Northwestern Professor Emeritus of Political Science George I. Blanksten, a leading authority on Latin American politics, died Dec. 31 due to complications from aspiration pneumonia and a brain embolism. He was 84.
Blanksten received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Chicago in 1939 and 1940. After working as a political analyst at the U.S. Department of State from 1941 to 1945, he received a doctorate in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles and joined NU’s faculty in 1947.
Political science Prof. Kenneth Janda met Blanksten in 1961. Blanksten served as chairman of NU’s political science department in 1956, 1963, 1964 and from 1965 to 1970, a period Janda described as one of the most politically turbulent in NU’s history.
“It was during the Vietnam War, and there was a lot of student activism on campus,” Janda said. “Blanksten had the unenviable task of dealing with all of that, which indicates the trust his colleagues put in him.”
Blanksten wrote the books “Ecuador: Constitutions and Caudillos” in 1951 and “Peron’s Argentina” in 1953. When Greek socialist politician and former NU economics Prof. Andreas Papandreou was arrested by Greece’s military government in 1967, Blanksten helped organize a national campaign of scholars to free him.
“He was a very kind and gentle person,” said Weinberg Assistant Dean for International and Area Studies Devora Grynspan, who knew Blanksten as a graduate student from 1976 to 1981. She was a teaching assistant for several of his classes.
“He used a lot of humor in classes to make sure that students developed an interest,” Grynspan said. “Even though our education in political science was quantitative, he wanted us to know the countries and their culture and language, or else those methodologies won’t get you very far.”
During the 1970s and ’80s, Blanksten was involved with the Winnetka theater group Tower Players, as well as other drama organizations in the north suburbs.
After retiring from NU in 1988, Blanksten spent more time with family members.
He was hospitalized for a stroke in April 2000 and then was moved to the Glenview Terrace Nursing Home, where he passed away New Year’s Eve. He is survived by his wife, Deborah, and two sisters, Evelyn Baker of Skokie and Beverly Hummel of Bethesda, Md.
