I

Waldemar Gurian, the founding editor, led the efforts of the Review from 1939 until his death at fifty-two in 1954. Gurian possessed the genius and the presence of mind to do the job. He surrounded himself with the necessary talent, people like Frank O'Malley and F. A. Hermens, and Father Leo Ward who could get things done for Gurian. Father Ward, for example, acted as liaison for Gurian with the university administration in finalizing arrangements to initiate the journal's operations. But there was more to the thirty-seven-year-old founding editor. Gurian had contacts everywhere. He, a notable scholar himself, knew scholars in America, many who had emigrated from Europe in the prewar and war years, and he continued to be in touch with others who had remained in Europe. His love of ideas animated his conversation, and he never missed an opportunity to engage his colleagues in intellectual discussions. Hannah Arendt, a dear friend of his for most of his life, put it best when she remarked, “Gurian had a flair for quality.”

More than sheer enterprise and this “flair for quality,” the young scholar knew what was needed to accomplish the larger task of commanding the attention of the American intelligentsia. He possessed a vision, some have said a mission, to address and correct the nation's and to a lesser extent the Western world's preoccupation with a mechanical understanding of politics. It was a spiritual and philosophical disorder he had seen corrupt and ravage Europe and felt America also was at risk of succumbing to. Though Gurian never wrote a great deal for the Review, sensing as others have said that his English was inadequate, he always recognized those writers who best represented his views. The University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought with its wide-ranging and distinguished faculty of humanistic learning proved to be a rich resource of ideas and authors for Gurian. The informal alliance of the two enterprises made for an exciting partnership. And scholars throughout America and throughout Europe soon were added to this new force.

Others, present at the time of Gurian's revolution, have reported on the Gurian era with more insight and greater familiarity than this writer ever could.Footnote ¹ It is evident from everything you read that indeed something unique began under the guidance of Waldemar Gurian. The journal came to symbolize a break with the atomizing culture of the modern West. Gurian committed himself to do battle against dehumanizing ideologies and politics. Whether it was Nazism or fascism or communism, he opposed the mindless inhumanity of dictators and political charlatans. But Gurian's most lasting effect on the wide world was his steadfast faith in the values of his Catholic religion and his loyalty to Notre Dame.

II

M. A. Fitzsimons, who had acted as managing editor under Gurian and assisted him in all manner of ways in the editing and production of the journal, assumed the role of editor following Gurian's death in 1954. Fitzsimons would be editor from 1955 until he stepped down in 1974, almost twenty years, making him the longest serving editor to date. If Gurian had been an instinctive genius, managing more by will than reason, Fitzsimons would be a more deliberative manager of the Review. It was at this time that I joined the staff as assistant to Professor Fitzsimons. It was a privilege to work for him. He had an uncompromising sense of what is right and an astounding skill at finding and promoting promising scholars. On occasion he would uncharacteristically remind others of the number of the prominent scholars he had been first to publish.

Without fanfare, the second chapter had begun. Fitzsimons observed in his twenty-fifth anniversary essay “Profile of Crisis” that the journal had not changed and would not change —“no special new course is intended.” Yet things do change. Fitzsimons, as the editors who were to follow him did, understood all too well the importance of a scholarly journal's appeal. Even as he spoke of the continuation of the “crisis” of the war and the struggles of the postwar era, Fitzsimons gave the journal a new direction by putting a greater emphasis on scholarly material. In the commotion of the times Gurian found plenty of pertinent material in the corridors of public opinion and political commentary. With the Cold War and its unsurety, politics called for analysis and historical perspectives.

Fitzsimons was a historian by training but had acquired in his association with Gurian an enhanced awareness of the mix of history and world politics. His two closest advisers, Father Thomas McAvoy, C.S.C., and Frank O'Malley, one a professor of history and the other a professor of literature respectively, along with a circle of similar-minded scholars like John J. Kennedy and Bruno Schlesinger helped steer the journal toward a consistently more scholarly agenda. Beginning with the first years of the Fitzsimons era, authors of a distinctively academic reputation mixed with the Gurian writers in the Review: Hannah Arendt, Peter Drucker, Arthur Link, George Kennan, Hans Kohn, Kenneth Thompson, Judith Shklar, and others. Perhaps then Fitzsimons was correct when he said things would not change—plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Many years later, reflecting on the history of the Review, then already over a half a century in the making, Fitzsimons expanded on his assessment of the enterprise.Footnote ² He saw before the many difficulties that lay ahead. The future did indeed appear grim. Yet there was reason for guarded optimism: as Fitzsimons said, “We may be able to deal with them, if we know who we are and are true to ourselves, but not in the demanding and selfish sense, too prevalent among us, that is a part of the problem” (248).

