In Memoriam: Howard Margolis
On Wednesday, May 13, 2009, the Harris School held a ceremony of remembrance for Professor Howard Margolis, who died on Wednesday, April 29 after a battle with cancer.The ceremony took place at Bond Chapel on the University of Chicago campus and was followed by a reception at the Harris School. The following members of the Harris School community spoke about their colleague, friend, and teacher.
Susan Mayer
Dean, The Harris School of Public Policy Studies
Duncan Snidal
Associate Professor
Steven Tkachyk
Harris School Student, MPP 2010
Robert Michael
Eliakim Hastings Moore Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus
Colm O'Muircheartaigh
Professor
Remarks by Susan Mayer
Dean, The Harris School
I want to begin with a story told by Howard himself in his book, It Started with Copernicus, and relayed in an article on his work that appeared in the University of Chicago Magazine.
Howard wrote: In the Old West a cowboy was wandering over the plateau of northern Arizona. Innocently he rides right up to the rim of the Grand Canyon. The cowboy sits a long time contemplating the vast gorge. Eventually he mutters, "Something happened here."
Howard's point from this story was that in observing the change in science around 1600 it was easy to conclude that "something happened here." The question was, what? I won't try to summarize Howard's rebuttal of the common view of the Scientific Revolution because that is not my point.
My point is that Howard spent his life as a cowboy noticing that "something happened here." And when he noticed that something had happened he tried to figure out what had happened. His inquiry took him to the Grand Canyons of intellectual thought. Puzzling over small gullies and minor bumps in the landscape was not his style. He tackled questions such as: How can we explain altruistic behavior? Why do people vote? How do habits of the mind change? Why do the perceptions of environmental risk by lay people differ so radically from the conclusions of experts?
Howard's work often began with a story about a puzzle that led him to a new view of the "something that happened here." His work defied compartmentalization, yet its influence found its way into every academic compartment.
Here is a list of where Howard's books have been reviewed:
American Political Science Review
Times Literary Supplement
Journal of Economic Literature
Ethics
Philosophical Review
JPAM
Journal of Public Policy
American Historical Review
American Journal of Psychology
Contemporary Sociology
Science
Isis
I have probably missed a few, but even the incomplete list confirms that an unbelievable diversity of disciplines and thought communities found Howard's research worthy of review.
Howard was a great gentleman but his curiosity about cognitive process could intimidate. I am sure many of you have been a subject in one of Howard's informal cognitive experiments. For a confident individual these can be fun. But many years ago when I was a young assistant professor lacking in confidence as assistant professors are wont to do, they were scary.
Howard would stop me in the hall and say something like: if the chip as a red dot on one side and a blue dot on the other and another chip has two blue dots blah, blah. And here I do mean blah, blah because at this point my brain would go into terror mode and I would melt into a puddle of excuses about why I couldn't answer or why my answer was probably not correct and so on.
No amount of assurances from Howard that he was not interested in the right answer but how one arrived at one's answer could dissuade me from the notion that his was a test - a test from a highly respected tenured faculty member.
Not surprisingly, Howard eventually quit stopping me in the hall perhaps out of pity or perhaps because I was a poor subject.
Now looking at Howard's accumulated academic record, I greatly I regret that I did not have the confidence to engage him on issues related to cognition and decision making because he was clearly thinking ahead of the curve on these topics, topics that I-like so many others-eventually have come to see as central to thinking about public policies.
I believe that Howard's work on these topics will increase in importance over time. But by the time I figured this out, I had become dean and the opportunity for engagement had passed.
Being dean led to a delicate subject with Howard: His vita. As the faculty of the Harris School know, each year I summarize the teaching and research of each faculty member. Howard had on few occasions to come talk to me as dean, but every year without fail he would come to tell me about something that I had left out in his summary.
Every year I would say, "But Howard I cannot figure out your vita."
Howard's vita would list some publications and not others, often out of chronological order, in different fonts, some with dates some without, almost never volume numbers, and so on. While I do note that his vitas got more conventional over time as his irritation with my leaving things out grew, his vita almost never captured all that Howard had done.
But the inelegance of his vita reminds us that for Howard keeping a record of his accomplishments was not as important as actually producing accomplishments.
The ragtag form of his vita reflected his impatience with the small stuff while its content reflected his passion for the big question and even more for the authentic answer.
His vita reflected his disregard of orthodoxy and convention while the work that it listed affirmed his creativity and substance.
Who else has titles like "Simple heuristics that make us dumb" and "Are economists human?" or "Game Theory and juries: a miraculous result"?
As we all now know Howard was working on his next book and teaching up to the last weeks with us. That is just so Howard. He lived by the Jewish proverb, "As you teach, you learn."
Howard had an amazing journey is his earthly life and he was accompanied for 48 years of the journey by his wife, Joan. They seem to fit one another well - weathering the challenges but living life for every moment. All of us know that Howard rode his bike to work, loved his home in Michigan. He windsurfed and bungee jumped at an age when most Americans do little more than watch television.
