In Memoriam

Robert Cuff

York University's Department of History and the Schulich School of Business lost a beloved colleague with the sudden passing of Robert Cuff. On 20 November 2001, Bob had been enjoying a convivial dinner meeting with his colleagues in the Business Policy Area at Schulich, rethinking the curriculum for the years ahead, when he collapsed from an apparent stroke. He died in Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital five days later at the age of sixty.

Bob Cuff was one of the early pioneers and brightest academic stars of the fledgling York University. Dean John T. Saywell, who had previously taught Bob in the Department of History at the University of Toronto, hired him away from the University of Rochester to bolster the field in United States history at York in 1969. After graduating from the University of Toronto in Modern History in 1963, Bob flew through the Ph.D. program at Princeton, completing in only three years an ambitious Ph.D. thesis for the demanding Arthur Link on U.S. mobilization for World War I. Rochester, which was then a powerhouse in U.S. history, snapped him up in 1967. But for all the energy and excitement at the University of Rochester, Bob and his wife, Mary Lou, jumped at the chance to return to Toronto to raise their family and to help build a new university.

During the 1970s, Bob Cuff was one of the scholars who established York's reputation for productivity and intellectual vitality, particularly in history. His landmark book, The War Industries Board: Business-Government Relations During World War I, came out in 1973 and still remains the standard work on the subject. Bob possessed the casual ease of a true professional; articles, contributions, collaborations, conference proceedings, book reviews tripped out of his typewriter. Through his book, his many articles, and review essays, Bob came to be known in the 1970s as one of the major figures of "the organizational synthesis" in U.S. history.

While he had become by profession a specialist in business-government relations in the United States, Bob also maintained a lively interest in Canadian history and public affairs. He and Jack Granatstein, for instance, collaborated on several books and articles on Canadian-U.S. relations. Bob played a quiet behind the scenes role organizing the Canadian Association of American Studies. He turned his interests on war mobilization towards the Canadian experience. With his own sparkling essays and those he encouraged from colleagues he also brought Canadian historical scholarship into the pages of the Harvard Business History Review. Selection for membership in the Charles Warren Center at Harvard as a visiting fellow in 1973-1974 marked Bob as a rising superstar in the U.S. historical profession.

In the 1980s, Bob Cuff began to turn his personal and professional attention to business education. His studies of the growth of the military-industrial complex in World War I led him to focus on the rise of bureaucratic methods of command and control. This, in turn, led him to examine for the first time the development of techniques of statistical measurement and management in U.S. universities' business schools.

Bob was able to connect his research interests with teaching practice in the mid-eighties when Thomas McCraw of the Harvard Business School recruited him for two years to join the teaching team of one of the core courses in the business program, Business and Government in the International Economy. Bob thrived in this new setting, discovering somewhat to his surprise that he was good at the theatrical teaching style demanded by Harvard's horseshoe-shaped classrooms and groups of ninety students. Harvard liked him as well. He and Mary Lou returned for another two years from 1989 to 1991. During this period, Bob made a name for himself with a series of tightly focussed essays on the personnel, techniques and political institutionalization of production control systems. Slowly his attention shifted towards the history of management.

When he returned to York in the early 1990s, after two stints at the Harvard Business School and with his new interest in both the history of management and teaching managers, Bob sought a joint appointment with the Faculty of Administrative Studies. His historical understanding informed his teaching, and in turn his experience with colleagues and students in the business school informed his historical research. Bob brought the same professional credibility, seemingly effortless competence, and level-headed decency to the burgeoning Schulich School in the nineties as he had to the rambunctious history department earlier. Bob, in his quiet, yet very effective style soon assumed the leadership of a diverse policy area at Schulich and built intellectual bridges between public policy and business management scholars, establishing unique masters and doctoral seminars that reviewed the history of management thought. By such means, he provided new historical perspectives on the discipline of management.

Bob was thus poised to embark on a new phase of his career when his beloved wife, Mary Lou, fell ill with cancer. With the same quiet dignity that had marked his entire career, Bob now devoted himself to his family and care-giving. Bob and Mary Lou were inseparable; childhood sweethearts in Peterborough, Ontario, a couple at the University of Toronto, partners in Princeton, Rochester, and Toronto. Mary Lou's death in November 1999 was a devastating blow.

