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to Issue #9Professor emeritus and political scientist Maurice Halperin passed away February 9, due to a stroke. He was one of Simon Fraser University's best loved and most distinguished professors, and had been with the University since its infancy in 1968. He would have been 89 on March 3.
Halperin was an authority on Cuba, and wrote several books on its politics and culture. His most recent publication was **Return to Havana**, published in 1994.
He was chief of the Latin American Division with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II and chair of Latin American Studies at Boston University in 1949. He received Brazil's Order of the Southern Cross for scholarly contributions.
In 1935, Halperin was part of an abortive mission with the League of American Writers to investigate human rights abuses in Cuba. Blacklisted during the "Red Scare" in the US in the 1950s, he and his wife Edith left journeyed to Moscow, Mexico, and at the personal invitation of Che Guevara, to Havana. For six years, Halperin worked as a university lecturer and government official in Cuba before leaving for SFU.
"He was a remarkable man and intellect who lived a long full life," said Ted Cohn, a colleague in Political Science since1977.
"I have many memories, including his immediate challenge to swim at least half a mile daily in the university's pool.... "
"He was a wonderful and immensely interesting man," recalls another long-time SFU colleague and friend Dr. Lenard Cohen.
"He was a treasure of stories of politics and power and how they are used and should be analysed, and we will miss him a great deal."