Victor T. Le Vine, professor emeritus of political science, analyst, and commentator, died on May 7, 2010, after a brief illness. Le Vine, an only son, was born in Berlin in 1928. His family fled Nazi Germany and lived in France until they immigrated to the United States in 1938. A polyglot, fluent in French, German, and Russian, he was a rigorous researcher, a dedicated teacher, and an encyclopedic repository of classical works in politics, history, literature, and music. He mentored hundreds of graduate and undergraduate students in his 47 years as an academic and was known for using his multilingual skills and photographic memory to make every class lecture come alive—at times accompanying them with his vivid newspaper clippings that he collected from his travels. In his classroom, the politics of the postcolonial world were peppered with vignettes of his experiences as a participant observer in the heyday of Africa's decolonization. He shared with his students the emergence of the political systems of diverse countries such as Benin, Cameroon, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Eritrea, Ghana, France, Israel, the PRC, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Zaire (DRC).
A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (BA 1953; MA 1958; Ph.D. 1961), Victor Le Vine was one of the first cohort of Africanists trained by James S. Coleman. His seminal works on Cameroon and francophone Africa, The Cameroon from Mandate to Independence (1964), Political Corruption: The Ghana Case (1975), and Politics in Francophone Africa (2004) continue to be required readings for both graduate and undergraduate students specializing in francophone Africa. His interest in conflict resolution led him to specialize in comparative research in the politics of the Middle East and Afro-Arab countries, leading the publication of his book on Afro-Arab Connection: Political and Economic Realities (1979), which guided his later research on oil politics, corruption, and terrorism. A renaissance scholar, Le Vine was never limited by geographic boundaries and produced articles and chapters on informal politics and economics of disparate areas such as Somalia and Russia. He was also a consistent critique of ideological wars and actively sought to change the culture of conflict endemic in war-torn regions such as Israel/Palestine, Ireland, Cyprus, and Turkey. As a founding member of the Center for International Understanding (CIU), Le Vine strove tirelessly to include students, civil society organizations, diplomats, and policymakers in the use of dialogue as a means of fostering understanding.
Victor Le Vine is remembered for his insistence on empirical data and especially the importance he placed on research design and the formulation of the “question” or “puzzle” guiding his students' research. A repertoire heard by his hundreds of students was “What is the question?” often accompanied by his exhortation to keep “focused.” Soft-spoken but firm, he mentored many students who would have been left on the margins of quantitative political science. His insistence on understanding history and factoring in the “human element” made him the teacher-of-choice for scholars who, like him, refused to be fenced in by academic boundaries. He welcomed not only students who specialized in comparative politics, but also those whose primary training was in African history, anthropology, sociology, and literature. Le Vine had a knack also for fostering the self-esteem of inquiring minds and guiding them through the maze of academic bureaucracy. His special courses dealing with “Law and International Politics” and “Guerrilla Wars and Terrorism” drew crowds, making him one of the most popular teachers in the department of political science at Washington University. Many a student who entered his classroom hoping to fulfill a required elective course ended up joining the ever-widening circle of comparativists.
An outstanding characteristic of Victor Le Vine was a spirit of egalitarianism, which he nurtured in and outside of the classroom. Whether chairing a dissertation committee, discussing papers in a panel, or leading a workshop on conflict resolution, he was inclusive and encouraging of women, minorities, and the non–political science majors who flocked into his classes. He practiced what he preached on respecting the right of every individual to a life of dignity and did not tolerate bigotry in any form or shape. He maintained his dignity as a free thinker and confronted parochialism using his intellect to win the battle with dignity against forces of McCarthyism and racism. Not forgetting his early years as a refugee from Nazi Germany, Le Vine also advocated for human rights and the equitable treatment of refugees fleeing tyrant regimes. He spent many hours gathering data on the human rights abuses suffered by opponents of regimes in francophone Africa and provided well-documented testimonials for asylum applicants seeking freedom.
Le Vine's abiding interest in peace and conflict resolution was born out of his understanding of its antithesis—war and the scourge of violence that haunted his generation. His analyses of nation building, war, and peace were always pragmatic and balanced. He did not shy away from volatile subjects such as the one- or two-state solution in Israel/Palestine; U.S. intervention in Iraq; terrorism and suicide bombers; electoral fraud in Africa, the Middle East, and Russia; and piracy in the Indian Ocean. His op-ed pieces in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and his insistence on academic integrity in comparative analysis of foreign policymaking in the twenty-first century will be sorely missed by his readers. A career spanning a half-century at Washington University in St. Louis (1961–2003; 2003–2010)ended at dawn on May 7, 2010, but Victor T. Le Vine left behind him a legacy of academic excellence, collegiality, and a compendium of work that bridged the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He is survived by his wife, Nathalie; two children; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
