George Rabinowitz, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, died suddenly on Friday. “Here”:http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2011/03/political_science_professor_george_rabinowitz_dies is a news story at the Daily Tarheel. “Here”:http://ipeatunc.blogspot.com/2011/03/rip-george-rabinowitz.html is a post by Kindred Winecoff at UNC’s IPE blog. I will borrow several of Winecoff’s links — to George’s “CV”:http://www.unc.edu/polisci/faculty_pages/cvs/vita.GR.pdf and to one of his “seminal articles”:http://www.jstor.org/pss/1956436 on directional voting. Much of George’s work was part of a collaboration with his wife, “Stuart McDonald”:http://www.unc.edu/polisci/faculty_pages/macdonald.html, who is also a UNC political scientist.
I was an undergraduate at UNC and a political science major. I never took a class with George but he was a member of my honors thesis committee. He had the unfortunate role of being my tutor as I conducted my first-ever quantitative analysis of survey data. I remember knocking on his door many times, clutching a sheaf of SAS output. Sometimes the door was open and sometimes it was closed. He always opened it nevertheless, even though I knew I was bothering the hell out of him. It wasn’t a bad thesis, as undergraduate theses go, and he deserves a lot of credit.
When I was considering doctoral programs, it was George who suggested that the one program I had been ignoring because of its physical distance from my NC home — UC-Berkeley — was worth considering. I visited Berkeley at the last minute and ended up going there. It is a decision I have never regretted.
As a graduate student and now faculty member, I have seen George on many occasions, usually at conferences. He (and Stuart, when I saw them both) were always exceedingly warm — asking about my life, excited when I got married and had children.
George was a model in so many respects. I will miss him.