M. A. Fitzsimons was a worthy successor to Waldemar Gurian, and that is to say all that one need say about these two pioneers. Their contributions to the University of Notre Dame and to the American scholarly community are legendary.

III

The next phase in the history of the Review under the editorships of Thomas Stritch and Frederick J. Crosson represents a major readjustment of priorities for the journal. Tom Stritch took over the duties of editor not once but twice. Upon Fitzsimons's retirement, Fred Crosson was to assume the position of editor. But in light of his tenure as dean of the College of Arts and Letters (1968–1975), he was granted a sabbatical leave. In his place Tom Stritch was appointed editor.

Tom Stritch typified the Notre Dame Frank O'Malley cherished. He took nothing for granted. He cared about people, ideas, his faith, and his alma mater. He knew his mind, was determined to share his views, and he was humble for an Irishman. But Stritch's allegiance in terms of journal content sided with the Gurian who was a publicist and poured that enthusiasm into the makeup of the Review. Not that anyone ever knows what is in someone else's mind, nevertheless published articles are a good indication of an editor's preferences. Stritch sought the contemporary, he wanted to publish essays concerning public issues and contemporary events. His very first issue focused on corporatism in South America (“New Corporatism: Social and Political Structures in the Iberian World,” January 1974), a hot topic in international studies. Articles on Locke and Rousseau that Fitzsimons envisioned as the staple subject-matter of the journal tended to be replaced by studies on Lebanon or the Helsinki Accords or Northern Ireland. If it wasn't the contemporary, it was the current that caught Stritch's attention. More essays on the church and church relations and US national politics appeared under his editorship.

Dean Crosson assumed the editorship in 1977. The change in editors did not signal a major change in policies or even content. The journal continued in the same vein as Fitzsimons had predicted. The focus remained a concern for politics, historical and philosophical. Crosson, however, educated as a philosopher, shifted the emphasis back to the more traditional. Articles on Augustine, Avicenna, Montaigne, Locke, and Tocqueville appeared alongside the contemporary. Crosson had a gift for mixing the two perspectives while always maintaining the priority of political philosophy.

As the result of a serious medical condition Mrs. Crosson had been suffering, Crosson decided to resign his post as editor. Thomas Stritch was again asked to take over as acting editor. He served one year in the position, never changing Frederick Crosson's name as designated editor on the inside front cover. Stritch published the essays Crosson had already vetted, a habit the Review editors in transition have always practiced, and added many of his own selections. While Stritch and Crosson contributed much to the style and substance of the Review in their brief time as editor, regrettably neither had the opportunity to see their vision for the journal to fruition.

IV

Donald P. Kommers was appointed the fifth editor of the Review of Politics in the fall of 1982 at the close of Thomas Stritch's interim editorship. Stritch made note that Kommers had replaced Crosson in the fall issue. In no small measure the arrival of the new editor confirmed the beginnings of a new attitude for the journal that reflected the disposition of the entire university. The university and the young faculty of the postwar years intended to bring the tone and posture of the school into line with other institutions of higher learning that wished to become research oriented. Obviously as anyone who had witnessed the Review's performance over the past forty-some years knew, the desire for excellence in scholarship was present from the beginning. But now the wherewithal to act on this desire was ever present.

One simple but significant change was that Kommers was the first political scientist to serve as editor. Within months of assuming the position of editor, he initiated what may seem today cosmetic changes. But the result was no mere facelift because it demonstrated emphatically the turn toward a new order. In the January 1984 number of the Review, he issued a two-page “Editor's Communication,” outlining what he considered suitable and what he considered unsuitable material for the journal. The statement was not a statement of purpose as much as it was a reassertion of the direction of the journal. Here are his words: the Review “is the product of professional scholarship, and politics is clearly its specialty” (3).

The “Communication” stressed research and scholarship, and such was to be the journal's primary commitment in the years to follow. Kommers's statement contained three significant policy initiatives. First, a board of editorial advisors was added. Scholars of prominence agreed to join the journal's efforts—Henry Abraham, Charles Anderson, Ernest L. Fortin, Arend Lijphart, Alasdair MacIntyre, Glenn Tinder, and others. Second, Kommers made another significant change in policy when in the “Communication” he explained in detail the editor's commitment to the peer review process of all submissions. Basically the peer review process simply became the stated policy of the journal; for years it had been its unofficial policy. In 1987 another innovation that continues to this day was started under Kommers's editorship. With the support and cooperation of the Department of Political Science, an editorial internship was set up for promising graduate students interested in political theory. Finally, and perhaps most relevant to the journal's future, Kommers persuaded Walter Nicgorski to take on the burdensome responsibility of managing the book review section. Nicgorski continued to be book review editor until he became editor-in-chief.

