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History

Tom Foley
Spring 2024

Ask the Authors: John Pierce and Kenton Bird, authors of Tom  Foley: The Man in the Middle

John Pierce and R. Kenton Bird were fellows in the same program nearly 20 years apart.

Pierce served as an American Political Science Congressional Fellow from 1970 to 1971, working part of that time in Tom Foley’s congressional office. Bird was a fellow from 1988 to 1989. Ten years later, he wrote his WSU dissertation on Foley’s congressional career. Pierce, chair of the Department of Political Science for eight years and dean of the College of Liberal Arts for eleven years, was on the committee for his doctoral degree. They spent nearly eight years working on their 2023 biography of Foley, which was … » More …

Quintard Taylor speaking with a blue background scene behind him
Spring 2024

Quintard Taylor: WSU ‘set my life trajectory’

Quintard Taylor Jr. didn’t expect to stay in Pullman for four years. He’d joined the faculty of Washington State University’s new Black Studies Program in 1971, thinking he’d teach for a year before going on to get his doctorate in history.

Instead, the decision to come to Pullman “became kind of life-changing,” he now says. “It set my career and my life trajectory.”

His work at WSU, researching the history of Black people in the Pacific Northwest, would become his doctoral dissertation at the University of Minnesota. It was the foundation of a public television series called South by Northwest. And it informed his … » More …