Of my many treasured memories of Ted Lowi, a few stand out:
My first memory is of the life-changing phone call from Ted (or Mr. Lowi, as we all called him back then) in the spring of 1973, when he offered me a fellowship to study American government and political theory together. His enthusiasm for Cornell and the life of the mind were infectious for a young 22 year old seeking his future.
Ted was taking sabbatical leave during my first year at Cornell in 1973. On his return, though, life for his students and me changed fundamentally. Once a week, Ted conducted an all-day long seminar in his office that he called, for lack of a better term, office hours. Invariably, by the time Ted arrived in the morning to unlock the door, a parade of students was already waiting to talk about their futures and to argue about ideas and theories. The conversations began early, carried through lunch and ended in the late afternoon. Ted taught us how to argue, to teach, and to listen. Given how Ted relished controversy, the more people who joined the conversation, the more exciting the office hours. Conservative ideas from Hayek about rule of law and markets clashed with Marxist theories of the state and public choice theory (the least insightful of the three, according to Ted). You didn’t have to agree with Ted. You just had to listen and think. He called on all of us to think great ideas. His great gift was how he instilled in us the tools for thinking critically and the confidence to believe that we actually could have great ideas.
My indebtedness to Ted runs deep. Like many others, he helped me to get my first job…and my second. He expanded my professional contacts, introducing me to Alan Stone at the University of Houston, individuals at the Institute for Humane Studies, and W.W. Norton Publishers. His influence sparked my desire to research and write about Texas government and politics. I am likely the only Cornell alum who has written on Adam Smith, Texas constitutional development, and the privatization of mineral rights in Texas. My eclectic interests are due in large part to his training and mentoring.
One of my happiest memories of Ted took place in Chicago (at least I think it was Chicago) at the annual meetings. Ted was in his late 70s, but you wouldn’t have known it by his actions. A group of his former students and colleagues were hanging around the Norton booth, waiting to go out to dinner. The crowd grew large and rowdy, with nobody listening to anyone else. Suddenly, Ted jumps on a rickety folding chair and begins to address us all. Terrified that he was going to fall off the chair and break his neck, we all stopped our conversations and urged him to step down. No luck. He had our rapt attention; the moment was his. With his arm extended out like Teddy Roosevelt on the stump, Lowi was lecturing and commanding our attention. We were back at the Lowi office hours and listening well.
Harpham graduated from the Pennsylvania State University in 1973 before joining the PhD Program in Government at Cornell University in the fall of 1973 as a John L. Senior Fellow. For two years, while pursuing his own studies, he worked closely with two other graduate students under Lowi’s direction on the history of political science. With Lowi on his committee, Harpham earned a PhD in 1980.
Harpham remained in contact with Lowi over the years, visiting with him at professional meetings and coauthoring an article with him on pluralist and neo-Marxist theories of the state. In the early 2000’s, he also coauthored with Anthony Champagne the nine Texas chapters of Ginsberg and Lowi’s We the People, Texas Edition. The combined US/Texas book went through seven editions before being broken up into separate US and Texas textbooks. Today, Governing Texas is the leading textbook on Texas government and politics. Now in its third edition, a fourth edition is under preparation. The chapters on political economy, constitutionalism in Texas, public finance and public policy owe much to Lowi’s approach to American government, politics, and policy.
Edward J. Harpham
Dean and Marcy McDermott Cook Chair, Hobson Wildenthal Honors College, and
Associate Provost and Professor of Political Science, University of Texas at Dallas
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