Pikeville College

I learned last week that William Cohen of Indiana University passed away in
a home accident at the end of November.  I am shocked at his passing and
that I have only learned about it now.  Though Bill was not "officially" an
Africanist, he mentored many of us who are.  Bill served as the chair of an
outside Ph.D. minor on European Imperialism in the Third World that the
late Norm Schrag and I designed when we were at Indiana University in the
mid-70s.  Bill was a delightful human being, erudite scholar, and brilliant
historian.

Two of his students, Rachel Fuchs <rachel.fuchs@asu.edu> of Arizona State
University and Steve Harp <sharp@uakron.edu> of the University of Akron
have written an obituary which appears on the Indiana University History
Department home page.  I have obtained their permission to post it to you
here.

William B. Cohen, in memoriam

William B. Cohen, Professor and Graduate Director in the Department of
History at Indiana University, died unexpectedly early Monday morning,
November 25, 2002, following an accident at his home around 4 p.m. on
Sunday. He had been cleaning leaves from a gutter when he fell from a
ladder. Words cannot express the great sorrow and sadness of this dreadful
tragedy. Bill taught for a year at Northwestern University before joining
the faculty at Indiana University in 1967. There he also served as chair of
West European Studies in the late 1970s, and of the Department of History
from1980-87 (and as acting chair 2001-02). He was also a past president of
the Society for French Historical Studies.

Born in 1941 in Finland of German Jewish refugees, he spent the duration of
the war in Finland and Sweden, and his parents emigrated to Ethiopia after
the war. His father was a prominent doctor who worked for the World Health
Organization. Although Bill didn't talk much about himself, many of his
friends and former students have heard stories about his childhood in
Ethiopia, including those about his pet monkey. After his father died,
and his mother emigrated to California in 1957. He always said that he was
glad to have been able to attend an American high school because it enabled
him to know American culture. He spoke several languages, and as he liked
to quip, "all with an accent," although the accent was undetectable. Bill
received his B.A. from Pomona College and his Ph.D. in 1968 from Stanford
University, where he studied with Gordon Wright.

Bill immediately became known as a dedicated teacher and superb scholar,
mentoring graduate students just as soon as he arrived at Indiana
University. Always a leader in the field, Bill was a scholar of French
colonial history, publishing his first book, Rulers of Empire: The French
Colonial Service in Africa, with Stanford University Press in 1971. His
second book, the pioneering and much acclaimed French Encounter with
Africans (Indiana University Press, 1980), followed shortly, and was soon
translated into French, as Francais et Africains: les Noirs dans le regard
des Blancs: 1530 =AD 1880 (Gallimard, 1981) and published by Pierre Nora in
his Bibliotheque des histoires. Bill was amused that a reviewer in Le Monde
once called him, a Francophobe of the first order, an "ennemi de la France"
for daring to suggest that racism had existed in France. His third book,
Urban Government and the Rise of the French City: Five Municipalities in
the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave/Macmillan and St. Martins Press, 1998) is
a detailed analysis of municipal powers in the face of nineteenth-century
French centralization. In addition he co-authored a major textbook in
Western Civilization and edited two books, European Empire Building:
Nineteenth-Century Imperialism (1980), and The Transformation of Modern
France: Essays in Honor of Gordon Wright (1997); he also published dozens
of articles. At his terribly untimely death he was preparing an important
book entitled "The Algerian War and French Memory, 1962-2002." In all his
scholarly work, Bill moved the study of colonial history and of French
history toward a social and cultural understanding of the phenomenon of
French colonialism and post-colonialism, transforming the field of French
colonial history. Moreover, he had tremendous breadth of vision and great
depth to his research, spanning several centuries and engaging with broad,
significant topics. Bill was a meticulous researcher with a love of the
archives that never diminished. His energy for scrupulous and conscientious
archival research became exemplary models for generations of graduate
students. He had great fun doing research and conveyed that joy to those
who knew him, especially to his students.

Everyone who knew Bill cherished and admired him. His generosity of spirit
and patience was unfailing; he found kindness and humor in every possible
instance. His tragic death is a serious loss to the department, university,
and profession, but a far more serious loss to those who loved him and to
those whom he so warmly taught and guided over the years. He was one of the
few professors who truly deserved the title of mentor. As one person who
was a graduate student at IU in 1979 said, "I was always a bit envious of
the Europeanists who got to work with him closely. Somehow, it just isn't
right...." A more recent graduate student remembers Bill's final words just
a few days before his death: "Always err on the side of optimism." That
phrase was emblematic of Bill's outlook on life.

Never self-important, Bill had ways of making the very difficult tasks of
research and writing abordable, doable for anyone willing to try hard
enough. Bill understood the manifold ways that historians work within
French and other archives and libraries to obtain documents, to get the
right to stay in the archives over the once sacrosanct French break for
lunch, and to work with archivists of every political stripe from royalists
to communists. He could smile, make those around him smile, and keep
working at the same time. He loved France and was fond of saying, "When I'm
in Paris I always envy myself."

In everything that Bill did, he was a model for all to follow. He was a
superb, careful, and dedicated scholar, who exemplified a love of teaching,
of learning, and of history; he taught others by what he said, but more
importantly, by his own example. He will also be remembered for the respect
he showed all his colleagues and graduate students, earning our tremendous
respect in return. He was unstinting in his support, encouragement,
kindness, and generosity to his colleagues and to generations of students.

Many owe their academic life to him. He was such a fine, gentle, wonderful,
and caring person, with a great sense of humor; his death is so very sad
and we will miss him terribly. All of us who knew or had met him feel so
incredibly lucky to have had him grace our lives.

Rachel G. Fuchs, Arizona State University

Stephen Harp, University of Akron

http://www.indiana.edu/~histweb/pages/faculty_and_staff/biographies/cohen-memoriam.htm>

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