Time and Bob's unsinkable spirit eventually took hold. Recently Bob had begun to participate anew in the history department's affairs; we revelled again in his jocular, self-deprecating humor. He played an important role in the hiring of new U.S. history professors at York. He was admired among his Americanist colleagues as an incredibly well-read historian who kept up-to-date with the latest scholarship in new fields while also encouraging new looks at older scholarship. Graduate history students appreciated his openness to new topics and approaches, and his acts of incredible generosity in giving them his own books, lecture outlines, and course materials when they began new jobs as instructors and professors. The students in his fourth-year history seminar on "Organizing the United States for War," marvelled at his excitement with the way in which he was able to illuminate the current organization of the U.S. war effort with historical parallels from his own work. Academically, he and Tom McCraw were about to launch on a research project on mobilization management for World War II. He was laughing and enjoying the fellowship of colleagues in the Schulich business policy unit, planning for the future, when he was tragically struck down.

Bob Cuff brought style, performance, academic credibility, professional dedication, and above all, human decency to York. He was admired as a scholar and loved as a human being. At his funeral, moving eulogies by Tom McCraw and Neville Thompson, friends of long standing, reminded us of the far-reaching influence of Bob Cuff's indomitable spirit, acute intelligence and integrity. He is survived by his father, Gerald Cuff, two daughters, Christine and Katherine, a son, Peter, and granddaughter, Alexandra. The family has requested memorial donations be sent to Sunnybrook Hospital Foundation, Toronto, or the Canadian Cancer Society.

John H. D'Arms

John H. D'Arms, a distinguished scholar, prominent classicist, and highly regarded leader, died 22 January 2002 in New York City at age sixty-seven after a long battle with brain cancer. His esteemed career included numerous accomplishments in the humanities both as a well-respected scholar and public servant.

Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, D'Arms was married to Maria Teresa Waugh, daughter of novelist Evelyn Waugh, in 1961 in Somerset, England. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1956 and in 1959 received a B.A. degree in Literae Humaniores from New College, Oxford. D'Arms went on to complete a Ph.D. in classical philology at Harvard in 1965.

From 1997 until his death, D'Arms served as president of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) where he was credited with leading the effort to enlarge and strengthen its prestigious fellowship program for scholars at all levels. During the thirty-two years prior to accepting the ACLS position, D'Arms served as a faculty member and administrator at the University of Michigan, holding such positions as professor of classical studies, chair of the department of classical studies, dean of Rackham Graduate School, professor of history, and Gerald F. Else Professor of Classical Studies. In 1982, he received Michigan's Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award and served as vice provost for academic affairs from 1990 to 1995. On leave from Michigan, he was both the resident director of the American Academy in Rome and a professor in its School of Classical Studies from 1977 to 1980. In 1994, Dr. D'Arms received the national recognition he so deserved when he was appointed to the National Council on the Humanities by President Bill Clinton, where he served until 1997.

D'Arms's scholarly work focused on aspects of ancient Roman cities, culture and society. His works include Romans on the Bay of Naples (1970), Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (1981), and more than sixty scholarly articles and reviews. At the time of his death, he was working on a study of the social and cultural conventions concerning food and drink in Roman society.

He is survived by his wife, Maria, their two children, Justin and Helena, two grandchildren, and brothers Ted and Phillip.

Hugh Davis Graham

Hugh Davis Graham, the Holland N. McTyeire Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, died on 26 March at his home in Santa Barbara, California. He was only sixty-five, a victim of esophageal cancer. With unusual courage and grace, he battled this fatal disease for five years, a near record not only for survival but for years of continued engagement in teaching and scholarship. He died just after the publication of his final book and just before an international conference on the Reagan presidency--a project that he had helped plan and organize. At the time of his death, Hugh was a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging an executive order by President Bush that limits public access to the records of former presidents, including many of the records of President Reagan.

Graham, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was one of three talented Graham boys. He was born in Arkansas but grew up in Nashville. His appointment to the McTyeire chair in 1991 brought him home again. With his usual exuberance, he committed himself completely to Vanderbilt. Over the next decade, he worked tirelessly to improve graduate work, served on numerous college and university committees, won major awards for his teaching and service to the university, served as department chair for two years, and was author or coauthor of two books, and editor or coeditor of two more. He was a model colleague, generous to a fault, full of good will, and optimistic in the face of illness and pain. His contribution to Vanderbilt marked the climax of a long and productive career as a historian.

As an undergraduate at Yale, Graham majored in history. In 1964, he completed his Ph.D. in history at Stanford. For the next three years, he taught in nontenured positions at Foothills College, San Jose State, and Stanford. From 1967 to 1971 he was a nontenured associate professor at Johns Hopkins, where he served as associate, and then acting, director of the Institute of Southern History. In the midst of several civic involvements, he co-directed a task force for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence in 1968-1969, and coedited the Commission report, Violence in America.

