ASU remembers
Sheldon Weiss Simon
Chair, Political Science Department - 1975 Director, Center for Asian Studies - 1979
January 2, 2021
Sheldon Weiss Simon, 83, passed away on January 2, 2021. Besides being at the top of his class academically, in high school he found that he loved performing in musical theater. By college age, he was not only striving for academic excellence at the University of Minnesota but also studying vocal performance and appearing in university musicals. Upon graduation, he began his master's degree at the Woodrow Wilson School of International Studies at Princeton University with the thought of entering the foreign service upon graduation. Instead, he accepted an offer from the University of Minnesota to return for doctoral studies in political science.
After spending a summer in Cripple Creek, Colorado, performing in Imperial Hotel's melodrama theater, he headed to Minneapolis and UofM to begin his PhD program in political science. He and Charlann Scheid, who had been cast opposite him in the melodrama, developed a serious relationship and commuted between the Twin Cities and Evanston, IL where she was in her senior year at Northwestern University. They were eventually engaged and were married in the ASU Chapel. Later he was invited to do his doctoral dissertation research at the Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.
Sheldon decided he wanted to join the Kennedy administration, so he accepted a position with the CIA as a political analyst. He arrived in DC in August, 1963. After President Kennedy was assassinated that November, being a government employee didn't have the same draw for Sheldon. He was also teaching classes at GW in the evening and found he enjoyed that more. During the three years in DC, Sheldon was also active in musical theater.
He decided to transition to academia in the fall of 1966 and accepted a position in the political science department at the University of Kentucky. He began his active publishing career while teaching at UK. To him, research and teaching were of equal importance. While in Kentucky, he applied for and won a grant from the National Humanities Council to put on musical theater shows for rural Kentucky communities. He was active in theater and political science research his entire life.
In 1975, Sheldon accepted an offer from the ASU Political Science Department to become chairman of the department. He served his four years in this administrative role and decided he would never do anything like that again. Subsequently, he served as director of the Center for Asian Studies. He enjoyed teaching undergraduate lecture courses and nourishing graduate students who would become the next generation of political science professionals. Research and publication were always a driving force in his life, so it is not surprising that he has several scores of journal articles, book chapters, and many books listed on his vita. Sheldon retired in 2018 as Emeritus Professor, School of Politics and Global Studies. (Source: Arizona Republic)