I knew him from Jan. 1 or Jan. 4, 1960 as a colleague. My special field was political theory and comparative politics. Of course, Fred Schuman was there teaching international relations and as you well know he was known as “Red Fred,” then there was a “Green Fred,” [Fred Greene] and much to Green Fred’s annoyance, Green Fred had to sub for Red Fred in the largest course I think in the college, that Schuman taught, some 80-odd people. I got a call from Jim Burns and was delighted to get the chance to interview here, and I got the job the very same day. And [several] years earlier the department had hired two people from the University of Chicago and both of them were marked by their Chicago graduate training, which in those days was heavily under the influence of Leo Strauss. And at a time when the academy had been marked by New Dealism and liberalism generally, it’s odd, Strauss was an arch-conservative, not in the right-wing Republican sense at all, although I daresay that he probably voted Republican, but in the traditional Aristotelian sense, classical sense of conservatism in terms of the importance of harmony, for instance. Bob Gaudino and [John] Rensenbrink, as I found out afterwards, were never in the inner circle of that cadre of disciples. They were relatively on the margin. But the point is that Jim Burns was concerned that under the aegis of Rensenbrink and Gaudino all of political theory was essentially classic Aristotelian conservative political theory. And he wanted a modernist liberal type. And that’s why I was hired. So I very early on perceived that my job essentially was as a counterbalance to Bob Gaudino’s teachings. Shortly I met Bob Gaudino and was absolutely captivated.

Kurt Tauber,
Former Political Science Professor