Ellis S Krauss
Sid Verba was at Stanford when I was in graduate school there for my PhD 1964-68. He was my idol—a full Professor at Stanford at age 31 and from where I was from: Flatbush area of Brooklyn, NYC. I think where he grew up was just a few blocks from where my parents were at the time. I took 3 classes from Sid in comparative politics and they inspired me to specialize in that sub-field of Political Science. One of the papers I did for his classes on Japan also led me to specialize in Japanese politics, my field for the rest of my academic career. One anecdote I recall is when I joined a group of grad students on his project on political participation and we were discussing how to measure "parochialism." Almost all the grad students were coming up with measures and questions trying to tailor them to the 3rd world countries in the survey. Sid just scotched that narrow approach by noting he knew people in Brooklyn who also would score as very parochial on those measures. He was truly the epitome of "a gentleman and a scholar."
