"Passionate in his support for students"

I am unfortunately unable to attend the memorial occasion personally. Ted was an important influence during my final year on campus and throughout my professional career.  I am pleased to offer the [following] personal note as a way of recognizing his presence in my life. In my opinion the world is a much better place because of the contributions he made over the past six decades.

Ted Lowi was passionate in his support for students, indeed energetically so in my experience. He encouraged lively research and critical analysis skills in our coursework as a matter of course for an active professor. Yet beyond this, and most remarkably, he partnered with us students in our struggle to design the right career path upon graduation, and beyond. I was, I’m sure, just one of hundreds who benefited from this passion of his.

As a senior at Cornell in September 1960, I was assigned to a young second-year Government Professor, Theodore J. Lowi, as my Honors adviser. My many office visits and our intense conversations are now a blur, but his personal interest in my efforts to make a contribution to our society remains a strong memory. As the year progressed, Ted Lowi actively encouraged me to take advantage of any and all post-graduate options that might be within my grasp. Not all our ideas and applications were successful (I interviewed but was not selected for a Rhodes), but he was instrumental in my receiving a graduate fellowship at Columbia’s prestigious Public Law and Government Department. It was a major step on the right road for me.

My career path from Columbia was anything but consistent and stable, and thus I must have presented a rather frustrating challenge to Ted as a former/current advisee. Over 50 years I worked my way through multiple careers: the military, government service, law practice, appointed and elected political office, teaching political science and international law, and eventually international conflict management consulting. What was consistent throughout was my contacts, and re-contacts, with Ted Lowi for advice, mentoring, and his thoughtful (and optimistic) encouragement and recommendations. The underlying theme was a commitment to contributing to a better local, national and international community.

I met Ted personally only twice after my 1961 graduation. When he gave a visiting lecture in Washington, DC, in the early 2000s, I attended and benefitted from his commentary on American politics. Approaching him after his talk, I started to introduce myself, but he interrupted, remembering me at once and calling me by my full name (my middle name “Stevenson” apparently stuck with him from the 1950s, with Adlai often a focus of our discussions). In October 2009, I enjoyed a long conversation with him in the lobby of the Statler Hotel on campus, discussing briefly past achievements and, as typical with any conversation with Ted Lowi, to identify and plan possible future projects. He was eager to encourage me to write a book about my international consulting experiences (a project yet to be started).

A most important contribution, often overlooked, that Ted Lowi made to this country and the world was his energetic advising of the students he taught and advised during their college years, and his mentoring presence in their lives beyond graduation.

John Murray

College of Arts and Sciences

Cornell Class of 1961