Kommers had the spirit for editing the journal. He was always willing to try new things, but he never varied much from the traditional course. So he experimented and yet remained steady and true. One of his experimental efforts involved expanding the journal to include public-law articles. For three years he set aside one issue a year to publish public-law submissions. The Review had a reputation for publishing superior theory pieces on constitutional law and American jurisprudence, but the public-law effort never attracted the needed interest. Kommers was an expert in his own right in comparative constitutional law as well American constitutional law, and he continued throughout his time as editor to publish first-class studies in the area. The decision to set aside an entire issue for one field in the profession, however, proved too costly in staff time and overall space and the yearly special issue in public law was discontinued.

More often than not Kommers succeeded in his initiatives to strengthen the presence of the Review of Politics in the academic community. He continued to publish quality articles, cultivating a wider selection of authors and scholarship and managing to develop new contacts. Walter Nicgorski with the aid of his assistant V. Bradley Lewis returned the book review section to its original richness.

V

Walter Nicgorski, after serving as book review editor for ten years, succeeded Donald Kommers as editor-in-chief in 1994. The decision was indeed self-apparent. With his long and close association with Kommers, as well as friendship with Fred Crosson in the Program of Liberal Studies, Nicgorski, a political scientist, was a perfect fit. He had edited, with Kenneth Deutsch, a special issue on Leo Strauss for the Review in 1991 and had also served as acting editor in Kommers's stead when he was on leave. Besides the suitability of the choice, it had a certain convenience. Nicgorski simply had to move—quite literally—from one chair in the editorial office to another.

The printing industry by nature tends to be conservative, and the period of Nicgorski's editorship could be said to have experienced the most stressed-filled time of technological adjustments. The world may not have gone mad, though that is debatable, but it certainly did go digital. As the industry went through the throes of change, so did the journal. The staff was forced to relearn their jobs and acquire new skills. Production of the journal, as a result of changes in technology, suddenly meant that greater attention had to be paid to numerous annoying details. The journal staff became responsible for all the copyediting, the typesetting, which in reality was now digitalized, proofreading, and so forth.

Amid the cataclysm of change, Nicgorski as always performed his duties with perfect poise. He followed the traditional purpose of the journal, publishing mostly theory articles concerning history and philosophy. Essays on Xenophon, Voegelin, Yves Simon, and Hegel were the regular. But also Nicgorski had a strong sense that the Review must continue with Kommers's initiatives to make the journal more relevant as a political science forum. First, Nicgorski appointed Peter Moody, a political scientist, to be his successor as book review editor in 1994. Moody, a noted specialist in Asian studies, brought to the Review a compellingly diversified perspective, something Fitzsimons and Stritch thought was the function of the book review section—to put the notion of a “review of politics” into the Review of Politics. For two decades Peter Moody has kept watch over the book review section.

Nicgorski pursued avenues of change throughout his editorship. One of his major undertakings took the journal into completely new territory. He commissioned Fred Dallmayr and Peter Moody to edit a special issue on non-Western political thought for the Summer 1997 Review. The issue, highlighting the recent interest in the subfield of comparative political theory, garnered a good deal of attention from a broader audience. But again in a few years in celebration of the millennium Nicgorski put together a double issue on Christianity and politics, a theme quite familiar to the readers of the journal. In the fall of 2000 a special commemorative issue on Eric Voegelin's contribution to American political thinking was marked by a series of appreciative essays, edited and organized by Nicgorski with the assistance of Jodi Cockerill Bruhn. In conjunction with these many initiatives to appeal to a wider readership, Nicgoski was insistent on finding ways of gaining greater exposure for the journal. For years with varying success, he made efforts to market the journal in university bookstores and even popular outlets. As he has said, however, the scholarly journal market had radically shifted away from the traditional emphasis on the print format.

VI

Catherine H. Zuckert, holder of the Reeves Dreux Chair in Political Science, became editor-in-chief in 2005 following Walter Nicgorski's two decades of service to the Review. Zuckert took up where Nicgorski had ended in continuing to steady the journal for the modern trends in the publishing industry. Under Nicgorski the journal had partnered with JSTOR, the largest digital archives of scholarly journals in the world. The JSTOR partnership provided worldwide access to the journal, and within a very few years the entire holdings of the Review could be accessed. But this was but the beginning of the journal's modernization. During Zuckert's first year in office, she initiated negotiations with several major academic publishers. The following year the Review of Politics had a new publisher of record, the Cambridge University Press.

Finding a new publisher who could help enhance the image of the journal, expand its circulation, and add to its appeal through online access and wider exposure to potential authors only confirmed Zuckert's vision to make the Review competitive in a topsy-turvy industry. Immediately she committed herself to the press procedures at Cambridge, eliminating many of the miscues from the process. With the support of Cambridge University Press the Review managed to have the luxury of a reliable and controlled schedule. Zuckert then turned her attention to recasting the profile of the journal.

