Credit: Robert Barker/University Photography

The life of Cornell professor Matthew Evangelista, Cornell M.A.'84, Ph.D. '86, offers so many parallels to that of Andrew Dickson White, co-founder of Cornell, that it's almost eerie, said Evangelista, chair of the Department of Government and recently appointed the President White Professor of History and Political Science.

"The President White Chair complements my existing collection of A.D. White connections," says Evangelista with a grin, explaining that he held an A.D. White fellowship in graduate school, he now works in White Hall, and he lives on White Park Road. "And A.D. White and I both named one of our daughters Clara," adds Evangelista with a laugh.

But the parallels go much deeper. Both men traveled to Russia for the first time when they were 21 -- White to serve as assistant at the U.S. Embassy in St. Petersburg, and Evangelista to study Russian at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow. And both men spent time teaching at the University of Michigan immediately prior to moving to Ithaca.

Evangelista says he's pleased to be associated with White, an early opponent of slavery and advocate of international law and arms control -- two of Evangelista's main interests. And he feels especially honored to be the recipient of a chair established by Cornell's co-founder and first president.

White had originally donated funds to establish a School of History and Political Science, but with the establishment of separate departments of history and government, the funds were used instead to create the endowed chair Evangelista has received. The choice of Evangelista offers yet another connection to White, since, as a specialist in international politics, Evangelista has taught and carried out research at the intersection of political science and history.

Concerned with the ethics of science and religion, White was a prolific writer, as is Evangelista, who has authored four books, edited four others, and has published more than 100 articles on such topics as Soviet and Russian politics, U.S. foreign policy, the Cold War, nuclear weapons, arms races, theories of comparative foreign policy, gender and war, and ethical and legal issues related to the "war on terror."

His Cornell dissertation became his first book, "Innovation and the Arms Race" (Cornell University Press, 1988); his second book, "Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War" (Cornell University Press, 1999), won the 2001 Jervis-Schroeder Prize of the American Political Science Association for the best book in international history and politics, and the Marshall Shulman Book Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. A translation of his most recent book, "Law, Ethics, and the War on Terror" (Polity Press, 2009), was just published in Italy, where Evangelista often lectures.

Evangelista's latest research asks how much the war on terror has changed under the new administration. He is also finishing a book that uses major feature films depicting nationalist conflicts to illustrate the relationship between gender, identity and ethnic or nationalist conflict, a topic that White, a representative at the 1899 Hague Conference, would no doubt have found fascinating.

Linda Glaser is a freelance writer.