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The weirder the better

- December 23, 2009

Lee didn’t only publish “multitudes of serious research articles”:https://themonkeycage.org/2009/12/while_you_were_sleeping_lee_wa.html. He was also responsible (together with henchperson Forrest Maltzman and a cast of others) for such outrages to the profession as the inquiry into “whether bad ventilation killed off early 20th century Congressmen”:http://home.gwu.edu/~forrest/fmdeathincongressps.pdf, the claim that _Bush v. Gore_ had been decided “in order to tip the balance in the Supreme Court election betting pool”:http://home.gwu.edu/~forrest/fmjusticewageringps.pdf and “uncovering the role of Ken Arrow in changing the papal election system”:http://home.gwu.edu/~forrest/Maltzman%28Pope.PS%29.pdf. Soon after I came to GWU, I thought about submitting a piece to the _APSR_ under Lee’s editorship, but was worried that it would be too off-beat and that derisory rejection letters might hurt my tenure chances. I cautiously approached Lee to ask whether submitting something weird to the _APSR_ was a bad idea in principle. He beamed at me (for Dakotan values of ‘beamed’) and assured me that from his point of view as editor, the weirder the better.

This attitude, more than anything else, explains why we have had so many bloggers in GWU’s political science department. Lee shaped the department’s culture into one which valued good academic research, but also valued weirdness. This made it (and makes it) an attractive place to work for people who don’t fit into the usual disciplinary boxes, and who are more inclined to experiment. Lee was a blogger before he ever started blogging. He also (and I suspect this is something few people outside GWU know) was a serious fan of electronic music. A few years ago, when Kraftwerk, his favorite band (for _Tour de France_ in particular) played the 9.30 Club, he was a bit put out that he couldn’t find anyone to go with, so I ended up going with him, stopping off at Ben’s Chili Bowl first, and running into Tyler Cowen at the event, with a book in hand (Tyler told us that he usually brought one along and read it upstairs until the band came on stage). It was a fun evening with good conversation – Lee was in his element, even if it was an element that you might not have expected to be his, had you not known him. I can’t say how much I am going to miss him.