Sanford A. Lakoff

We deeply regret to share that Sanford A. Lakoff, known fondly by most as “Sandy” – founding chair of the UC San Diego Department of Political Science and a 2018 winner of the university’s highest honor for emeriti faculty, the Revelle Medal – has passed away. Lakoff died at his home in La Jolla on September 25 at the age of 92.

Lakoff arrived at UC San Diego in 1974 and made an indelible impact on the campus over the course of nearly five decades of enthusiastic service. As the first department chair of political science, Lakoff, together with a small band of other founding faculty, quickly built the department into one of the highest ranked in the nation. Just 15 years after the graduate program in political science launched at UC San Diego, the National Research Council had placed it in the country’s top 10. Today, the department, its doctoral specializations and undergraduate programs are consistently rated as among the nation’s very best.

Lakoff was also instrumental in promoting campus-wide initiatives that recognized the university’s distinctive geographic location and its opportunity to affirm a leadership role in both border studies and studies of the Pacific Rim. For example, he was a strong advocate for the establishment of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, and the Institute of the Americas. He also helped lay the groundwork for the establishment of the school now known as the School of Global Policy and Strategy.

A distinguished scholar in political philosophy and science and public policy – one of the first to study science in government – Lakoff was a prolific author. His most important work, he said, was the work he did on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), in cooperation with physicist Herbert York, founding chancellor of UC San Diego. Together they published “A Shield in Space? Technology, Politics, and the Strategic Defense Initiative,” at the time the most comprehensive study of the SDI. Other co-authored and solo-authored publications on the topic followed.

He published dozens of papers and essays in journals, edited volumes and encyclopedias, as well as opinion pieces in general-audience newspapers. Among his other books are “Equality in Political Philosophy,” “Ten Political Ideas that Shaped the Modern World” and “Democracy: History, Theory, Practice.” The latter was widely and positively reviewed in both scholarly and popular journals, as was his 1998 biography of the journalist and radical thinker Max Lerner, “Max Lerner: Pilgrim in the Promised Land.”

Lakoff also made tremendous contributions as a campus citizen, from establishing and generously supporting an honors thesis program for undergraduate students in political science to serving for 18 years as the editor of the Emeriti Association’s newsletter, “The Chronicles,” where he penned numerous insightful articles along with a regular popular column of quips and quotes that he called “Anecdotage.”

In addition to earning the Revelle Medal at UC San Diego in 2018, for sustained, distinguished and extraordinary service to the campus, Lakoff was celebrated with the systemwide 2017-2018 Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award, which honors emeriti faculty for long and notable records of research, teaching and service to the UC, their disciplines and their communities. 

A staunch believer in an academic’s civic duty to public engagement, Lakoff gave standing-room-only talks to local retirees in a variety of different forums and for many years taught master classes through the Division of Extended Studies’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. He also continued to teach undergraduate courses at UC San Diego long after retiring in 1992, on such complex topics as “Democracy, Politics and the Environment” and “Middle East Politics.” 

Based on his ongoing experiences with younger students, Lakoff expressed optimism about the country’s future, and, on accepting the Revelle Medal in 2018, said he most wanted to be remembered as “a teacher – that I contributed my bit to the life and times we’re in.”

Born on May 12, 1931, Lakoff grew up in Bayonne, N.J. and attended Bayonne public schools before matriculating to Brandeis University. He earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1959, going on to teach there, then Stony Brook University and the University of Toronto before moving to San Diego. In addition to being a passionate and involved academic, Lakoff was also a longtime supporter of cultural life in the region, in particular the San Diego Early Music Society.

Lakoff was preceded in death by his first wife, Evelyn Schleifer Lakoff, and is survived by his second wife, Deborah R. Miller, his brother, George Lakoff, nephew, Andrew Lakoff, and others.

Pradeep K. Khosla
Chancellor

Elizabeth H. Simmons
Executive Vice Chancellor

Carol Padden
Dean of the School of Social Sciences