George Rabinowitz, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, died suddenly on Friday. Here is a news story at the Daily Tarheel. Here is a post by Kindred Winecoff at UNC’s IPE blog. I will borrow several of Winecoff’s links—to George’s CV and to one of his seminal articles on directional voting. Much of George’s work was part of a collaboration with his wife, Stuart McDonald, 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.
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This is absolutely heartbreaking news. George is the first political scientist I modeled myself after. It was his passion in the campaigns and elections class that I took with him my senior year at Carolina that convinced me I wanted to be a political scientist. It was his input that led me to work with Paul Gurian — one of his past graduate students — as a graduate student at the University of Georgia.
I’m proud to call myself an offshoot of that political science family tree, and I’m greatly saddened to hear of George’s passing. He was a truly great, warm and caring man.
I’m still trying to make sense of this terrible news. In addition to being a first-rate scholar, he was one of the nicest people I have ever met. He was a passionate graduate teacher who struck the perfect balance of holding us to very high standards without discouraging those who were struggling to keep up. On our one research collaboration, he was endlessly patient, gracious, and ultimately helpful in ways that are still paying dividends.
I was proud to be one of his TAs a couple of times, and would have done it again without hesitation, despite the legendary 14-hour grading marathons.
My heart goes out to Stuart, to whom I also owe many professional debts. They were an amazing pair.
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