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Writing an autobiography for a 50th reunion is bittersweet. My adult life has been spent in college classrooms, state and federal courtrooms, backrooms of political campaigns, and legislative corridors and committee rooms. I had a lot of scholarship choices after graduation, but wound up at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. With a B.A. from Beloit and a national fellowship, I went to Stanford for a year and an M.A., and then switched to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1962, for a PhD in political science. I've lived in Providence ever since, in the same house since 1971, and with a second place on Nantucket Island ("Gail Winds") the last four years. In September 1965, I began teaching political science at Wheaton College in nearby Norton, Massachusetts and have been there ever since. Now in my 42nd year, I have seen the College change from an all women's school (the ninth of the "seven sisters") to a co-ed school (in 1988) to a very "hot" college, with three students, two of them my protégés, winning Rhodes Scholarships in the last six years. Goaded by students who said I could not be a good pre-law advisor without a law degree, I went to Suffolk University Law School in Boston at night from 1975 to 1978 and picked up a J.D. During a Wheaton sabbatical, I completed my legal pedigree by clerking for a United States District Court judge in Providence. With bar memberships in |