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Sometimes you come across people that permanently change the way you think. About life, yourself, or an area of study. They instill a sense of resolute optimism about the world and your abilities. Bear Braumoeller was that person for us. Wise, accomplished, brilliant, humble, and kind. Anyone who can be remembered that way lived life well. Bear is one of those people. He was our professor, mentor, colleague, and friend. We were richer for knowing him, and are poorer for his passing.
We first got the chance to meet Bear during our recruitment process to Ohio State. We gravitated toward him and his research. Bear went out of his way to bring in the best and brightest graduate students to the program, and was absolutely relentless in his efforts. He took phone calls from us, discussed all of our options, and went out of his way to procure funds and opportunities for every student. Bear was known to showcase some of the best places to eat in Columbus, too. We all got along with Bear immediately, and he became a powerful force in our proverbial corner, helping us navigate and thrive in graduate school.
We’ve been fortunate to have terrific professors, but Bear was an unusually good professor. In graduate seminars, we were exposed to a wide breadth of topics in political and social science. The breadth that Bear introduced in his courses was unique for a political science class. Most importantly, he taught us how to read books and articles critically and constructively. Graduate students are often great at tearing apart a piece of scholarship. And that’s important. But published works are generally published for a reason, he reminded us, and so it’s equally important to identify their strengths in addition to their weaknesses. That approach cultivated humility (there are always tradeoffs in research) but was also encouraging. If graduate students think pieces published by top scholars in good journals are bad because we only focus on their downsides, how could we possibly do good work?
Bear’s take on the literature and the discipline was just like his research interests: complex, rich, and nuanced. He loved what he studied, and his knowledge in these areas often seemed encyclopedic. He would recommend a citation and quote on a whim, from memory. He always asked big, important questions, and he did his best to answer them. His two books, The Great Powers and the International System and Only the Dead, address two important questions in international politics: how leaders and historical circumstances jointly shape major historical outcomes, and whether war is declining. He was methodologically sophisticated, but for him it was about getting closer to the truth. He truly didn’t care what method you used if it fit the question. He had a great academic pedigree (University of Chicago, University of Michigan) but he wasn’t elitist. He wanted to hear from smart people, and he believed in demystifying the academy, making it accessible.
Bear was a formal advisor, but also a tremendous mentor to us. He helped guide many important decisions in graduate school, from the type of training we needed, our choice of dissertation topics, to the construction of our committees. Bear’s was ready to provide feedback on any idea or draft, regardless of its stage of development. He was also kind when he didn’t have to be, and when no one would praise him for it publicly. It’s just who he was. His feedback was always constructive and intended to enable better work. When we made mistakes he would correct us – firmly, gently, and privately.
Bear created the MESO (Modeling Emergent Social Order) Lab, which has been supported by NSF and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. It didn’t start as a lab, though. The first day some of us gathered in the conference room, it was just a group of people who Bear thought might be interested in an idea he had. We talked it over – a question about the relationship between hierarchical order and war – and decided it was interesting enough to pursue. One of the first things we did was to gather on a Thursday and just start working, the whole day, with no distractions, putting ideas on paper and into code. He would call them Hackathons, reminiscent of a Silicon Valley start-up. These early days made a huge impact on Bear. Numerous times after that, in presentations or conversations about what we were doing, he would mention that he had never before felt as productive as he did in those early research sessions. He realized that this was it, this was the way forward for him. This was not merely working on a project. This represented a change in how he was going to do research, in how he approached being a professor and working with graduate students.
International Relations is not known for collaborative research. The vast majority of major work in the field has a single author, more rarely two, and very rarely more than two authors. Some of us had co-authored with Bear before, but this was different. Whereas previous partnerships were more traditional co-authored research projects in which each author did their part, this was something bigger. Bear had a vision beyond group publications. He wanted us to grow into scholars who would think big, who wouldn’t be afraid to tackle questions that might seem intimidatingly broad, and who would pull the right minds together to tackle those problems. Our first project was “Hierarchy and War”, which addresses two of the biggest topics in the discipline. We were meant to say something new about both – and the relationship between them – in a single paper. The ambition was daunting, but that was Bear’s way: take big, important questions and swing as hard as you could at answering them.
As membership in the MESO Lab grew and expanded, Bear expanded the lab’s projects as well. As always, all projects are led by us, the students. Bear gave us remarkable autonomy and control over these projects: despite our status as graduate students, we had the final say over theoretical framing, modeling decisions, and data analysis. He gave us room to explore different paths, even if it meant delaying the progress of the project. In addition to developing us as scholars, he helped us develop as people. Bear understood that a good life outside of work with food, travel, and family, was of equal importance to doing great work. He expected high quality work from us, but the lab never became a source of stress or frustration. Being in the MESO Lab has been one of the greatest blessings from being Bear’s students. Just as a system is not equal to the sum of its parts, our lab produces scholarship that is more creative and fruitful than what we could individually create.
