The department mourns the passing of Jon W. Western, Carol Hoffmann Collins '63 Professor of International Relations and Five College Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College, who received the Ph.D. in political science at Columbia in 2000. Professor Western was the author of Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005) and co-editor of both The International Community and State-building: Getting Its Act Together? (Routledge, 2012) and Global Giant: Is China Changing the Rules of the Game (Palgrave, 2009).
Professor Western earned the B.A. at Macalester College, the M.P.P. at the University of Michigan, and the Ph.D. at Columbia University. Before joining Mount Holyoke, he was a Peace Scholar-in-residence and the coordinator of the Dayton Upgrade Project at the United States Institute of Peace. He also served as a Balkans analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the U.S. Department of State. He previously taught at Columbia University and George Washington University.
Professor Western's friends and colleagues have published a tribute page on The Duck of Minerva.
