Argentinian native inspired generations of Notre Dame students
Eight years ago, I was sitting in politics class at Notre Dame’s London Centre listening to a professor with a thick Argentinian accent passionately describe an execution by firing squad. We had been talking about Thomas Hobbes just a few moments before, and in Hobbes’s day the executioner used an ax instead of a gun, so we figured we had missed something in translation.
“Whoa, professor, are you saying YOU were before a firing squad?” asked one of my classmates.
Professor Guillermo O’Donnell – who died last fall at age 75 – nonchalantly confirmed that, indeed, he was talking about himself. This great storyteller, who always spoke with dramatic energy, proceeded to tell us how his political enemies had captured him and ordered his execution. I’m fuzzy on the details, but it was clear he stood before a row of men who fired their guns at him. He fell, and realizing he was still alive, he wisely played dead. Someone among the authorities had decided to intervene and fill all the guns with blanks.
Afterward, he somehow escaped to America, where he earned both his masters and PhD from Yale. He then became one of Notre Dame’s legendary professors.
He was just as Irish as he was Argentinian and American. He told us in his London class that once when he visited Ireland’s County Donegal, ancestral home of the O’Donnells, he was hailed a hero by people who knew what it was like to fight for freedom.
After a brilliant career dedicated to promoting democracy and to teaching generations of students, Professor O’Donnell died November 29, 2011, in Buenos Aires. Not content to lecture a class and then get back to his research, he was a genuinely devoted teacher.
In Notre Dame’s London Program, I signed up for his 9:30 a.m. “Democracy Past and Present” class, along with about 25 others, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He took a liking to a few of us in the class, who were able to get energetic about Cicero, Locke, and Hobbes at 9:30 despite having possibly had a few pints the night before.
Pulling us aside, he created a separate class with just the 5 or 6 of us. We would meet at the more civilized hour of 3:00 p.m., just once a week and spend an hour or so discussing political theory.
Class was always a conversation, never a lecture, and “O’D” – despite his vast experience and knowledge – exhibited a youthful, curious excitement about whichever theorist we were discussing. We talked about democracy in theory and in practice, but the more important lesson was how to think and write about important ethical matters – and how to discuss our differences civilly. Professor O’Donnell and I did not agree politically, but he always enjoyed the give-and-take and respected the views of anyone who made an effort to put together sound arguments. Having lived under tyranny, he relished vigorous, yet friendly debate, especially over a pint.
The following fall, all of us, including Professor O’Donnell, were back on campus in South Bend. We would occasionally meet up for a pint at Legends to hear more stories and to recall the good days in London. He continued to look out for us, writing letters of recommendation, even ensuring we had copies so we could use them far into the future.
He was called the “foremost Latin American political scientist of the last 50 years” but we – fairly unaware of his great stature in the academic world – knew him as a teacher and friend, thanks, in part, to whoever saved his life that day in Argentina.
Joe Lindsley founded the IRISH ROVER in 2003. Contact him at joseph.p.lindsley@alumni.nd.edu.
