Francis Boyle, in memoriam

Tribute to my best penpal, fellow alumnus of Russian studies at Harvard, Professor Francis Boyle

It came as a shock to learn today about Francis Boyle’s passing.

I had a lively correspondence with him for the past several years though we never had occasion to meet. Our friendship developed on the basis of shared views on international affairs, both as an academic discipline and in the real world of geopolitics.

From time to time, he commented on my writings and videos. Indeed, his last email to me was with regard to a snippet in my 9 January chat with Judge Napolitano on the subject of Tony Blinken’s scandalous press conference just before leaving office.

I had said that Blinken’s recitation of the delusional principals which guided his policies in office represented his “claim to a professorship at Columbia University, which is the modern day successor to The Hoover Institution in California as the graveyard of failed politicians.”

This obviously tickled Boyle who wrote back to me: “LOL! Fab.”

At other times, our correspondence was dead serious with respect to what actions could, should be taken to impeach Joe Biden before he succeeded in taking us all to the grave with him in a nuclear exchange. Boyle had drafted and circulated among several Congressmen a draft resolution to that effect, charging the President with violating his Constitutional powers by waging war on Russia without Congressional authorization.

Indeed, here in matters of policy towards Russia, not in Boyle’s better-known activities as human rights defender and advisor to the Palestinians, is where had most of our exchanges. We shared thoughts about the present-day devastation of Russian studies, when Harvard and Columbia have become centers of Ukrainian propaganda, and also about our common experience at Harvard in the 1960s-1970s with many of the same professors of Russian and Soviet history.

For Boyle, Harvard was where he got his doctorate in this field and his law degree; it was where I got my A.B. degree and then came back for two years as a post-doctoral fellow at the Russian Research Center, now the Davis Center. We both had our critical thoughts about senior staff, in particular Richard Pipes and Adam Ulam. We both had great respect for the medievalist and great linguist Ned Keenan who was my sophomore year tutor and Francis’ best Irish friend on campus, virtually the only faculty member who actually liked Russia, aside from one chap in the Comparative Lit department (Valentine Boss). We both knew how few of the newly minted doctorates at the end of the 70s could ever hope to find lasting employment in academic life. Francis was one of the few, one of the very best.

He was also, most exceptionally, for a human rights lawyer, a strong exponent of the Realist School of international politics, meaning the principles of Westphalia, interest driven foreign policy as opposed to values driven policy.

Francis Boyle took great pride in his legal work in the 1980s relating to disarmament. Among his most memorable achievements was to have drafted what became the U.S. implementing legislation on the international chemical weapons ban.

His death leaves a void that no one can fill. His career was unique and he was busy building it out almost to the time of his death. He confided in me a couple of months ago that he was very pleased to have fought and won to keep his faculty position in Russian affairs at the University of Illinois, quite apart from his law school work. The mainstream faculty wanted to expel him for being a square peg in the round hole of conformists and disseminators of State Department press releases that they were.

Francis Boyle was a brave soul with lively wit whom I will never forget.

Gilbert Doctorow