Professor of Politics Will Morrisey was hired to replace Alexander Shtromas, a child prodigy trained by the KGB in geopolitics. He taught students who went on to careers in homeland security, international journalism, and even two who returned to teach at Hillsdale.
Morrisey has been at Hillsdale since 2000. In the course of his time here, he has seen the politics department become independent, triple in size, and establish the Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship. When he arrived, the three political science professors — Professors of Politics Robert Eden, Mickey Craig, and himself — were part of the department of history and political science. Concurrent with College President Arnn’s arrival, however, the politics and history departments parted ways and began to specialize.
“It used to be that you had three people teaching three areas,” Morrisey said. “Political philosophy, the American regime, and international politics. I was the one who was dealing with the international politics, primarily.”
With Morrisey’s departure, the Hillsdale politics program loses its last faculty member whose primary focus was on comparative and international politics. Early on, there was little room for specialization and a high demand on every professors’ time. Each professor taught classes within a broadly-defined topic and shared the load of the introductory courses. Constitution 101 was not then part of the core curriculum, so the introductory political theory class was Introduction to Politics, which lives on as Regimes: Classical and Modern.
“We all taught the Regimes course,” Morrisey said. “But you have the three ‘food groups’: political philosophy, the American regime, and international politics. Now, the department is primarily focused on the first two.”
Two students from the mists of Morrisey’s undergraduate courses’ past were Assistant Professor of History Matthew Gaetano and Assistant Professor of English Dwight Lindley.
“But I don’t take credit for either one of them,” Morrisey said.
Lindley said, however, that Morrisey’s class was quite influential for him as a Hillsdale undergraduate.
“At the time, I was quite exhausted by politics and suspicious of political movements,” Lindley said. “Dr. Morrisey’s class ended up being refreshing to me, because I was introduced to political theory in the form of Aristotle’s ‘Politics’ and de Tocqueville’s ‘Democracy in America.’ I learned from Dr. Morrisey to love classical political theory, and I loved the opportunities I had in graduate school to study it.”
Gaetano fondly recalled the class’s treatment of the same two texts.
“I was able to reflect on how the ancient and the modern thinker both addressed the benefits and dangers of the political participation of ordinary people,” Gaetano said. “My only criticism was that I didn’t know the first names of my peers who made contributions to class discussion because of Dr. Morrisey’s charming practice of referring to students as Mister and Miss.”
Jillian Melchior ’09, now a contributor to National Review and senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, said his classes have helped her in her work abroad.
“We did a class on world leaders, which was hands-down my favorite,” Melchior said. “I think he was really impressive at looking at different regimes and seeing what problems might arise. It’s been interesting in my career, going to places like China or Ukraine or Iraq, and seeing things that I thought were going to be obscure while I was taking the class. They turn out to be incredibly relevant.”