In 1971, Graham moved to a tenured position at the relatively new University of Maryland, Baltimore County where he remained until accepting a position at Vanderbilt in 1991. He began his career at UMBC as dean of the social science division and later served as dean of graduate studies and research. During these years he won an unusual number of fellowships and grants--Guggenheim, two NEH, Wilson Center, National Institute of Education, American Enterprise Institute, Lyndon Johnson Foundation, and Social Science Research Council. His early interest in civil rights, and in southern politics, led him to join Numan Bartley in 1975 in writing Southern Politics and the Second Reconstruction, an update of the classic work by V. O. Key. During these busy years, Graham began a new line of scholarship involving the complex process of federal policy making and its implementation. The fruits of these efforts were three major books and a deserved national reputation as the most successful pioneer in the newly self-conscious field of policy history.

His first policy study, The Uncertain Triumph: Federal Education Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Years (1984), records the successful achievement of major federal aid for public education. Graham emphasized new legislative strategies, such as the use of task forces, but was most original in following the legislation into the implementing stages, when powerful outside constituencies, working with federal agencies, often so reshaped policy as to move far beyond congressional intent. Graham's next project was The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960-1972 (1990). As fascinating as the successful legislative victory was in gaining three major civil rights acts, what happened later was equally intriguing. Well-organized pressure groups, soon with symbiotic ties to such federal agencies as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, slowly helped shift civil rights policy away from the original congressional intent (non-discrimination) to overt preferences for designated minorities. No one before Graham had ever looked so closely at the internal dynamics of policy development, or exposed so many contradictions in federal policy.

In his last years, even while suffering intervals of chemotherapy, Graham completed his final policy study, one that complemented his work on civil rights. In Collision Course: The Strange Convergence of Affirmative Action and Immigration Policy in America (2002), he shows how early civil rights legislation, intended largely to correct injustices to African Americans, eventually offered protection and favoritism for a flood of new immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Many immigrants who qualified as minorities under federal law were among Americans with the highest incomes. This developed without any clear congressional intent and with little public scrutiny. Few wanted to agitate the complex issues involved, or challenge the organized minority groups who enjoyed preferential treatment. This has contributed to present confusions and new policy debates involving both immigration and affirmative action. It reveals the often unforeseen, or unwanted, effects of social legislation.

Such a brief survey of Hugh Graham's contribution to historical understanding leaves so much out. This includes dozens of articles and chapters in books, a coauthored book on graduate education, several edited or coedited books, and his involvements with major historical associations. Above all, such a survey cannot communicate the vibrant personality that lay behind all the work, or express the appreciation of all the colleagues and students who gained so much insight and support from his friendship and his teaching.

Herbert F. Margulies

Herbert F. Margulies, Emeritus Professor of American History at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, died 28 May 2001 at the age of seventy-two. During his thirty-seven year career, Professor Margulies had been a good citizen in the republic of learning, authoring four groundbreaking books and numerous monographs on the political history of Wisconsin Progressives, the U.S. Congress during the League of Nations controversy, and the Republican Party in the Wilson era. Specifically, his works include The Decline of the Progressive Movement in Wisconsin, 1890-1920; Senator Lenroot of Wisconsin: A Political Biography, 1900-1929; The Mild Reservationists and the League of Nations Controversy in the Senate; and Reconciliation and Revival: James R. Mann and the House Republicans in the Wilson Era. He was a lifelong student of combat and compromise, whether in national politics, in the sports arena, or in his own academic department--which he chaired successfully and with dignity during seven turbulent years. His colleagues have established a fund to support a Herbert F. Margulies prize in American History to be awarded annually to a graduate student who shows promise of reaching Herbert's standards of integrity and scholarship. But it will be very hard, indeed, to find a recipient who could match Herbert's unique blend of wit, wisdom, and gentleness. He is survived by his wife of forty-six years, Francine, four children, and five grandchildren.

Rush Welter

In 1951, Rush Welter completed his graduate studies by presenting an ambitious doctoral dissertation in Harvard University's notable interdisciplinary program in the History of American Civilization. At Harvard, Rush was able to draw heavily on the resources of the government department as well as the history department. His advisers were Louis Hartz. and John M. Gaus. Hartz was on the verge of a major breakthrough that would change the course of American historiography. Gaus was a humane, broad-gauged senior statesman who took a warm interest in graduate students. A young man, scornful of specialization, who was always in pursuit of the "big picture," could not have had more helpful and appropriate teachers.

