Professor James R. Soles died this morning.  He’d struggled with health problems for many years.  His wife Ada Leigh passed in June of this year.  (We regret the misspelling of her name in the original version of this post.)

The University of Delaware has this to say.

The News Journal has this to say.

Governor Markell said:  “Delaware lost one of its great scholars and citizens with the passing of Professor James R. Soles.”  Markell ordered that state flags be lowered until the morning after funeral services.

Soles came to the Political Science department of the University of Delaware in 1968, the same year I started as a freshman.  It was a time of uproar and scandal, marked by the firing of two professors–Albert E. Myers (psychology) and Robert J. Bresler (political science)–for their opposition to the Vietnam war.  Soles mentored me, and was a significant influence on me, for a year or two.  Subsequently our paths diverged and I saw him only occasionally, the last time when he chaired a committee for Senator Tom Carper about a national park for Delaware. Continue reading →

This story seems timely as a key objective of the “Tea Party” people and the Republican party is to undo the– very limited and inadequate –health care reforms enacted since the election of President Obama.  Read the paper itself here.

Alan Muller Continue reading →