It was a privilege to know him and an honor to be his colleague.
Duncan Snidal
Associate Professor
Howard Margolis was a friend and colleague at the Harris School for nearly 25 years. During that time he was a constant presence, always eager to discuss the latest problems he was working on or the play between politics and policy.
Howard was an extraordinary person and scholar in every sense of the term. Academics was his second or perhaps third career, and he came to the University of Chicago after working as a journalist and on defense policy in the Kennedy administration. Although his doctorate was in political science, no single discipline was sufficiently broad as to contain him. Indeed, Howard always enjoyed pointing out how he had backed into political science inadvertently and that the MIT department had, in effect, created special rules to give him a degree since he didn't fit their standard template.
But Howard never fit the standard template in scholarship or life. His dissertation became his first book and justly famous for pioneering what Howard called a dual utility function representing people as both self-interested and other-regarding. He summarized this under the label NSNX - "neither selfish nor exploited" - and it was the central theme of his research on how individuals behave in potentially cooperative settings. Selfishness, Altruism and Rationality was the first of many works that can be characterized as starting from an assumption that individuals are rational decision makers, but then immediately looking for the deviations and even quirkiness in how people actually decide.
More recently, Howard published a piece entitled "Are Economists Human?" (Some of you may be relieved to hear that the answer is in the affirmative.). Howard's point was that even well-trained economists are often unable to live up to the standards of rationality presumed in their models. This approach has now become the important area of behavioral economics and has spread to many of the other social sciences - but Howard was practicing it long before it became in vogue.
Howard's interest in decision making led him to work on how cognition guides, and sometimes clouds, so-called expert and scientific judgment. In the policy realm, he applied this approach to how we think about risk and to how conflicts between everyday intuitions and expert knowledge make it hard to achieve the right policy. This interest even led him into the philosophy and history of science with his work on the Copernican Revolution and how a different way of thinking had the consequence of-as Howard put it- "turning the world inside out and led to the Scientific Revolution."
But it was not just what Howard investigated but how he did his investigation. It is now very fashionable in many areas of social science to frame one's investigation as addressing some "puzzle" in the world. Howard literally used puzzles to guide much of his work. Many of us at the Harris School have been approached by Howard wanting to try out some puzzle on us to see how we would solve it - and, of course, we would invariably get it wrong.
Howard had a veritable arsenal of puzzles but many of you probably know the so-called Monty Hall Problem where a game show contestant is presented with a choice of three doors, behind one of which is a fabulous prize. The contestant chooses a door but before it is opened, Monty Hall reveals that the prize is not behind a second door and asks the contestant if they wish to switch their choice to the third door. Should the contestant take Monty up on his offer? What is surprising about the puzzle is that even sophisticated decision experts regularly give the wrong answer and then stubbornly refuse to see their error. Howard used such puzzles not as ends in themselves but for what they can tell us about decision-making and, through that, about persuasion and beliefs-and hence about politics and policy.
Howard also lived life to the fullest. In the best sense of the term, Howard never "acted his age" but always had both the mental and physical inclinations of someone much younger. Whenever Howard had been to a conference or to give a talk, I learned to ask him what else he'd been doing. Howard was an avid skier and always found a conference or meeting near some convenient place like Vail to sneak out for a bit of R&R; or to Paris for the food; or to Petra for the archeological wonders; and so on. But my favorite recollection of Howard's extracurricular activities was when he came back from a trip-I think it was to New Zealand-and announced he had been bungee jumping. When I asked him what had possessed him to jump off a bridge, his explanation was that as he was driving by he saw a sign saying "Free Jumps to Seniors." Howard was always willing to take a leap.
Howard was one of a kind. He enriched the School and he enriched our lives. We will miss him but never forget him. Thank you, Howard.
Stephen Tkachyk
MPP 2010
Good afternoon. I was a student of Professor Margolis, in his Persuasion and Policy analysis course this term. I am honored to have the opportunity to say a few words about him.
My association with Professor Margolis was relatively brief, but he left a very strong impression, both as an educator and as a person.
When I had the chance to take my first elective courses this term, Professor Margolis's class was one of the first I considered. As a policy practitioner, I have come to appreciate the importance of persuasion not only in politics, but in the policy-making process within government. I was interested in learning about it from the resident expert in the field.
I therefore e-mailed Professor Margolis, asking if he would meet with me to discuss the course. He responded almost immediately, in the affirmative, and we arranged to meet shortly thereafter.
At that meeting, I remember him spending a good 15 to 20 minutes at the start asking me about my background and my policy interests. He seemed genuinely interested. After a wide-ranging discussion of policy, politics and persuasion, I thanked him for his time and prepared to leave. I cannot recall his exact words at that point, but he began by inquiring if I could spare a few more minutes. I said yes, and he then rummaged around his desk for a few minutes, finally locating and handing me a sheet of paper with some questions on it.
Those of you who knew Professor Margolis well can probably guess what was on the paper. Sure enough, it was one of his "puzzles of logic." Since there was no easy or polite way out of my predicament, I surrendered to fate and got to work on the puzzle.
