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J. David Singer, a globally recognized scholar of international politics, died Monday, December 28, 2009 in Ann Arbor. He was involved in an auto accident on September 22 and had been hospitalized since. At the time of his death, David Singer was Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, where he’d been on faculty since 1958 until retiring in 2002. He was 84 years old.
Professor Singer was a pioneer in the scientific study of international politics. He was a vigorous advocate for research that was systematic, replicable, and based on empirical evidence. Of the scholars most frequently credited with the development of the quantitative empirical study of war, from Quincy Wright to Karl Deutsch (two of Singer’s heroes and models), the contributions of J. David Singer to the scientific study of war are considered to be paramount.
Singer is best known as founder of the Correlates of War (COW) Project, dedicated to the systematic accumulation of scientific knowledge about interstate and civil military conflict, which had its genesis in a 1963 grant from the Carnegie Corporation to the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Conflict Resolution, a portion of which went to Singer and for the study of war. Singer and his associate, historian Melvin Small, generated the project’s first database which described the frequency, participants, duration and battle deaths of all wars since 1816; subsequent data sets included diplomatic ties, geographic proximity, territorial changes, intergovernmental organizations, civil wars and the military, economic and demographic dimensions of power. Singer’s goal was to produce generalizations about the conditions associated with the onset and seriousness of war coded by specific variables. An early and influential book came out of the COW Project in 1972, The Wages of War (Wiley, 1972), which established a standard definition of war which has since guided the research of hundreds of scholars.
Professor Singer was a lucid and prolific writer who produced, alone and with co-authors, more than 120 articles in academic journals as well over 20 books and edited volumes over his long career. Graduate students and senior scholars associated with the COW Project have produced hundreds of books and articles on the causes of interstate and civil wars, as well as militarized disputes. The COW Project remains active and growing more than 45 years on, and after Singer passed its leadership to Paul Diehl at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2002.
David Singer’s reputation, and his enthusiasm for recruiting scholars to the field of peace research, led him to accept numerous appointments abroad, at such institutions as: the Institute for Social Research; the Institute for International Affairs in Norway; the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland; the University of Mannheim in Germany; the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies; the International Institute for Peace, University of Groningen, The Netherlands; and at the National Chengchi University in Tapei, Taiwan. His achievements brought him honorary degrees from Northwestern University and Binghamton University. He also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Political Science Association and the Founder’s Medal from the Peace Science Society. He served as president of the Peace Science Society (International) and the International Studies Association.
As a scholar, it was Singer’s goal to produce rigorous, reliable research and contribute to the larger academic project of honing methodology, improving theory and perfecting results. Singer’s larger and more visionary goal, however, was to generate explanatory knowledge about the causes of war that could, in practice, be applied to the purpose of eliminating it. Over the years, Singer repeatedly expressed his hope that scientifically derived knowledge on war would be used by government leaders to produce better policy and minimize human suffering.
Born in Brooklyn on December 7, 1925, his sixteenth birthday saw the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Singer enlisted in the US Navy two years later. He served as a deck officer on the USS Missouri at the end of World War II and on the USS Newport News during the Korean War. In return for his military service, the GI Bill provided the education that led Singer to commit his career to ending the violence he witnessed as a citizen and in the Navy. He received his undergraduate degree from Duke University in 1946, and his PhD from New York University in 1956. He was later a Ford Fellow at the University of Iowa, an instructor at Vassar College, a visiting Fellow at Harvard University, and a visiting professor at the US Naval War College.
Singer served as Consultant to the Department of State, Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, and most recently, to the US Strategic Command 2010 Nuclear Posture Review. During his years at the University of Michigan, he received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the World Society Foundation, and the US Institute for Peace. He remained active in scholarly pursuits until his death, serving as Chair of the Correlates War Project Advisory Board, publishing articles on international conflict, presenting at conferences and working on his scholarly memoirs.
