The new year marks Harry M. Clor Professor of Political Science David Rowe’s 25th year on the Hill. This past summer, due to Rowe’s outstanding contributions to the College, he was appointed to an endowed professorship. The Collegian sat down with him to discuss his life at Kenyon, various career paths and adventures as an outdoorsman. 

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Anna Sugg (AS): To start, what is your favorite Kenyon memory?

Rowe: One of my favorite Kenyon memories came about in 2009, and the run-up is that my wife [Professor of Political Science Pam Camerra-Rowe] and I had been separated for the 2008-09 academic year because we were on sabbatical. And so she had applied to be a congressional fellow, and I’d applied to be a visiting Fulbright professor at the University of Innsbruck. Both of these are very low-probability events. And so we were figuring out, maybe we’ll be in Europe, or maybe we’ll be in D.C. The most likely [outcome] is we’re not going to be anywhere because these are really competitive [opportunities], but we got both of them. Then, when I moved back from Austria, I had only seen my wife a couple of times over that year, and I came back to the United States, and I sent the kids onto Gambier, and turned around to go back to D.C. I am completely jet-lagged, but I see her and I’m thinking, “Get to her, get to her place.” Then she says, “Well, I hope you have some energy, because we’re going out tonight.” We have a lot of former students who are in the Washington D.C. area, and she told a couple of her students, “Hey, let’s go to a bar. Professor Rowe’s going to be there,” and so, the word just spread. We then go to this bar, I think it was on Capitol Hill, and there were 60 former students there. It was Kenyon off the Hill, and I want to say it was very gratifying to see so many former students who were all in different points in their career. This is now something that Professor Camerra-Rowe and I … do … every few years. We will go to Washington, D.C., and say, “Hey, we’re in town, and we would like to see you.” Word gets out, and we have our former students come from all years. It is just wonderful because you have this really sort of deep connection.

AS: What does it mean to be a professor at Kenyon College?

Rowe: Being a professor here is wonderful. I started my career actually at [The] Ohio State University, an R1 research university. The difference between being a professor at an R1 university and being a professor at a liberal arts college is that research narrows you. You spend most of your life focusing on a very narrow set of questions, and you know an awful lot about a very small slice of the world. Being at a liberal arts college, and especially at a place like Kenyon, it forces you to broaden. That’s been, for me, just really intellectually stimulating because I’m spending a lot of my time thinking about how all kinds of different things relate to one another. That means that you have this very rich intellectual life, because instead of focusing in, I’ve got to broaden in a way that creates systematic insight across all kinds of different areas of human endeavor.

AS: I was told you lived many lives before coming to the Hill. What have you done outside of Kenyon? 

Rowe: I’ve done a lot of different things on my way to becoming a professor. I worked at an international bank, you know, thought I was going to be a banker. I worked for the U.S. Department of Defense. I was in the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which manages the U.S. military aid programs to other countries. That was fascinating. I’ve worked for the Aspen Institute. There, I was the executive director of something they call the Aspen Strategy Group, so I was basically the person who did all the administration, and it was a grouping of former cabinet level officials in the United States, who were either former Secretaries of Defense, directors of [the] CIA, secretaries of state, people who’d served on the [National Security Council], plus key members of Congress and some high-level journalists. We would convene four times a year and talk behind closed doors [about] the really pressing issues of American foreign and security policy. These were all people from across both sides of the aisle, who just said, “We think the United States international system is very challenging, and we have to figure out ways of managing that.” 

AS: It has been said that you’re a seasoned outdoorsman, especially in fly fishing. Why do the outdoors call you?

Rowe: My father was a ranger for the National Park Service, and so I grew up in national parks all over the United States. National parks were not a place that you visited, they were a place where you lived. You grew up hiking, you grew up fishing, you grew up engaged in different kinds of mountain sports, so it’s just a natural thing. I mean you grow up in New York, and going to the opera and going out to the cafes is just sort of second nature. It’s what you do, because that’s how you’ve grown up. Well I grew up just being outdoors, regardless of the weather, that’s what you do. The most formative place that I lived in was at the bottom of a canyon in New Mexico. I mean we were miles from anywhere, so you’re very remote, and you just grow up knowing that the outdoors is there and it’s there to be lived in. 

AS: That’s amazing, but why fly fishing? Is there a fly fishing culture here at Kenyon that I’m unaware of? Give me some tips. 

Rowe: Oh, there are a lot of fly fishermen here. I fly fish right here in the Kokosing, in part because it’s close by. It’s easy. The Kokosing is a beautiful river. Patience is really important, and you have to be actually a little bit analytical. I mean, one of the things I love about fly fishing is you have to read the water. You have to understand what’s going on in the water, what’s going on underneath the water, about the biology of the stream. My advice is that fly fishing is, in many ways, a very meditative activity, and you have to just get into the flow, enjoy the water. And it’s always better when you catch fish, but never fish to catch fish. You fish to be in nature. 

AS: I’ve heard that you have lots of crazy stories. Can you tell us one?

Rowe: We were hiking in the Alps, and this massive thunderstorm blows through. And so we were going to climb up to a peak where you could see all the Alps. It’s me, my son, my daughter and my wife, and we start to hear thunder. So all right, we got to get off the mountain. We look at the map, and we say, “Hey, we’re going to drop down and catch this mountain road, and this will be the fastest way off the mountain.” We catch the road and start just trying to lose altitude as rapidly as we can. And we come around a shoulder of the mountain and come around the ridge and we can now see it is just purple and black everywhere. Then the lightning starts crashing and then it starts hailing. And I don’t mean little hail, I mean golf ball size. I told my wife “We’re going into those trees over there,” because the hail was so hard we needed shelter. We hop into this copse of trees and the lightning is crashing around us. This isn’t like a sort of Midwestern thunderstorm, where it blows through. This is a convective thunderstorm, and it is just coming down. My son’s lips are turning blue, so I turn to my wife and say, “Look, we’re at a decision moment. If we don’t get off this mountain, he’s going to be hypothermic, and so we have to go.” It was just serendipitous, but right at the time that we decide to go, the storm stops. We finally got off the mountain, and we got to the trailhead where we had parked our car. As we come out of the trail, there’s a resident of the town who just looks at us, and he’s like, “You survived!” We later learned that there had been 13 people struck by lightning. So, we get in the car, and my wife and I are just like, “We survived that.” Then all of a sudden, from the back seat, my son’s voice pipes up, and he’s like, “Well, now I’ve had an adventure!” 

AS: To end, let’s do some rapid fire questions. Do you prefer a Gambier fall or spring?

Rowe: Oh, I much prefer the fall. 

AS: Favorite genre of music?

Rowe: ’60s, ’70s rock.

AS: Best building on campus

Rowe: I’m blanking on it. Ask me for the best classroom on campus.

AS: Best classroom on campus?

Rowe: Tomsich 101.
 
AS: You and your wife, Professor Camerra-Rowe, are hosting a dinner party. You get to invite three historical figures. Who would you invite? 

Rowe: I would invite Abraham Lincoln. I would invite John Adams, and I would invite John Locke.

AS: How will you be spending your winter break?

Rowe: I will be spending my break in Copenhagen, Munich and Innsbruck.