Remembering Our Lost Colleagues

started this post sort of confessionally. It’s been a while since I wrote on the blog. I had started one earlier this year on the destruction of USAID and PEPFAR but redirected my energy into advocacy (such as it was). One reason for my relative absence on the blog is government service. From 2021 to 2023, I was in the Biden Administration serving as a Senior Climate Advisor in the Department of Defense. More recently, my father was in ill health and died at the age of 79 in August. He was also an academic, a distinguished scholar of southwestern American literature at Texas State University.

I suppose on some level that loss brought me to write. My father’s death reminded me of the scholars we have lost in recent years. My father’s passing, though tragic, had more in common with the late greats of international relations like Bob Jervis who will be missed but who led a rich and full life.

What brings me to write though today is the memory of colleagues who died far too young. Their lives were cut short by illness, accident, or in some cases by their own hand. Having been on this blog for more than a decade, we have had occasion to feature their posts and sadly remembrances of their passing.

I want to take the time to honor and remember them. Their deaths were especially painful because many of them were personal friends. We mourn their loss for their families, their colleagues, and the world. They had more to give, and it’s awful to lose them. These losses were especially poignant for me because many were in their 40s or 50s. With my 55th birthday approaching, I don’t take it for granted that I’ll be here. Something terrible could happen at any time.

When you are a younger scholar, you write with the intensity to make your career. When you are an older scholar, you write with the knowledge that your time is ebbing, and each piece you write could be your last. I was struck by the fact that Joe Nye was still co-authoring with Bob Keohane this year up until his death, continuing to try and shape the direction of U.S. foreign policy, up until the end of his life. His last piece in Foreign Affairs was published posthumously.

We have lost some good scholars in recent years far too young, and I wanted to take a moment to appreciate them.

Susan Sell
We lost Susan Sell tragically in 2023. Susan was a firecracker and passionate scholar who wrote about global injustices related to patents and medications. Like me, she was a big music fan. I first met Susan as a post doc in 2006 when I hosted a workshop at Princeton on dealing with the AIDS crisis. We stayed in touch and I loved her posts from her adventures in Australia after she departed GW. There was a tremendous outpouring of grief and story-telling for Susan after her death at ISA. I know her family and former students miss her terribly. We ran a multi-part series of posts on her legacy as a scholar and human being.

Bear Braumoeller
We also lost Bear Braumoeller in 2023. I didn’t know him personally, but I certainly knew of his work by reputation as an exacting quantitative scholar of conflict. I did have the occasion to edit a post for the Duck that he wrote in 2019 which discussed choosing a cover for books. I had seen a post on Twitter about the idea and asked him to elaborate in a longer essay for us, which he was more than happy to do. I just reviewed our exchange, and I think collegial and accommodating are what comes to mind. It was this sentiment of generosity that his former Ohio State students wrote about in their remembrance of him here. They speak of him as a gracious and mentor.

Jon Western
We lost Jon in 2022. Jon was a foundational leader here on the Duck as part of the editorial team and his involvement predated mine. He had taken a step back from the Duck to let other people have a hand, but there was no indication he’d been ill. I think his death was just a terrible shock. He had written foundational pieces on humanitarian intervention that I frequently assigned to my class. He was a terrific scholar and colleague. I got the sense of him just being a great ally and friend to all. Dan Nexon’s remembrance on the Duck captured Jon’s generosity of spirit well.

Sean Kay

I cried when I heard my friend Sean Kay had died in November 2020. It was just after the 2020 elections, and I had just zoomed in to his class in October. He’d previously hosted me in Ohio for a guest lecture and was one of the most kind people in academia I’ve ever met. He and I both loved the outdoors and music. He was an accomplished guitarist and singer in local bands. He also had a lively book on music and politics which we had featured here on the Duck. His scholarly work had mostly been about NATO and European security but in recent years, he was gravitating to write more about environmental politics. I wrote about Sean’s death here. We had some other terrific remembrances from former students here for whom Sean’s kindness loomed large.

Andrew Price-Smith
Drew died in 2019 from cancer, but it felt like I had just been there to visit him in Colorado not too long before. We felt like kindred spirits. He was a gifted musician so we bonded over music (though I am sadly not at all musical). He and I both had been writing about the impacts of disease and the environment on international relations and security. He had previously come through Austin to talk about projects he was working on, which were legion. My family came out with me to Colorado for the talks I gave at Colorado College. Drew was such a gracious and friendly host. When he died, I didn’t know he had been ill. I still hope that there is an opportunity for his final manuscript that he was working on the environment might see the light of day. Jeremy Youde had a terrific remembrance of Drew here on the Duck and how Drew was writing about health at a time when very few political scientists thought it worthy of the field. Drew made it possible for Jeremy, me, and others to think that it was okay to write about global health as a political scientist.

Lee Ann Fujii
Lee Ann died suddenly in 2018 at a time when she was just about to finish a major manuscript. I didn’t know her personally but she had blogged for the Duck in 2017 on the challenges of diversity in academia. A mutual friend had said she gave an uncompromising keynote speech at ISA-NE and that we should invite her to publish it on the Duck. We did and she didn’t pull any punches. It was great stuff, uncomfortable but important. Her scholarly work brought different perspectives to the study of conflict and genocide, drawing on non-elite interviews in her book on the Rwandan genocide. Her former students and colleagues memorialized her here on the Duck (here, here). I see that her book on violence and display will be coming out in 2026, brought to conclusion by Marty Finnemore.

Will Moore
By all accounts, Will Moore was a bright shining light who was one of the pioneers of quantitative work in conflict studies. He was brilliant, a big personality, and iconoclastic. I didn’t know him personally but his loss to the field left a big hole for many. His collaborator Christian Davenport wrote about the burdens of the kinds of things they study. Jana von Stein wrote about how Will was such a big source of support for her at a time of great sorrow.

Postscript:
I realized my post was not exhaustive. There are other folks in the field who died young in recent years including Nuno Monteiro (2021) and Brandon Valeriano (2025), both of whom were well known to the Duck.

Nuno and I participated in SWAMOS together many moons ago, and he hosted me at Yale for a talk on climate change to the grand strategy series. His loss shook many of his close friends deeply, and he was known for his work on unipolarity and nuclear weapons. He and I had a friendly debate on the Duck on the peacefulness of unipolarity (my original, his reply).

Brandon was a rising star in the cyber security world and wrote pathbreaking work just as that field came into being. He was a guest author on the Duck and wrote a number of posts.Steve Saideman honored his memory on the Duck here.

I hope we can continue to keep the memories of our friends and colleagues alive, both as persons and as scholars. Life is fleeting, and tragedy can take us at any time. That may sound a little maudlin, but it’s true. Here is to Susan, Bear, Jon, Sean, Lee Ann, Will, Nuno, and Brandon and other friends gone too soon.

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