Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
- Dalhousie University. Faculty of Arts and Science. Government and Political Science (1921-1927)
- Dalhousie University. Faculty of Arts and Science. Political Science (1928-1988)
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
The 1863 appointment of James Ross to the newly created Chair of Ethics and Political Economy marks the early beginnings of the teaching of politics at Dalhousie University. While funding for the chair ended with Ross’s death in 1886, in 1891 George Munro established a Chair in History and Political Economy, which was held by John Forrest, who taught two political economy classes a year until his retirement in 1911. Over the following decade there were no politics classes offered, although constitutional history and economics were taught by series of associate professors of history and political economy.
The study of contemporary political science at Dalhousie began in 1921 with a $60,000 endowment made by the parents of a former Dal student killed in action at Vimy Ridge during World War One. In addition to funding the Eric Dennis Memorial Professorship of Government and Political Science, Senator Dennis gifted $1000 to start a library collection and another $2020 to fund an annual series of Eric Dennis Special Lectures.
Henry Frazer Munro was the first appointed Eric Dennis Memorial Professor, and the 1921-1922 University Calendar lists six courses under the heading of Government and Political Science. In 1926 Government was dropped from the department's name and in 1927 Robert Alexander MacKay became the second Eric Dennis Memorial Professor. He remained the only professor in the department until he left in 1948, although Lothar Richter, who founded the Institute of Public Affairs, served as an occasional Special Lecturer. James Aitchison was hired in 1949, and political science largely remained a department of one until the 1960s; Aitchison was named its first head in 1964.