William Foltz

Henry J. Heinz Professor of African Studies and Political Science

Bill Foltz, A.B. Princeton University, Ph.D. Yale, faculty member at Yale since 1962, over the course of your long career your research has concerned ethnic conflict and the politics and international relations of Africa. Your publications on Africa range widely, and include From French West Africa to the Mali Federation; Arms and the African (with Henry Bienen); and dozens of articles, lectures, and papers on a wide range of related topics. Your expertise has not been used in scholarly writing alone. You have brought your knowledge and understanding to the help of many external entities: among them the Department of State, the United Nations Development Program, the Rand Corporation, the Economist Intelligence Unit, the African American Institute, and more. Your profound knowledge of Africa has enabled you to bring an awareness of that country, and especially of Francophone Africa, to the general public as well as the larger scholarly community. Just as an example: the fact that 3 people are trained for skilled jobs in sub-Saharan Africa because 2 out of 3 will die of AIDS is a terrible truth that you have been able to communicate.

Beyond your scholarly work, it is difficult to cram into a short space all the ways you have been an exemplary University citizen at Yale. You are a long term member of the Council on African Studies, and its chairman so many times that is would seem repetitive to write them all down. For many years you worked hard to nurture the MA in African Studies, teaching its core course. You were a major player in the Southern Africa Research Program. You were Chair of the International Affairs Council for three years. You were, for six years in the eighties, the director of YCIAS, serving again as acting director in ‘92-‘93. You have been DGS in Poli Sci, and twice you agreed to take on the chairmanship, once in ‘90-‘91 and again in ‘04-‘05. You have taught a course that demands French reading ability—thereby, early on, fulfilling one of the CYCE imperatives which is to develop courses outside of language departments which require language ability. You are, simply put, one of those people who has been called on in all sorts of ways to help Yale—and you have always stepped up. Now as you retire, your colleagues would like to step up themselves to wish you well, and offer you deep gratitude for your accomplishments and services.

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans