People in Political Science

his friends, colleagues, students, and
strangers.

His brilliant and productive career
as a political scientist both drew
upon and reinvigorated his personal
and political commitment to preserv-
ing and enhancing all human life. He
was a man as good and kindly as his
scholarship was great.

He received strength from his
many friends and most of all from
his family. He is survived by his
wife, Juanita, and their children,
Marit, Mia and Helge. His presence
is deeply missed.

Joseph Fletcher
Alkis Kontos
University of Toronto

Guy Renfro Donnell

Guy R. Donnell, Oklahoma State
University emeritus professor of
political science, 86, died on Novem-
ber 2. For 25 years he taught politics
to students enthralled by his quick
wit and carefree cynicism. Students
flocked to enroll in his classes, and
when the time finally came for him
to retire in 1970, he was honored
with a scholarship fund from which
awards are granted annually in his
memory.

With Guy DonnelPs passing,
another gallant witness to pioneer
times in the Southwest is gone. His
mother, Iva May, came to Texas
with her parents after a nine-week
trip by covered wagon from Illinois.
She married John Donnell, whose
father had fought with the Missis-
sippi Regiment in the Civil War. She
strongly encouraged their three chil-
dren to excel in school, and between
them they went on to earn seven uni-
versity degrees. When Guy Donnell
graduated from Saint Jo High
School, Montague County, he was
the valedictorian of his class. He
studied for one year at what was
then called North Texas State Teach-
ers College in Denton, after which,
at the ripe age of 18, he secured the
first of several teaching jobs in small
county schools. Living frugally, he
managed to squeeze in semesters at
college between teaching jobs. It
took him nine years to get his
bachelors degree, which was awarded
by the University of Oklahoma, and
several more years to get master's

and doctoral degrees from the Uni-
versity of Texas in Austin.

When World War II broke out,
Donnell joined the U.S. Army Air
Corps. He served as a flight com-
mander at the Aviation Cadet Center
in San Antonio, which was then
regarded as the elite school for army
aviators. Donnell abhorred pomp
and pretentiousness. He had a repu-
tation for being kind and considerate
to cadets, who were often the butt of
harsh discipline administered by
younger officers with heads freshly
swelled at West Point. Thanks to
friendships formed in those days,
Donnell received shortly after the
war a welcome invitation to join the
political science faculty at Oklahoma
A&M in Stillwater.

Donnell became a mainstay of the
political science department, which
he managed almost single-handedly
while the nominal head of the de-
partment busied himself with more
lucrative ventures. Donnell planned
the class schedules, attended count-
less committee meetings, advised
hundreds of students, and taught
three or four courses a semester, all
the time delighting students with
wicked anecdotes and sarcasms he
found it inadvisable to repeat outside
of the classroom. His familiarity with
state and local politics affected both
his view of human nature and his
view of academic political science.
He would often merrily dismiss a
piece of scholarly writing by compar-
ing its author's intelligence unfavor-
ably to that of his cat, Cochise.

Donnell was a great favorite of
faculty members of all departments.
His election to serve on the univer-
sity's Faculty Council testified to
their respect for him. He himself
took special pride, however, in his
service on the university's Athletic
Cabinet, appointment to which, as
the only university committee from
which faculty members drew any
tangible benefits, was incontroverti-
ble proof he was not a chump.

After his retirement from the OSU
faculty Donnell continued to fre-
quent the campus and to regale
friends and colleagues with amusing
stories and outrageous insights. Even
as he coped valiantly with the loss of
his wife, Sue, and three serious ill-
nesses, his intelligence and sense of
humor never faltered. Vigorous and

charming into his ninth decade, he
found a new and valued friend,
Mary Elizabeth Jones, who joined
him in marriage and brought him
new happiness.

Bertil Hanson
Oklahoma State University

Cecelia Kenyon

Cecelia Marie Kenyon (Cele as she
was more generally known) died in
her home in Northampton on Janu-
ary 22, 1990. She was born in
Gainesville, Georgia, in 1922, and
received her Ph.D. from Radcliffe in
1949. She had come to Smith the
year before as an instructor and
remained a member of the Smith fac-
ulty until she retired in 1984. She was
named the Charles N. Clark Profes-
sor of Government in 1969.

Her field was European and
American political theory, and most
of her scholarly writing dealt with
the political theoretical arguments
surrounding the birth of the Ameri-
can Republic. For a variety of
reasons she did not publish much,
but the articles and books she did
publisli have become classics in her
field to be cited, discussed, and
argued about by others. This is
especially true of her seminal essay,
"Men of Little Faith: The Anti-
Federalists on the Nature of Repre-
sentative Government," which was
originally published in 1955 and
then, expanded to over 100 pages,
served as an introductory essay to
her edited volume The Anti-Federal-
ists, published in 1966.

In recognition of her contribution
to our understanding of the founda-
tions of the American political order,
Cele was awarded an honorary
degree by Rutgers University in 1976.
In the same year, she spoke before
the U.S. Congress at a program
marking the birthday of Thomas Jef-
ferson, one of her heroes. Two years
earlier, in 1974, she had been chosen
to address the United States House
of Representatives at a program
marking the 200th anniversary of the
First Continental Congress. She also
served as a member of the Board of
Trustees of Oberlin College, where
she had received her B.A. degree.

If Cele was a creative scholar, she
was also a respected and revered

76 PS: Political Science & Politics



In Memoriam

teacher. She worked closely with her
students, going over their examina-
tions or papers with a fine-tooth
comb, writing pages and pages of
comments and spending hours and
hours of her time with them. At the
peak of her career she was an impor-
tant model for many government
majors, partly because they knew
that, while demanding, she was also
supportive and fair. And while she
could be very serious, she also had a
rich, wry sense of humor.

As one of her former students
wrote recently:

My most favorite memory of Cecelia
Kenyon is the lecture she gave on
Thomas Jefferson in which she admit-
ted to stealing two bricks from Monti-
cello on one of her pilgrimages there.
This admission she made with a con-
spiratorial grin and defiant toss of her
head in front of over fifty Saturday
morning Smith students. Before that
moment I felt mostly awe in her pres-
ence. After that moment my awe was
tempered by the warmth of her admis-
sion. The steel trap mind was wedded
to a very human heart. Cecelia Ken-
yon has been, and remains, my most
important memory of four years at
Smith. Her influence on my life has
reached far beyond the information
she imparted.

Cele was also a wonderful col-
league. She gave freely of her time to
the college, fostering that faculty self-
governance which has become its hall-
mark, and she was elected to many
key committees by the faculty. She
loved Smith and, therefore, insisted
that the college live up to her very
high standards of fairness and jus-
tice. Thus, although not confronta-
tional by nature, and, indeed, rather
shy, she said what she believed and
stuck by it. For this reason Cele was
sometimes regarded with trepidation
and annoyance, if also respect, by
her colleagues and those college pres-
idents who served while Cele was
here. She was the sometimes lovable
and sometimes not so lovable bane
of their existences.

Cele was, to use an old-fashioned
word which she liked, a lady. She
was invariably courteous to her
opponents and soft spoken, inter-
lacing her arguments with wryly
humorous remarks, which during the
height of her powers, often produced
peals of laughter even from those

with whom she disagreed. Of course,
we all knew that the velvet glove
covered an iron fist.

Cele was also an old-fashioned lib-
eral Democrat. She hated both
Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan
with a passion, not only because of
their conservative social policies, but
also because both of them, she
believed, had violated the rule of law
and its constitutional underpinnings.
On the other hand, she was not par-
ticularly sympathetic to radical critics
of the American system and she was
not a feminist. Although very sensi-
tive to discrimination against women
of the kind she had experienced at
Harvard, she was quite angered by
attempts to write off political
theories because they had been con-
structed by men. Thomas Hobbes
was another one of her heroes and,
insofar as she had made his thought
hers, his gender was, she believed,
unimportant, and he could be suit-
ably revised to provide support for
equality of opportunity for men and
women. It was equality of oppor-
tunity that Cele sought. She was
strongly opposed to quotas or even
"goals."

Finally, she was passionately com-
mitted to freedom of expression and
academic freedom. She would,
indeed, have echoed the words of
Jefferson: "Here we are not afraid
to follow truth wherever it may lead,
nor to tolerate any error so long as
reason is left free to combat i t . "
Many ascribe to that view when
asked, but relatively few people in
this world, a saving remnant, are
willing to put themselves on the line
defending unpopular speech when
push comes to shove. Cele was a
member of that saving remnant. May
her spirit long be with us.

Stanley Rothman
Smith College

Horace B. Jacobini

H. B. (Jack) Jacobini died at the
age of 68 on August 19, 1990, after
waging a valiant battle against
cancer. He came to Southern Illinois
University at Carbondale in 1957
after teaching at The Citadel, the
University of Alabama (Huntsville
Center), East Central State College
(Oklahoma), and at the University of

Michigan on assignment at the Uni-
versity of the Philippines. His pri-
mary teaching interests and special-
ties included international law,
administrative law, jurisprudence,
and the government and politics of
Southeast Asia. He served on over
eighty master and Ph.D. committees,
directing more than his share of
theses and dissertations. He traveled
widely, giving lectures and conduct-
ing research throughout the world.

Jack was the author of numerous
professional articles published in
the United States and abroad. He
penned eight books. Completed just
before his death, his tome, Inter-
national Administrative Law, is
scheduled for publication by Oceana
in 1990. His best known works are
two editions of the widely adopted
book, International Law: A Text
(1962/1968).

His father was an Italian immi-
grant who taught romance languages
at Fort Hayes Kansas State College,
an institution where Jack received his
A.B. and M.S. degrees. It is perhaps
this background that helps to explain
Jack's interest in and intense study
of modern languages. His bedtime
reading often included studying one
exotic language or another so that he
might better understand an obscure
manuscript or converse with experts
in their native tongue.

Jack was a modest man who dis-
dained those who made too much of
their academic pedigree. He was the
first recipient of the Ph.D. degree in
political science at the University
of Kansas (1951) and a man who
marched to his own intellectual
drummer. He believed that scholars
should pursue their own research
agendas, without respect to existing
paradigms or discipline orthodoxy.

A thoroughly humane individual,
Jack always had time for his stu-
dents, colleagues, and friends. His
kindness to students was well-known
but it was not until his death that
many of us learned that he aided
political refugees from foreign lands,
providing food and shelter to the less
fortunate.

Living the life of a gentleman-
scholar, Jack and his wife Billie
occupied a fine home and ranch/
farm not too many miles from the
Carbondale campus. In this idyllic
setting, they nurtured four successful

March 1991 11