Security did overlap just a bit with his more recent projects to the point that we shared the stage on an ISA panel on the topic in Montreal several years ago.
What always struck me about Alker was his unbridled enthusiasm, his absolute love for each and every aspect of his work in IR. He saw the fascinating parts of everything, and everything had something valuable and fascinating in it. He was excited when delivering a paragraph sized question complete with citations to a distinguished panel of senior scholars, and he was excited to talk to a graduate student and young scholar about his work. He was excited to talk math, he was excited to talk language, feminism, balance of power, or teaching IR to undergraduates. It was so clear that he loved what he did, and, having worked closely with several Alker students, it was clear that he was able to pass that commitment on to those he mentored.
His passing leaves a great void in our field, and he will be missed greatly.
I don't know whether it's appropriate to thank you for your kind words. Certainly that's a privilege of Ann and Hayward & Ann's daughters. But I'll thank you nonetheless. I've been talking to my fellow Alker students are we are all grieving. I'm at APSA, and Hayward's absence is very painful. I wasn't prepared to lose him. None of us Alkerites were.
Hi all,
This is Gwendolyn Alker, Hayward's youngest daughter. On behalf of my family, I wanted to thank you all for your wonderful comments. I will make sure that my family sees them. It’s certainly helpful for us to see how my father inspired his students and colleagues. I am also a teacher and endeavor to continue his intellectual generosity with my students. Perhaps this is a trait that has inspired many people.
The most complete obit can be found at the USC website:
http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stori...ries/
14186.html
All my best,
GA
I am Hayward's student from MIT and have just learned the sad news. I thank all of you for your kind words about our wonderful and generous teacher, whose book Rediscoveries and Reformulations is I hope someday widely appreciated for the great scholarly contribution it represents.
I thank Gwendolyn for her note and am glad she finds some consolation from your words at this difficult time, as I do. I have heard her father speak of her so very often.
Apart from his contributions as scholar and teacher, Hayward will be missed as a good and decent man, a kind and caring soul, a most loving father, grandfather, and friend.
Please keep writing as those of us who are still in shock come to grips with our grief. Thank you. Kimberly
Since learning the sad news more than two weeks ago, I've been flooded with thoughts and memories of Hayward.
I took both Hayward's and Bob Keohane's "Theories of IR" courses at the same time my first semester at MIT. It was a mind-expanding cross-rough of ideas, approaches, and critiques. I also audited his "complex social systems" course, in which complexity sometimes approached chaos. He was on my oral exams, and an informal adviser.
Hayward was a massively-parallel super-computer, in a profession populated by abacuses. He was much loved by many -- in the past two weeks I've exchanged emails about him with his former students in Baghdad (!), Toronto, Japan, DC, California and Boston. I'm struck by how diverse were the people he touched. He was a gadfly's gadfly. There was an intellectual purity in his love of ideas. He was working on a 100-year long research program, and was way ahead of his time.
He was kind, and gentle, and an inspiration to me and so many others. We'll miss him and reminisce about him for the rest of our lives.
We have a few college students online from college of California State University Hayward and we love your blog postings,so well add your rss or news feed for them, Thanks and please post us and leave a comment back and well link to you. Thanks Jen ,Blog Manager,
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