| Wiarda leaving for post at Georgia by Daniel J. Fitzgibbons, Chronicle staff
Wiarda, who will depart at the end of the semester, also will serve as the Dean Rusk Professor of International Affairs at the 31,000-student campus in Athens, Ga. "Georgia made a stupendous offer that would be hard for anyone to turn down," said Wiarda. Along with the Rusk Professorship, Wiarda said Georgia is committed to adding two new faculty positions and two teaching assistantships each year over the next five years to the department of international affairs. Wiarda's spouse, Iêda Siqueira Wiarda, also a political scientist, also has accepted a position at Georgia. "The University made a concerted effort to match the Georgia offer," said Wiarda, "but in the end it could not do so. I'm sad to be leaving. On the other hand, the chance to build and grow a new and vigorous department is a great opportunity." The author or editor of more than 60 books, anthologies and monographs, Wiarda also has written more than 300 scholarly articles, papers and book chapters. In 1998, he was appointed the Leonard J. Horwitz Professor of Iberian and Latin American Studies, the first endowed chair in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Wiarda played a lead role in securing the funds for the professorship. On campus, Wiarda directed the Latin American Studies Program and chaired the Foreign and International Studies Council. During his career, Wiarda worked at the Department of State and Department of Defense and has been associated with a number of think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He also is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, which advises the president, National Security Council and the secretaries of defense and state on foreign policy. Three years ago, he was awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Austria and Hungary on post-Communist democratization in Eastern and Central Europe, and the integration of new member-states into NATO and the European Union. More recently, he was named a Ful-bright Senior Specialist by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars. Wiarda was a visiting scholar at Harvard University from 1979-81 and 1988-90; visiting professor of national security strategy at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., from 1990-94, and 1995-96. He serves as general editor of two major book series and is on the board of editors of four academic journals. Wiarda expressed regrets about leaving UMass. "I'm very much saddened by the poor condition of the University these days," he said, "and by the absence of strong state support. It's very disheartening to watch a great university like this go into decline." Chancellor John V. Lombardi, also a Latin American scholar, praised Wiarda as "a nationally distinguished Latin Americanist scholar with a superb track record of accomplishment, publication, and leadership in his field." "That the University of Georgia would seek his leadership as they launch a major effort to create a strong Latin American program is entirely understandable," said Lombardi. "The consequence of having superior faculty is that from time to time other institutions will try to raid us. We make every effort to counter such raids on our distinguished faculty, and we succeed with most, but on occasion the other institution has a program or an opportunity that is too attractive for our colleague to pass up." M.J. Peterson, who chairs the Political Science Department, also praised Wiarda as a "very distinguished researcher and teacher and a mainstay of our graduate program." "We're going to miss him and we wish him well," Peterson added. |
