Political Science Faculty

Emeritus Professor

Amir Rafat

Ph.D. (University of Minnesota)

Professor
U4 O'Hair House
Phone: (765) 658-4884
E-mail: arafat@depauw.edu

Amir Rafat
A testimonial for a Career of Distinguished Teaching and Scholarship at DePauw

April 23, 2004  Amir Rafat is retiring from teaching at DePauw after thirty-eight years of continuous dedicated service. The university and especially International Education and the Department of Political Science will miss the quality of his scholarship, civility, and wise leadership. 

Amir Rafat’s university education spans a decade (1955-1964) at the University of Geneva (Switzerland,) the University of Nebraska, and the University of Minnesota where he earned his Ph.D. in 1964. 

Amir joined DePauw University in the fall of 1966 as Associate Professor after brief  stops at Wesmar College (61-64) the University of South Dakota (64-65) and Kent State University (65-66.) 

While Amir’s teaching kept him at DePauw, his scholarship and research took him to various institutions of higher education and research centers in Europe, the Middle East, and other campuses in the USA. 

In addition to his teaching at DePauw, Amir served as acting Chair of Political Science, Director of International Education for ten years, and resident director of the DePauw Mediterranean Program in Athens, Greece, the Junior Year Abroad Program, and the Freiburg and London study abroad programs. His scholarship and expertise in International Law and world affairs left his mark on our curriculum and produced several publications in journals of law and world affairs. 

Amir Rafat is a scholar’s scholar. He is intellectually engaged, with sharp intellect, and cosmopolitan engagement and scholarship. He lives comfortably in the epicenter of continental Europe as he does in the heart of the American Midwest. He manages to exude the humility of a thinker as he strives to add to the quality and scope of the much he already knows. For these qualities, his colleagues and his students relish their interaction with him. They leave his company better for it. 

Some of us have known Amir for decades. In all that time, Amir has been consistently pleasant, supportive, and kind, a friend to his colleagues, a superb mentor to his students.  

Amir is one of those people, perhaps a bit out of fashion in this politically charged age, who has never lost his personal warmth and his sense of humor, and yet he always retained a sense of seriousness and professionalism. When problems come Amir’s way, he readily deflects them with a smile and a chuckle. During his long career at DePauw, Amir Rafat has made many friends, but not a single enemy. 

Amir’s presence in the Department of Political Science can be described as “elder statesman.” The adjective is obvious: Amir has served in the department longer than anyone else. But “statesman” is the important appellation. Over his many years at DePauw Amir has displayed time and again, and consistently, the talents, the instincts, the qualities of mind and heart, that we recognize as belonging to those rare figures to whom we look for leadership and guidance at critical moments in the life of a department. In times of difficulty – when important decisions have to be made, or when questions of justice arise and must be settled, or when matters of high policy must be addressed – Amir Rafat has unfailingly provided sagacious wisdom in a manner that is calm, rational, and timely. With a capacity to get quickly to the heart of an issue, and then to place it in as broad a context as it requires, and finally to speak cogently in favor of a solution, he is, in our judgment without a peer. 

Amir Rafat is a creative, persevering, and cosmopolitan teacher scholar who kept pace with his area of expertise, creating new courses and updating his teaching of old ones even when he was phasing into retirement. Amir is exiting the classroom, but he is staying among us: a friend, a colleague, a mentor, and a generous and enriching resource.