The new editor tried a variety of initiatives to enrich the composition of the journal. A symposium held in 2005 on Jeremy Waldron's new book God, Locke, and Equality attracted scholars such as John Dunn, Michael Zuckert, and Paul Sigmund. In 2007 she dedicated to Wilson Carey McWilliams a special issue on politics and literature. In 2008 a special issue on comparative political theory in honor of Fred Dallmayr was organized. And in 2009 Zuckert commissioned a collection of essays on political philosophy in the twentieth century, which was later expanded to include more essays and subsequently published as a source book on political philosophy (Political Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Authors and Arguments, Cambridge University Press, 2011). While the journal continued to publish articles, submitted in the conventional manner, of a wide assortment of political theory topics and other political science interests, Zuckert's creative use of special issues continued to bring senior scholars and established authorities to the pages of the Review. Another roundtable issue came out in 2010 on Michael Gillespie's Theological Origins of Modernity. Last year Zuckert set aside an issue to celebrate the centenary of Rousseau's birth with Frederick Neuhouser, Michael Davis, Christopher Bertram, Denise Schaeffer, John Scott, Laurence Cooper, and Victor Gourevitch.

Zuckert, besides the invited special issues, initiated a series of books to reintroduce political science to the long and variegated past of the Review. The first in the series is A. James McAdams's The Crisis of Modern Times: Perspectives from “The Review of Politics,” 1939–1962 (University of Notre Dame, 2007). McAdams compiles articles from the earlier era—Maritain, Nef, O'Malley, Srauss, Voegelin, Arendt, and Gurian—to explain the charisma of the journal, despite obvious differences among the authors, that attracted so many eminent scholars and essayists. Keir A. Lieber edited the second book in the Perspectives series, War, Peace, and International Political Realism: Perspectives from “The Review of Politics” (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009). The collection of authors spells out as no simple essay could the many-faceted perspective of the original realists. Experts such as George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, Gurian, and others are included.

As the discipline of political science continues to fragment into ever-smaller and more specialized venues of scholarship, the Review remains steady with increased online and print subscriptions and a constant appeal to scholars committed to traditional political research. Under Catherine Zuckert's supervision the journal has secured its place in the future, finding its way unto library shelves throughout the world. Zuckert's editorship has answered the challenge of the new digital environment of scholarly publishing with energy and enterprise, exhibiting an intellectual excitement and editorial enthusiasm worthy of the seventy-five-year history of the Review of Politics.

VII

The editors-in-chief are the rightful heroes of our story. The Review has been blessed with seven very dedicated leaders. They have given of themselves selflessly, often sacrificing precious time from their own scholarship for that of others. The story, nevertheless, would not be complete without a note of gratitude and genuine appreciation to the staff of the journal. Over the seventy-five years many more than seven have worked diligently on producing the journal.

The office managers and administrative assistants who have done everything but write articles, persons like Kelli Brown, Nancy Benjamin, Julie Bixler, Roberta Ferkins, and many others kept the Review going and kept the rest of us on our toes. It may seem as though the business of producing a journal is routine. The fact of the matter is that never a year goes by that there aren't several changes in the so-called routine. As always the office managers mastered the changes first and taught everyone else, and everyone else consists not only of the editors. Kelli Brown I fear has seen the most changes in her years since 2005. It is amazing how she manages it.

Numerous undergraduate student workers—Matt DeCartolis, Tim Chasteen, Jeffrey Ihlendorf, Katherine Mounts, Jonathan Morgan, and of course the most long-serving Erin Horvath Moskwinski who practically grew up in the Review office—did all the essential tasks. There was a time when the journal was typeset and proofread and paginated in house. The tasks were endless, and the students were there. Every era brought new tasks. The learning curve was merciless, and the undergrads came through with bells on. The journal also employed graduate students for decades and still does. They read manuscript submissions, advise the editors on outside referees, and occasionally provide research help. The list of past editorial interns includes dozens and dozens of students: Frank Colucci, V. Bradley Lewis, Alan Gibson, David Barrett, Jeanne Heffernan Schindler, James Paul Old, Xavier Marquis, Jeffrey Church, and S. Adam Seagrave. They have all earned their doctorates and are now teaching in universities throughout the world. One more person I must mention. Les Harris serves as our Assistant Editor, doing all the copyediting and most of the proofreading for Cambridge University Press. Around forty years ago I was an assistant editor; we assistant editors have to stick together.

Tocqueville said, “History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals.” But the history of the Review of Politics contains numerous originals from the very beginning to this day. Through the years the journal has made its way—committed to excellence. Without bias and armed with a distaste for intellectual faddism, the editors and staff have done their best to provide a forum of ideas for honest scholarship. Waldemar Gurian I suspect knew that accomplishing this task was indeed original. The Romans said it best: ad multos annos.