Betty Glad

We mark with sadness the passing of Betty Glad, a renowned scholar of American politics and foreign policy and, most recently, the author of An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy.

Professor Glad’s contributions to the field of political science have been immense, both in terms of the importance of her scholarship and her trailblazing career in a field that has not always been hospitable to female scholars. In 2000, she was honored with the Frank J. Goodnow Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Field of Political Science, and she received numerous other honors for her scholarship, service, and teaching. For our part, here at Cornell University Press we have been honored to be associated with Professor Glad and to have published what is her last book. In An Outsider in the White House, she considered the career of President Jimmy Carter, weighed his success as a foreign policy president, and presented the lessons that current and future executives can learn from Carter’s four years in office. Revisiting a presidency that she depicted with vivacity and insight in her 1980 book, Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House, Professor Glad offers an assessment of the Carter Administration that bears thoughtful and extended consideration. We are grateful for her many contributions to American political and intellectual life.

Below is the full obituary that appeared, on August 6, in The State.

Dr. Betty Glad, 82, died August 2, 2010. She enjoyed a truly distinguished career as a scholar of American politics and foreign policy. She was the Olin D. Johnston Professor of Political Science and Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of South Carolina. She was an exemplary scholar, an expert on the American Presidency, United States foreign policy, and political psychology. She was the author of Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House; Charles Evans Hughes and the Illusions of Innocence; Key Pittman: The Tragedy of a Senate Insider, and most recently, An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy (Cornell University Press, 2009). She was editor or co-editor of The Psychological Dimensions of War; The Russian Transformation, and other books. In addition, she published dozens of articles, book chapters and commentary. Her first book Charles Evans Hughes was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Dr. Glad received a distinguished alumna award from the University of Utah in 2009.

She earned her B.S. degree magna cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Utah. She received her doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1962. She taught at Mt. Holyoke College, and Brooklyn College, then taught for many years at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She was also a visiting professor at New York University, 1986-1988. She was one of the first women to earn a Ph.D. in Political Science and then teach at a Ph.D. granting institution. She served as the first woman chair of the University of Illinois Department of Political Science. Dr. Glad joined the University of South Carolina in 1989. She was a dedicated teacher and exemplary mentor to untold numbers of graduate students whose careers were enhanced with her care and guidance. As a pioneer and role model for women throughout the Political Science profession, she also was one of the first women to challenge prevailing conventions and gender discrimination in the discipline, and one of the first to attain national and international stature. As a result, she won many awards for both scholarship and leadership throughout her long career, including the Frank D. Goodnow Award from the American Political Science Association for a lifetime of contributions and service to the discipline, and the Harold Lasswell Award from the International Society for Political Psychology for a lifetime of outstanding contributions to political psychology. She served as President of the International Society for Political Psychology, President of the Presidency Research Section of the American Political Science Association, and Vice-President of the American Political Science Association.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Harluf Glad Anderson and Edna Jeannette Geersten Glad and her niece, Cheryl Jensen, of Salt Lake City, Utah. She is survived by her brother and sister-in-law, Jay and Edris Glad and by her great-nephew and niece, Christine and Jason Stout.

Dr. Glad enjoyed music, ballroom dancing, reading, and good conversation. Among the many virtues contributing to Betty’s success were courage, strength and tenaciousness. She was a democrat and a Democrat (both little and big D) and loved justice.

Dr. Glad will be buried next to her parents in Salt Lake City, Utah. A memorial service will be held in The Rutledge College Chapel on the historic Horseshoe of the University of South Carolina, Columbia, on Sunday, August 8, 2010, at 2 p.m. Dunbar Funeral Home, Devine Street Chapel, is assisting. In lieu of flowers, tax deductable memorials may be sent to: The Betty Glad Legal Defense Fund of the Women’s Caucus for Political Science, c/o Dr. Laura R. Woliver, 425 Dean Hall Lane, Columbia, SC 29209.

Insight into the past of the Press

An article from the Cornell Daily Sun archives about Sage House, the home of Cornell University Press. We are always talking about reviving the dumbwaiter to ferry manuscripts up and downstairs.

Cornell Daily Sun, Volume XIX, Issue 6, 27 September 1898, Page 6
THE NEW INFIRMARY.

Changes Made in the Henry W. Sage Mansion.

What will probably be the finest college infirmary in the country is now being fitted up on the site of the Henry W. Sage mansion on State street. The Sage family has done much for Cornell University, but probably no gift from that family has been given with more tenderness and feeling than this latest gift of a site and a mansion for the exclusive use of the students of Cornell. The family of the late Henry W. Sage felt that no better use of their father’s home could be made; and both sons have been much interested in the fitting up of the house for use as a students’ infirmary.

The Sage place was one of the finest and best appointed houses in Ithaca, and it was Mr. Sage’s idea that few changes should be made and that the infirmary should retain a homelike appearance. The large rooms have, therefore, not been cut up. They average eighteen feet square and except at infrequent intervals there will be no necessity for putting more than one patient in a room. In cases of necessity, however, four patients can easily be accommodated in each. The capacity of the infirmary will be about thirty, there being seven large rooms. The ventilation will be excellent. The rooms on the first story are twelve and one- halt feet in the clear; on the second story, eleven feet; on the third story, ten feet and one half.

When the plumbing was first put into the house, some twenty years ago, it was the finest that could be obtained; but Mr. Sage has had the old plumbing removed and the new fittings are of the most approved sanitary type throughout.

The paper has been removed from the walls in the rooms which were changed and they have been painted. The house is well equipped with bath rooms, there being two on the second story and one on the third, beside one in the basement and one bath-room and two lavatories on the first floor.

The second and third stories have each an emergency kitchen supplied with a gas stove and everything necessary tor the preparation of broth and food for the patients. Each is connected by dumb waiter with the kitchen.

For use in any surgical cases one of the rooms, which has two east, and one north window, has been set aside. A sky-light has been put in, there is a large fire-place with a gas log for ventilation, while all the woodwork has been removed and the floors have been painted and the walls varnished. A closet with hot and cold water is connected with this room.

The heating system is hot water and it has always been adequate and the house is thoroughly and easily heated. Gas and electric lights are used for lights throughout. Mr. William H. Sage has completely furnished the infirmary with linen, furniture, and china leaving some of the carpets and furniture which were used by his father’s family.

The infirmary is almost ready to open, a few painters only being still at work. It is for the exclusive use of the students of the University and the charges will be as low as they can be made. Mr. Miller, the architect, who has had entire charge of the work in the house, and who kindly gave a Sun representative information regarding the changes could not state definitely just what the charges would be.

Muhsin Mahdi Dies; Edited and Translated Two Books with Cornell

As reported in the September/October issue of Philosophy Now, Muhsin Mahdi, the world’s foremost expert on medieval Arabic and Islamic political philosophy, died in August at the age of 81. Born in Iraq, he spent his academic career at the University of Baghdad (1947–1957), the University of Chicago (1957–1969), and Harvard University (1969–1996), where he held the James Richard Jewett Professorship in Arabic. Among his many books were two works he published with Cornell University Press—Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, which he coedited with Ralph Lerner, and an acclaimed translation of Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, originally published in 1969 and reissued in 2002 with a new foreword by Charles E. Butterworth and Thomas L. Pangle. Both books reflect the remarkable archival and philological work for which Mahdi was universally admired.

Why France? Why not France?

In the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s new “The Academic Life” section, Alice Kaplan provides a guide to life and work in the City of Lights: “A Scholar’s Paris.” Our book Why France? contains answers to the eponymous question from nineteen distinguished historians of the irresistible land.

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