William H. Moore III, ASU Professor

William H. Moore III (Will), professor of politics and global studies at Arizona State University, died April 18 2017.[1] He received his PhD from the University of Colorado—Boulder and was previously a member of the political science faculties at the University of California—Riverside and Florida State University. Will is remembered as a brilliant scholar and, particularly, as a pioneer in the study of political violence. His research helped shepherd the quantitative study of human rights, state repression, and dissent into the mainstream of political science.

Most importantly, Will is remembered as a committed mentor, an inspirational teacher, a conscientious colleague, and a loyal friend. This was apparent to even those who knew him for only a short time. Will arrived at ASU in 2015; yet, his brief presence in the School of Politics and Global Studies had a profound impact on his colleagues, graduate students, and undergraduate students, all of whom are deeply saddened by his loss but grateful for the opportunity to have known and worked with him. The intellectual spirit he brought to the school and the encouragement and mentoring he provided to students and junior colleagues will be sorely missed. However, Will leaves behind hundreds of former students, colleagues, and friends—both at ASU and across the discipline—that have benefited from his high expectations, forthright feedback, biting wit, and generous soul.

Adequately summarizing Will’s accomplishments and contributions to the field is challenging to say the least. During his nearly three decade career, Will published more than 50 articles and book chapters on topics including insurgent mobilization during the Rhodesian civil war, the correlates of ethno-political rebellion, the influence of transnational kinship ties on international conflict, the complex relationship between state repression and opposition dissent, the effects of repression on migration, the use (and cessation) of torture by state agents, and a variety of other topics. He also contributed to the field of political methodology, including a co-authored textbook on the use of mathematics in social science research. At the time of this death, he was researching a book on the history and use of terrorism and coauthoring (with friend and colleague Christian Davenport) a textbook entitled Repression 101.

In terms of scholarship, Will is perhaps best known for his path breaking research into the factors that motivate and facilitate the mobilization of political dissent and violent challenges to the state.[2] This research moved beyond structural explanations, relative deprivation arguments, and action-reactions models of dissident behavior that pervaded earlier literature on the topic and endeavored to more explicitly probe the strategic processes and decisions that produced violent confrontations between an incumbent regime and its domestic challengers. In this sense, Will’s work reflects a “rationalist” approach to political and social phenomena. Indeed, Will was partly responsible for helping to introduce and firmly entrench strategic theories of dissent and repression in the political violence and contentious politics literatures. The same is also true of his work on forced migration.[3] While previous studies predominantly relied on structural, normative, and/or legal lenses, Will’s research sought to incorporate the decision calculus of the actors into theories of forced migration and displacement.

The approach Will employed in these related research agendas has had at least two important and lingering effects on later scholars and their scholarship, both of which are likely to expand in the future. First, he encouraged scholars of conflict and human rights to focus more explicitly on dynamics processes, interactions among relevant actors, the timing and sequence of events, and actor adaptation in order to develop theoretical and empirical models that provided scholars better purchase on the complex events they studied. Subsequent generations of scholars have incorporated these ideas into their own work, leading to the publication of innumerable important studies that in some way or another bear Will’s distinct mark. Second, and perhaps often neglected, by employing this framework, he sought to move the subject of study—the groups and individuals who engage in costly mobilization against the state, who employ repressive violence, or who face the terrible decision to flee persecution or remain—to the center of the argument. In this sense, the rationalist models he typically utilized imbued the subjects he studied with a level of agency that is often diluted or overlooked in other approaches. Consequently, regardless of whether the actors behave in principled or morally reprehensible ways, his research attempted to understand the rationale that guided their actions. This orientation illustrates both Will’s humanism and assiduous concern with human rights.

It is perhaps this perspective that so frequently led Will to remind us that the subjects we study are not simply abstract entities but actual people with preferences and values shaped by their experiences and world views, limits to their knowledge, and constraints on their abilities. He also cautioned us to critically evaluate the language we use in describing these actors in our research. As just one of many examples, in recent years Will frequently highlighted the dangers of using value-laden terms such as “contagion” to describe the relationship between human displacement and conflict because it unintentionally relates a vulnerable population to pathogens and potentially offers non-academics a convenient way to twist scholarly research to promote specific political agendas.

As those who interacted with him even casually can attest, Will’s critiques were always pointed and often savagely honest. He did not pull punches or mince words. Moreover, he seemed compelled to be objective and forthright in his critiques, regardless of the recipient or the audience. It is this aspect of his character that made interactions with Will simultaneously vexing and intensely rewarding. While his critiques and comments could border on insensitive, they were typically spot-on. As a friend and former colleague recently remarked, Will always challenged you. He was a “truth speaker” in a world where such frankness is not always valued; he would tell you everything whether you wanted to hear it or not. This is, of course, a quality that we should value in academia. Will consistently pushed us to clarify concepts, identify causal mechanisms, improve measurement and data collection, and better match our research designs to our theoretical arguments. And he often did this in a very public and very blunt way. As he would assert in his final blog post, he was almost incapable of doing otherwise, despite the friction and frustration it could cause with friends and colleagues. Unknown to most until after his death, this abject candor and seeming inability to couch critiques in gentler terms was a point of intense internal frustration throughout his life and an aspect of his personality that often made him feel like a misfit.

The great paradox of Will’s self-described misfit nature is that so many people recall how deeply they valued their interactions with him and how much they benefitted from them. Speaking with his former colleagues, students, and friends, one is humbled by the impact he had on their careers, including their teaching, mentoring, professional interactions, and scholarship. A former colleague noted that Will challenged her to think deeply and critically about the structural sexism, racism, classism, and elitism that imbue our culture and our profession and noted that these discussions exerted profound influence on her own mentoring and leadership in the profession. Other friends and colleagues relate that he helped them to recognize the limited value of conformity and convention, a realization that they feel liberated them and allowed them to become better scholars and made them more comfortable with other aspects of their professional lives. Perhaps most importantly, and most ironically, Will’s success as a community builder has been a constant theme heard in the myriad comments voiced in the wake of his death. Despite seeing himself as a social misfit and someone who struggled to fit, he helped to both create and nurture a community of scholars who share a common perspective on the importance of their research topics, the dignity of their subjects, a commitment to rigorous scientific inquiry, and a determination to push one another to succeed and to support one another. His legacy is found in those communities, and it is viewed most visibly and most authentically in the generation of successful junior scholars—both his own students and many, many others—that he mentored.

--Reed M. Wood, School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University