I think a lot of his colleagues completely misunderstood him. When they say “charismatic” they immediately thought that Bob was turning his students into acolytes. Because typically, that’s what charismatic people do, right? They’re so overpowering that you become acolytes. Now I just talked recently with John Chandler and both of us observed the same thing: Bob was maddeningly, maddeningly unwilling to let people know where he stood precisely because he was determined that he was not going to create acolytes. If people wanted to take his pedagogy and say that that’s valuable and deal with it, fine. But he didn’t want them saying, “Well he’s a liberal Democrat or he’s pro-war or anti-war.” He didn’t want them, his students, following him and somehow aping his points of view. It was maddening because he would do the same thing with his colleagues. And it was complete asymmetry there because he was constantly asking you who you were and where you were coming from and how you felt, and yet very reluctant to give back and let you know how he felt about things. Although he was confident in what he did, there was a kind of modesty about him. You know, “I’m not great deal, why would you care about what I think?” And I think that was genuine. I don’t think it was false at all. But anyway, that’s the way he was

David Booth,
Former Political Science Professor