With scores of books dedicated to him, David Singer is remembered as a teacher, mentor and a clear and passionate communicator of ideas. Former students continue to produce valuable research and to emulate Singer’s famously engaging teaching style. David Singer is survived by his wife, Diane Macaulay of Ann Arbor, MI, his daughters Annie Singer of Washington, DC and Katie Singer of Montclair, NJ, and his two grandchildren, Kayla and Jake Ephros of Montclair, NJ. A public memorial service is being planned for Spring of 2010 in Ann Arbor, MI.
Singer is best known as founder of the Correlates of War (COW) Project, dedicated to the systematic accumulation of scientific knowledge about interstate and civil military conflict, which had its genesis in a 1963 grant from the Carnegie Corporation to the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Conflict Resolution, a portion of which went to Singer and for the study of war. Singer and his associate, historian Melvin Small, generated the project’s first database which described the frequency, participants, duration and battle deaths of all wars since 1816; subsequent data sets included diplomatic ties, geographic proximity, territorial changes, intergovernmental organizations, civil wars and the military, economic and demographic dimensions of power. Singer’s goal was to produce generalizations about the conditions associated with the onset and seriousness of war coded by specific variables. An early and influential book came out of the COW Project in 1972, The Wages of War (Wiley, 1972), which established a standard definition of war which has since guided the research of hundreds of scholars.
Professor Singer was a lucid and prolific writer who produced, alone and with co-authors, more than 120 articles in academic journals as well over 20 books and edited volumes over his long career. Graduate students and senior scholars associated with the COW Project have produced hundreds of books and articles on the causes of interstate and civil wars, as well as militarized disputes. The COW Project remains active and growing more than 45 years on, and after Singer passed its leadership to Paul Diehl at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2002.
David Singer’s reputation, and his enthusiasm for recruiting scholars to the field of peace research, led him to accept numerous appointments abroad, at such institutions as: the Institute for Social Research; the Institute for International Affairs in Norway; the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland; the University of Mannheim in Germany; the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies; the International Institute for Peace, University of Groningen, The Netherlands; and at the National Chengchi University in Tapei, Taiwan. His achievements brought him honorary degrees from Northwestern University and Binghamton University. He also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Political Science Association and the Founder’s Medal from the Peace Science Society. He served as president of the Peace Science Society (International) and the International Studies Association.
As a scholar, it was Singer’s goal to produce rigorous, reliable research and contribute to the larger academic project of honing methodology, improving theory and perfecting results. Singer’s larger and more visionary goal, however, was to generate explanatory knowledge about the causes of war that could, in practice, be applied to the purpose of eliminating it. Over the years, Singer repeatedly expressed his hope that scientifically derived knowledge on war would be used by government leaders to produce better policy and minimize human suffering.
Born in Brooklyn on December 7, 1925, his sixteenth birthday saw the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Singer enlisted in the US Navy two years later. He served as a deck officer on the USS Missouri at the end of World War II and on the USS Newport News during the Korean War. In return for his military service, the GI Bill provided the education that led Singer to commit his career to ending the violence he witnessed as a citizen and in the Navy. He received his undergraduate degree from Duke University in 1946, and his PhD from New York University in 1956. He was later a Ford Fellow at the University of Iowa, an instructor at Vassar College, a visiting Fellow at Harvard University, and a visiting professor at the US Naval War College.
Singer served as Consultant to the Department of State, Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, and most recently, to the US Strategic Command 2010 Nuclear Posture Review. During his years at the University of Michigan, he received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the World Society Foundation, and the US Institute for Peace. He remained active in scholarly pursuits until his death, serving as Chair of the Correlates War Project Advisory Board, publishing articles on international conflict, presenting at conferences and working on his scholarly memoirs.
With scores of books dedicated to him, David Singer is remembered as a teacher, mentor and a clear and passionate communicator of ideas. Former students continue to produce valuable research and to emulate Singer’s famously engaging teaching style. David Singer is survived by his wife, Diane Macaulay of Ann Arbor, MI, his daughters Annie Singer of Washington, DC and Katie Singer of Montclair, NJ, and his two grandchildren, Kayla and Jake Ephros of Montclair, NJ. A public memorial service is being planned for Spring of 2010 in Ann Arbor, MI.
