The university lost one of its most beloved teachers and preeminent scholars on April 10 when Alan Wertheimer, professor emeritus of political science, passed away after a lengthy ilness.
Wertheimer, a highly acclaimed academic in the area of political philosophy, spent 37 years, nine as chair, helping build the Political Science Department into a nationally recognized program. An internationally-recognized scholar, he penned countless articles in top journals and wrote three seminal books: Coercion (Princeton University Press, 1987); Exploitation (Princeton University Press, 1996); and Consent to Sexual Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
“Alan Wertheimer epitomized the teacher-scholar in the finest tradition of the University of Vermont's faculty,” says former colleague Gregory Gause, who was a professor of political science from 1994-2014 before becoming head of the Department of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. “He not only has a national, but an international reputation as an extremely accomplished scholar in his field of analytical philosophy, who applied his keen mind to thorny problems of public policy in a disciplined and creative way. At the same time, he was a dedicated teacher, tough but fair with his students. Those who wanted to learn were devoted to him. Al was a great friend; always interesting, always honest. The political science department and the university will not be the same without him.”
A memorial service will be held for Wertheimer on Friday, April 24, at 3 p.m. in Billings, North Lounge followed by a reception in the Billings Apse.
Wertheimer spent a year as a fellow in the Program in Ethics and the Professions at Harvard University (1989-90) and also as a fellow of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1984-85). He was selected as a University Scholar in 1995-96, one of the highest honors in the university. Despite his growing reputation as a major academic, however, Wertheimer was known for spending time with students and cultivating young academics like Professor Bob Pepperman Taylor, who joined the Political Science Department in 1986.
“Here I was this kid coming out of graduate school, and he wanted to know my opinion and what I was going to teach,” Taylor says. “That meant a lot to me. In a lot of ways the ideals that I developed as a faculty member and my vision of the potential for this university were deeply shaped by Alan. He was part of a generation of academics like Raul Hilberg and Mark Stoler who were just terrific scholars and teachers who I think represent UVM at its best. So when I think of Al Wertheimer I think of one of the most distinguished people to ever work in the University of Vermont’s Political Science Department.”
When he arrived in 1968, Wertheimer immersed himself in all aspects of campus life. He served on countless committees, including as chair of a committee on general education that wrote what Taylor calls “the single most thoughtful report ever written here at the university that could have been published as a book.” He also took steps to stabilize the Political Science Department, which had gone through some recent turmoil. “He was a very stabilizing influence at a time when it was really needed," says Garrison Nelson, political science professor, who was hired the same year as Wertheimer. "He established a clear path for tenure and promotion, so people knew what to expect. Alan was probably the best university citizen the department as ever had, and the university benefitted tremendously from his role.”
Wertheimer, who was a master bridge player and enjoyed trips to Saratoga to watch thoroughbred horse racing, remained active throughout his UVM tenure. He helped develop the curriculum for the first Honors College course, a year-long ethics sequence, which he taught with longtime friend Don Loeb, professor of philosophy.
“It never occurred to me to think of Al as anything other than a philosopher; we always thought of him as the unlisted member of our department,” says Loeb. “I think of what he did as straight up philosophy. Al was one of the most reasonable philosophers I’ve ever met. He let the issues decide for him what position to take, rather than taking a position and trying to justify it with clever philosophical reasoning. Conservatives thought he was a liberal and liberals thought he was a conservative because he was not any of those things, he was just honest. When I think of that particular quality or virtue there’s only one person I associate it with, and that's Al. He was in fact willing to live by his own principles.”
Some of Wertheimer’s most influential work came after his retirement in 2005. Ezekiel Emanuel, a prominent bioethicist at Harvard and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and one of President Obama's top health care advisers, offered Wertheimer a one-year visiting professor position at the NIH, eventually hiring him as a senior research scholar in the department of bioethics in the Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md. Wertheimer and Emanuel, now the Diane and Robert Levy University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, produced some controversial research papers, placing them in the middle of a heated national health care reform debate.
“Al was one of those very rare, brilliant people who wrote three definitive books and then came here and made major, major contributions to bioethics,” says Emanuel. “In very short order, he became one of the leading lights in the field, wrapped in modesty and great mentorship and generosity -- a pretty unusual combination. We published a lot together. He was one of those absolutely rare kinds of people who was brilliant, but also very generous of spirit and not an egomaniac."