The loss of Bear leaves a gaping hole, not only in our lab but in our profession more broadly. People around the world have so beautifully expressed their appreciation and admiration for Bear, with an outpouring of tributes and memories. As is so often the case with grieving, those left behind expressed a desire for one more conversation, one more snarky comment, one more belly laugh, one more smile. His presence and reputation were felt with the same gravity and strength across the discipline. So many people felt as strongly and warmly about Bear as we did.
It is impossible to properly account for all the things Bear taught us. He taught us to be ambitious in our research. He taught us to be fearless when exploring and implementing new ideas. He taught us to be gentle and kind, with others and ourselves. His ideas and influence are all over our projects and dissertations. We will do our best to carry forward that work and legacy.
Rest in peace, Bear. It was a privilege and honor to have known you as a leader, mentor, and friend. Your memory is a blessing and you are missed.
About the authors
Maryum Alam, Andrew Goodhart, Michael Lopate, Haoming Xiong, and Liuya Zhang are political science Ph.D. candidates at The Ohio State University. Maël van Beek is an incoming postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. David Peterson is an incoming post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan. Jared Edgerton is an Assistant Professor of political science at the University of Texas, Dallas.
Please consider donating to support Bear’s daughter, Molly Braumoeller.
Randall Robinson, a lawyer, civil rights activist, and educator died from aspiration pneumonia on March 23 in Basseterre, St. Kitts, where he had lived for the past two decades. Robinson was 81 years old.
A native of Richmond, Virginia, Robinson attended what is now Norfolk State University but left to join the U.S. Army. After military service, Robinson earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Virginia Union University. He held a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School. At Harvard, it was the first time Robinson had ever sat in a classroom with White students.
After law school, Robinson worked as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill. In 1977, he established the TransAfrica Forum. According to the group’s website, TransAfrica is a “research, educational and organizing institution for the African-American community, offering constructive analysis concerning U.S. policy as it affects Africa and the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin America.” While leading TransAfrica, Robinson became one of the strongest voices in the United States against South African apartheid. In 1994, Robinson went on a 27-day hunger strike to protest U.S. policy toward Haiti.
Robinson worked at Penn State jointly as a professor of law at the University Park campus and as a professor at the Penn State School of International Affairs from 2008 to 2016. He was the author of seven books including Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America (Dutton, 1998). In the book, Robinson stated “I am obsessively Black. Race is an overarching aspect of my identity. America has made me that way.”
“Randall Robinson was an intellectual giant,” said Victor Romero, a professor of law at Penn State. “His pathbreaking work in the area of international human rights and social justice, especially regarding the history and condition of Africans and African-Americans, was particularly influential and still resonates today.”
Roslyn Pope, a civil rights leader and educator, died on January 19 in Arlington, Texas. She was 84 years old.
A native of Atlanta, Pope was a graduate of Spelman College. While a senior at the historically Black college for women, Pope along with a young Julian Bond wrote “An Appeal for Human Rights,” which was published by three newspapers in the city and was reprinted widely across the United States and read into the Congressional Record. The “Appeal” laid the groundwork for civil rights protests by college students in Atlanta.
After graduating with a degree in music from Spelman College, Pope moved to Florida and taught in the public schools in Fort Lauderdale, while raising a family.
Later, Dr. Pope studied piano at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She earned a master’s degree in English from Georgia State University and a Ph.D. in humanities from Syracuse University. Dr. Pope taught at Pennsylvania State University and later historically Black Bishop College, which was founded in Marshall, Texas, and moved to Dallas in 1961. The college closed in 1988.
Arthur Thomas, the former president of Central State University, the historically Black educational institution in Wilberforce, Ohio, died on February 9 in a hospital in Silver Springs, Maryland. He was 82 years old.
A native of Philadelphia, Thomas enrolled at Central State University after serving in the U.S. Army. After graduation in 1962, he secured a job as a teacher in the public school system of Dayton, Ohio. There he was a leader in the effort to end racial segregation in the school system.
Dr. Thomas went on to earn a master’s degree in education from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and a doctorate in education administration from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
In 1985, Dr. Thomas was appointed president of Central State University. He was the first alumnus of the school to serve as university president. He resigned in 1995 when it was revealed that the school was $5 million in debt.
Later in his career, Dr. Thomas was the senior administrative coordinator of the Ph.D. program in bioenvironmental science in the School of Computer, Mathematical, & Natural Sciences at Morgan State University in Baltimore. He then served as a presidential fellow for the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.
Patricia Hill, professor Emerita of English at the University of San Francisco, died on January 23. She was 80 years old.
A native of Washington, D.C., she was a member of the first class to desegregate McKinley High School in Washington. She then earned a bachelor’s degree at Howard University.