Eleven years would pass before Rush published in 1962, a greatly enlarged and deepened revision of his doctoral dissertation, now entitled Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America (1). It offered a vivid narrative of how an expanding belief in popular education at public expense became almost universally accepted as the essential safeguard of a free society: the one sure cure for political and social evils. By the end of the Civil War, radicals and conservatives, whites and blacks, northerners and southerners, were joining this national consensus. However, the partnership that Rush admired, between democracy and rationality, reached and passed its zenith in the early twentieth century. Stoically, the young historian mapped out the disillusions, from the 1920s onward, that have lapped at the American faith in schooling, without weakening an ongoing dependence on schools.

This may be Rush's finest book. Drawing on an abundant literature of political debates, scholarly inquiries, and popular tracts over a span of two centuries, it explored divisions of opinion with a fullness that matched its commitment to a single unifying theme. I suspect that it is no longer much read because educational history has turned decisively away from the history of ideas in order to immerse itself in the social history of schools and of the families, ethnic groups, and classes they serve. Nevertheless, Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America is an enduring book. During the forty or more years since it was written, it has aged very little, if at all. The magisterial bibliography that accompanies Lawrence A. Cremin's authoritative three-volume history of American education makes this comment: "Rush Welter, Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America remains the most incisive work on the special role education has played in American politics and political thought."

Buoyed by success, Rush must have started work soon after on a still more encompassing project. He resolved to undertake an overarching interpretation of the attitudes and ideas of the period he knew best, lying between the election of Andrew Jackson and the outbreak of the Civil War. That was when the American people (as Rush argued) were defining themselves and providing us with "the social imperatives we still honor as well as the errors we now contend against." Rush was perhaps encouraged to tackle this daunting work by the provocative example of his former adviser, Louis Hartz. Hartz's aggressive critique of the liberal tradition in America was just then arguing that American culture had always been locked in a stupefying intellectual consensus. Rush's own cast of mind, unlike his mentor's, was attuned to differences as well as commonalities. He was both a lumper and a splitter. But his desire to embrace the nation as a whole responded eagerly to the strong emphasis on consensus and national identity that was just then reshaping both the social sciences and the writing of history. His assessment of what he called The Mind of America 1820-1860, one of the most contentious eras in our history, took the form of assessing the ways in which a common national faith struggled against the disruptive forces it was eventually unable to contain.

This was a big book. Its powerfully argued text--spanning almost 400 pages--was enriched with another 183 pages of appendices, notes, and bibliography. The spine of its argument ran through the party battles of liberals against conservatives, while touching in fresh ways on religion and the western frontier. Yet it took too long to write. By the time it appeared, the brief heyday of the "Consensus" school of historiography was over, and all of Rush's scrupulous attention to conflict and diversity could not save his book from the backlash that ensued.

Just two years after The Mind of America was published in 1975, a conference of prominent intellectual historians met to consider ways and means of defending their discipline against a dramatic shift of student interest away from lofty ideals and national goals. The conferees were largely agreed on the desirability of featuring more empirically verifiable constructs and more tangibly identifiable social groups, such as ethnic minorities, women, musicians, and working-class formations. To expound "the mind" of a nation in the wake of the Vietnam war seemed both politically regressive and intellectually delusive. In the book that came out of the conference, Rush's paper, "On Studying the National Mind," argued valiantly for the methods he had employed and the rationality he had presupposed. His colleagues were in no mood to listen.

The Mind of America remains, nevertheless, a powerful work still occasionally consulted by students of the Middle Period. The copy in my university's library has been checked out twice in the last decade. Compared to the short life of the great majority of serious works about the mid-nineteenth century that pour from university presses, it has held up pretty well.

Rush, of course, was bitterly disappointed and never afterward, to my knowledge, undertook anything on that scale. His confidence in himself was, however, far from shattered. Sometime in the late 1980s, after we had become good friends, he remarked one day that he did not expect his work to be recognized during his lifetime. This was long after he had turned to a narrower topic for which he was ideally suited and which aroused his enthusiasm. In the late 1970s he fixed upon a major theme in post-Civil War political debate, namely the "Money Question," which evoked all the anger and moral fervor that had gone into the slavery issue before the war. The pamphlet literature preserved in the Library of Congress was enormous, and Rush took on the subject as a suitably tangible theme for a chastened but accomplished intellectual historian. In the early 1990s he was devoting his retirement entirely to this project. Then our paths diverged, and I heard no more about it. Time had once again closed in upon Rush's life work (2).

2. New Directions in American Intellectual History, ed. John Higham and Paul K. Conkin (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), pp. 64-82.