My friend and mentor, Dr. James Simmons, passed away recently at the age of 76. Jim was a widely published scholar in the field of Political Science, a UW Oshkosh campus leader, a community activist, and much loved by his family and friends. Through his example he inspired me in many ways, some of which I will describe in this post.
When I arrived on the UW Oshkosh campus in the fall of 1989, three people made an immediate impression on me: Doug McClain, Barbara Sniffen, and James Simmons.
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| In the 1990s and 2000s I produced and co-hosted (with former Oshkosh Mayor James Mather) a public affairs television program called "Commentary." Jim Simmons was a regular guest. In the picture are (from left) Jim Simmons, me, local author Dan Rylance, and Mr. Mather. |
The late Doug McClain was an Assistant Dean of Students. A deeply spiritual man with an infectious smile who could not say a bad word about anyone, Doug taught me that academia at its best stands for the love of great ideas and the love for all humanity. On the basis of just a few short conversations Doug recognized in me a passion for helping people to become their most authentic selves, and so he recruited me to work with student leaders on developing their communication and leadership skills. Doug passed in the late 1990s, yet to this day whenever I find myself getting cynical about the prospects for positive change, I remember Doug's radiant optimism for the inspiration I need to get back on track.
The late Barbara Sniffen was as close to a Mother Jones figure as I will ever meet. A History professor by trade, Barb was a first class hell-raiser. Passionate about labor union activism, she was known for her assertive recruitment of faculty and staff to join the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers. By assertive I mean "in your face." Though they would never admit it, UW administrators walked in fear of Barb; she was the gadfly who stood up to them on all major issues, all of the time. After I was in Oshkosh for about a year, Barb chased me down on campus and said, "Tony you're smart and a good public speaker. You need to do more to fight for justice around here." At first I was offended, but then I realized she was right. When she passed away in 2003 I called her a fighter, mentor, and friend.
And then there was Jim Simmons. He also arrived at UW Oshkosh in fall of 1989, and from the first time I met him (at a new faculty orientation) I was blown away by his vast knowledge of history and politics, two topics that I've always been consumed with. In one of our earliest conversations I happened to mention to him that I had recently seen a picture of the Ku Klux Klan marching across the Main St. bridge in Oshkosh in the 1920s. Jim proceeded to give me a lengthy, awe inspiring lecture on the history of the Klan in the Midwest, which was fascinating and terrifying at the same time. People who know Jim will remember that intense sparkle he got in his eyes whenever he riffed on something he had a good deal of knowledge about. I remember leaving that interaction--and dozens of future interactions--thinking that I needed to do a hell of a lot more reading just to keep up with him.
Around 1996 Jim and I became close friends. That year the city manager of Oshkosh announced he was retiring. The form of government in Oshkosh always appeared strange to me, in large part because placing executive power in the hands of an unelected bureaucrat seemed to run counter to the basic principles of representative government. Given that the city manager was retiring, I wondered if it might be a good time to change the form of government to be more like Appleton, Green Bay, Madison, and many other cities that place executive power in the hands of an elected mayor. Changing the government at that time, I reasoned, would not require firing a city manager.
I had absolutely no idea how anyone would go about changing the form of government, so as was typical for me at the time, I called Jim Simmons. He responded to me as if he had been waiting for the call for years, providing me with an incredibly detailed overview of the history of government in Oshkosh. Inspired by our conversation, I wrote a letter to the local Oshkosh Northwestern arguing that the City Council should hold off on starting a search for a new city manager, and should instead ask the voters if they wanted a stronger mayor position instead. Within days, I received numerous emails and phone calls from people who had been involved in previous attempts to change the form of government. They were mostly older men who in their lives had been everything from city workers to assembly line workers to small business owners, and they told me how they had been condemned by the local media as "two percenters" every time they tried to expose the problems with the government.
Jim suggested that we arrange a meeting at the Oshkosh Public Library to see how much interest there was in the issue. About twenty people showed up at the first meeting, which shocked me. We ended up calling ourselves "Citizens of Representative Democracy" (CORD), and put in place a process of getting the thousands of petition signatures necessary to put a change of government referendum on the ballot. Jim put an unbelievable amount of work into that effort, not only collecting signatures, but also developing promotional literature, wording the referendum so it would pass legal muster, and handling all media inquiries. His wisdom and eloquence kept all CORD supporters motivated. It was really in this time period that I began to see Jim for what he was: a Populist Political Scientist with a genuine love for people at the grassroots level. His interaction with the CORD activists--few of whom had college backgrounds--was grounded in a deep respect for the "little guys and gals" whose names rarely get mentioned in the press, but who are the true salt of the earth.
The change of government referendum came close but did not pass. For his efforts Jim took a beating in the local media (which supported the manager form of government), but he gained the admiration and respect of many for the way he spoke truth to power. For me, he did something even more important: he spoke truth to the power-less, which is not something the typical academician does. Jim was a public intellectual in the best sense; guided by political science theories and scholarship, he helped people at-large solve practical problems. He was acting in the best tradition of what has been referred to in the UW as the "Wisconsin Idea."
Some years after the CORD movement, I wrote a Media Rants piece for the SCENE newspaper called "Deonstructing Don Kettl." Jim was always a fan of the Media Rants column, and in that particular year (2004) he happened to be the editor of the Wisconsin Political Science Association Journal. He liked the Kettl column, and asked me if I would be willing to write an expanded version of it for the WPSA journal. I was honored that he liked the piece and of course said yes, but I asked him if he was concerned about possible pushback. Professor Kettl after all was Republican Governor Tommy Thompson's favorite UW professor, and a respected scholar at UW Madison. My problem was not really with Dr. Kettl as much as Thompson's use of him to provide a kind of intellectual cover for his "reforms" of state government--most of which were supported by the monied interests that run the state capitol. I remember Jim saying, "don't worry about pushback.It's a good piece and it belongs in the journal."
Well, after the piece came out a few University of Wisconsin Madison faculty went apoplectic. The main argument of my piece was that professor Kettl had become a symbol of the tendency of the modern professoriate to become tools of power as opposed to challengers of it. The critics could offer no rational response or counterpoint to that argument. Instead they called on Jim to resign as journal editor, and launched a number of personal attacks at me. It was a bizarre display of a kind of academic thin skin that made it painfully obvious why governor Thompson--who brought big money and big business influence to Wisconsin--did not fear the professoriate. Of course Jim Simmons did not resign as journal editor, and he pointedly defended his own and my integrity throughout the process. Jim truly had my back, something I will never forget.
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| Jim Simmons' book "What Government Can Do," co-authored with Ben Page in the year 2000, argued that government can and should create policies to reduce poverty and inequality |
If an honest history of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh campus is ever written, Jim Simmons should occupy a prominent place in it. He was a master of faculty governance who could cite complex handbook language from memory. He took on administrative bullies, and never compromised the shared governance principles that are supposed to frame administrative, faculty/staff, and student interaction. He kept reminding university employees--including the faculty--that they were WORKERS with interests that must be fought for. Jim had a great career, but he was not a careerist; it was more important for him to search for truth and lend his expertise to worthwhile causes than it was to gain academic status or rewards.
Thank you James Simmons for all you did to make Oshkosh a better community, UW Oshkosh a better campus, Wisconsin a better state, and the United States a better nation. You will not be forgotten, and your legacy will continue to inspire generations of future scholars and activists.
