Hayward R. Alker Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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American scholar Hayward Alker (1937–2008) held the John A. McCone Chair in International Relations at the University of Southern California (USC), where he specialized in the history of international relations theory, computational research methodologies, conflict resolution, and world order studies. In his 1997 book, The Future of International Relations, international affairs expert Iver Neumann named Alker one of twelve most influential thinkers in international relations.

Alker was born in New York City in 1937 and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1959 and a doctorate in political science from Yale University in 1963. He stayed to teach at Yale and became a full professor at the age of twenty-nine. In 1968, Alker returned to MIT as a political science professor and remained there until joining USC in 1995. His career was marked also by distinguished visiting professorships, including a 1989 appointment as the first Olaf Palme professor at the universities of Uppsala and Stockholm and a 1996 fellowship to study chaos theory at the Santa Fe Institute. Alker served as president of the International Studies Association from 1992–1993 and of the Institute of Defense and Disarmament Studies. He was also an adjunct faculty member of the Watson Institute.

Alker’s wide-ranging contributions to his field include pioneering work on North-South dynamics within the United Nations, computational linguistics, mathematical modeling in the social sciences, the analysis of complex systems, social theory, and peace research. He was also responsible for path breaking work on bringing humanistic traditions back into the study of international relations. His many publications include Mathematics and Politics (1965), Rediscoveries and Reformations: Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies (1996), and the coauthored Journeys through Conflict: Narrative and Lessons (2001). He integrated mathematics and humanities into his investigations of artificial intelligence, globalism, and game theory. His last project, which he led at the Watson Institute, was on the dialectics of world orders.

Bibliography:

Alker, Hayward. Mathematics and Politics. New York: Macmillan, 1965.
Rediscoveries and Reformulations: Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Alker, Hayward, Karl Wolfgang Deutsch, and Antoine H. Stoetzel. Mathematical Approaches to Politics. New York:Wiley, 1973.
Alker, Hayward,Ted Robert Gurr, and Kumar Rupesinghe, eds. Journeys through Conflict: Narratives and Lessons. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.
Alker, Hayward, and Bruce M. Russett. World Politics in the General Assembly. New Haven, Conn.:Yale University Press, 1965.
Neumann, Iver, and Ole Waever. The Future of International Relations, Masters in the Making. New York: Routledge, 1997.