This is a very special issue of the H-Diplo/International Security Studies Forum (ISSF). Robert Jervis, the founder of ISSF and, in the judgment of the forum’s organizers, the most distinguished international relations scholar of his generation, succumbed to cancer this past December. As a way of honoring his memory, we wanted to give people in the field a chance to talk not just about his work, but also about what he meant to them personally, both as a scholar and as a human being.
H-Diplo | ISSF Tribute to the Life, Scholarship, and Legacy of Robert Jervis: Part I
4 February 2022
Organizers: Richard H. Immerman, Diane Labrosse, and Marc Trachtenberg
Production Editor: George Fujii
Foreword
This is a very special issue of the H-Diplo/International Security Studies Forum (ISSF). Robert Jervis, the founder of ISSF and, in the judgment of the forum’s organizers, the most distinguished international relations scholar of his generation, succumbed to cancer this past December. As a way of honoring his memory, we wanted to give people in the field a chance to talk not just about his work, but also about what he meant to them personally, both as a scholar and as a human being.
An unusually large—indeed, quite overwhelming—number of people will be participating in this forum, so large, in fact, that we are breaking it down into two parts. The part we are publishing today begins with an introduction by Richard Immerman and an essay by Diane Labrosse on Bob’s ISSF work, and is followed by the tributes that were received by mid-January, concluding with a doggerel by Page Fortna. We are also republishing here the autobiographical essay Bob wrote for the H-Diplo/ISSF “Learning the Scholar’s Craft” series two years ago, along with a truncated copy of his C.V. that includes his honors as well as his publications. That list naturally includes the many books and scholarly articles he published in the course of his career, but Bob also wrote many relatively informal pieces for H-Diplo/ISSF—more, in fact, than any other contributor. Since those pieces provide an important window into what he was like as a scholar, we are including a list (with links) of his main contributions to those online publications. We also include a short list of three articles in which he talked about his life and scholarly career.
The second part of the forum, consisting of essays and appreciations that could not be submitted by the January deadline, will be coming out in the summer.
Finally, we wanted to express our thanks to JD Work, a research scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, for allowing us to publish his wonderful November 2019 photograph of Bob Jervis reading a copy of IO in his office in the International Affairs Building. Thanks also to Tom Christensen for drawing the photo to our attention.
The full tribute is available solely as a PDF file due to its length.