After attempting it, and with some trepidation as to the result, I returned it to him for evaluation. He inspected it, shook his head slightly, and then brightened a bit - I think he was considering the possibilities of making this a "teachable moment." He then proceeded to explain to me - at considerable length and in depressing detail - the reasons why I had answered the puzzle incorrectly. Kindly, he hastened to add that Nobel prizewinners routinely get this puzzle wrong also.
Having thus combined a bit of research with a mini-lesson in logic and persuasion, and having signed up a new recruit for his class, he seemed pleased.
I took three impressions from that meeting. First, it was obvious that Professor Margolis was very generous with his time - he seemed to have an almost unlimited amount for students. Second, he had a passion for his research and a genuine intellectual curiosity that was wide-ranging. Third, I could tell that he truly enjoyed teaching.
So it was that I enrolled in his persuasion class. Once the course had commenced, the attributes just mentioned were amply in evidence; accompanied this time by other qualities of character that were revealed under conditions of great adversity.
I would like to share a few of our experiences from the course, which I think say a good deal about Professor Margolis.
During the first week of the course, it was necessary to reschedule a class. When it proved impossible to arrange a single time when all students could attend, Professor Margolis scheduled two separate supplementary sessions, to ensure that each of his students had an opportunity to hear the lecture and discuss the material with him. I recall being deeply impressed by this at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, and knowing his true condition, as I did not then, I appreciate and admire it all the more.
Despite rapidly declining health, it was clear that Professor Margolis remained greatly interested in, and strongly committed to, the academic progress of his students. He stayed with the class until it proved physically impossible for him to continue. As many of you know, his last lecture to the class was taped from a hospital bed, just a week before his passing.
Under the circumstances, I thought his conduct extraordinary. He was a model of courage, determination and dedication. He seemed entirely unconcerned about himself in any selfish sense- only about the class and his capacity to guide us through it.
My best memory of Professor Margolis is from the extra session I attended during the first week. There were only two students in attendance that afternoon, so it was a true seminar setting. He was in excellent form that afternoon, and I suspect we were getting a glimpse of him at his best.
It was late in the day and I was quite tired, but Professor Margolis was most enthusiastic and engaged. His enthusiasm was infectious, and we spent a genuinely fascinating hour and a half discussing the material. I emerged from the class invigorated.
This is a reminder to me of how much can be accomplished with good teaching, how much fun the learning process can be, and what a privilege it is to be here.
So, even in the brief time that I knew him, Professor Margolis gave me and his other students a great deal, including a marvelous example to reflect upon in our own lives and careers. I am grateful to him for all of these lessons.
Thank you.
Robert Michael
Eliakim Hastings Moore Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus
I have been asked to read a letter sent recently to Joan. It is a lovely letter, but before I do so let me offer a few remarks of my own --
Howard Margolis
How little we know one another. Howard has worked down the corridor from me for some twenty years. I'd know he was in by that over-sized cup he used for soup, sitting in the sink, or when he dropped by to show me a complicated graph or challenge me to do some mental puzzle that supported one of his theories, or just to get someone's address or phone number. But I didn't know he was ill.
Howard had such an inventive, keen mind. He was a most enthusiastic social scientist. He reveled in following his own instincts in pursuing an idea and testing it out, sometime deductively but in recent years, sometimes with a data set he'd found and enjoyed analyzing - I liked to think his interest in using data was a result of his being in the Harris School!
Howard always did things his way: most academics begin as an assistant professor and rise though the ranks, but not Howard: his first tenured track academic appointment was as a full professor in the Harris School at the age of 58, and he was going full-tilt just a few weeks ago. Most intellectuals begin as theorists or model builders or analysts and over time turn increasingly to policy, to public dialogue, and gravitate from the ivory tower toward seats of power in government and toward Washington D. C., but not Howard: he began his career in his late 20s as the organizer and a principal writer of the "News & Comment" Section of Science Magazine, and as a staff assistant to the Secretary of Defense during the McNamara, whiz kid, era. Only later did he go back to MIT for his PhD and begin a series of appointments as a "Visiting Scholar" at Russell Sage in New York, at Princeton, and UC Irvine before coming to the University of Chicago where he joined the faculty of the Committee on Public Policy Studies before there was a Harris School, and he taught there and in the College.
Howard was an honest, sincere, seeker of truth: he got hot under the collar when he thought a piece of research offered in a workshop was disingenuous or deceptive or transparently foolish. He was genuinely curious about so many topics and issues, from current politics to the philosophy of science. He enjoyed and contributed to intellectual history and loved to debate about rational choice, the perception of risks large and small, and as he described them, "simple heuristics that make us dumb."
An iconoclast, a joyful and an inspiring man. Howard, Joan, Nancy, and I enjoyed our social times together. I knew Howard socially and professionally but I wish I'd known him better. I'll miss him very much.
The letter I will now read is from Norman Schofield, a professor in the departments of economics and political science at Washington University in St. Louis.
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