Professor Hill moved to the Bay Area in the late 1960s and earned a master’s degree at the University of San Francisco and a Ph.D. in English from Stanford University. Dr. Hill joined the faculty at the University of San Francisco in 1970 as an instructor in English and ethnic studies. She was later named director of the ethnic studies program. She created and taught a wide range of courses including Survey of American Literature, Harlem Renaissance, Survey of Women’s Literature, Survey of African American Literature, as well as courses in drama and women’s studies. Professor Hall was the editor of Call & Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition (Houghton Mifflin, 1997).
Dr. Hill retired as a full professor in 2015 after teaching at the University of San Francisco for 45 years.
John H. Bracey Jr., a longtime faculty member in the W.E.B Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, died earlier this month at age 81.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Washington, D.C., Bracey attended both Howard University in Washington and Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1964. He did graduate work at Roosevelt University and Northwestern University, while active in the civil rights movement in Chicago.
Professor Bracey was a leading figure in the fields of African American studies and U.S. history. He joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts in 1972 and helped create one of the nation’s first doctoral programs in African American studies. He also served in several roles including as chair of the department and co-director of the graduate certificate in African Diaspora Studies.
Professor Bracey’s writing and research focused on African social and cultural history, radical ideologies and movements, and the history of African American women, while his recent interests focused on the interactions between African Americans and Native Americans, Afro-Latinx, and Jewish Americans.
He co-authored or co-edited numerous books including Strangers and Neighbors: Relations Between Blacks and Jews in the United States (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) and the two-volume African American Mosaic: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to the Twenty-First Century (Pearson, 2004 & 2020).
“Professor Bracey was a giant in his field. His contributions, mentorship, and advocacy for African American Studies/Black Studies were known throughout the world. He was a member of our department faculty for over 50 years,” said Yolanda Covington-Ward, chair of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies. “Indeed, he was an institution within himself. His commitment to supporting and guiding our students was invaluable; he impacted the lives of so many students and faculty. Our department has lost one of its strongest pillars and we are grieving. We are still trying to come to terms with this tremendous loss.”
Fannie Gaston-Johansson, a long-time faculty member of the School of Nursing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, died at her home in Baltimore on January 7. She was 84 years old.
Dr. Gaston-Johansson grew up in Hickory, North Carolina, and was valedictorian of her high school class. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from nearby Winston-Salem State University. Dr. Gaston-Johansson continued her studies at the University of California, San Francisco, where she received a master’s degree in medical, surgical, and psychiatric nursing. She traveled to Sweden as an exchange student where she met her husband, Dr. Sonny Johansson and raised a family. While raising her four children and working full-time, she earned a Ph.D. in 1985 at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
Dr. Gaston-Johansson was a member of the University of Nebraska Medical Center faculty from 1985 to 1993 where she served as an associate professor and the director of nursing research and quality improvement. She joined the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1993 as an associate professor and held the Elsie M. Lawler Endowed Chair throughout her tenure. In 1998, Professor Gaston-Johansson became the first Black woman to become a tenured professor at Johns Hopkins University. For a time, she held joint appointments at Johns Hopkins and the University of Gothenburg.
Her work and research focused on symptom and pain management, quality of life, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, and racial and ethnic health disparities. A scientist who authored upwards of 100 scientific articles, Professor Gaston-Johansson was also an inventor, holding U.S. and international patents on the Pain-O-Meter, an assessment tool that provides a standardized way to measure pain. It has been used by hospitals in the United States and overseas.
In 2007, Gaston-Johansson was named the inaugural chair of the department of acute and chronic care at John Hopkins Nursing, as the school’s faculty was organized in academic departments for the first time. She also served as director of the school’s Center on Health Disparities Research. She was named professor emerita upon her retirement in 2014.
In May 2022, Johns Hopkins University renamed the Target Opportunity Program, the Fannie Gaston-Johansson Faculty of Excellence Program. Since 2015 this program has played a key role in increasing faculty diversity at Johns Hopkins University.
G. Reginald Daniel, a professor and director of graduate studies in sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, died late last year. He was 73 years old.
Dr. Daniel held bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Indiana University. He earned a Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles.
After serving as a lecturer at UCLA, Dr. Daniel began teaching at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1992. He was named an assistant professor of sociology in 1998. He was promoted to associate professor in 200e and to full professor in 2009.
Dr. Daniel’s research centered on race and ethnic relations, critical mixed-race studies, comparative race and culture, and comparative and historical sociology. He taught the course “Betwixt and Between,” which is one of the first and longest-standing courses in the United States to deal specifically with the question of multiracial identity comparing the United States with various parts of the world.
Dr. Daniel authored several books including More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order (Temple University Press, 2001) and Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths? (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006). He was also the co-founding editor and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies.
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