Fred Frohock, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR EMERITUS
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Fred M. Frohock (Ph.D., Political Science and Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Miami with academic concentrations in political philosophy, law, and bioethics. He is the author of twelve books and numerous papers, reviews, and articles in scholarly journals that include The American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Political Studies, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Journal of Religion, Religion, Polity, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Social Theory and Practice, and Human Rights Quarterly. His work often combines theory and field work. Special Care: Medical Decisions at the Beginning of Life is an ethnographic account of decision-making in an intensive care neonatal nursery (University of Chicago Press, 1986). In 1992 he published Healing Powers: Alternative Medicine, Spiritual Communities, and the State (University of Chicago Press), a study of alternative medicine and spiritual healing. Public Reason: Mediated Authority in the Liberal State (Cornell University Press, 1999) delineates public reasoning on post-Wittgenstein theories of language. Lives of the Psychics: The Shared Worlds of Science and Mysticism (University of Chicago Press, 2000) examines anomalous and mystical experiences. Bounded Divinities: Sacred Discourses in Pluralist Democracies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) is a treatment of religion and politics that uses Santería as a case study in a general theoretical examination of the two practices. In Beyond: On Life After Death (University Press of Kansas, 2010), Frohock critically scans the evidence for life after death, a study that supports a variation on the thesis that evidence underdetermines theory, or, roughly put, that rival theories can be consistent with the same data set and rank ordered only by relying on background conditions. His most recent book is a novel, Crossroads to Eden (Archway Publishing, 2018). He is also the author of The Nature of Political Inquiry (Dorsey, 1967), Normative Political Theory (Prentice-Hall Foundation Series, 1974), Public Policy: Scope and Logic (Prentice-Hall, 1979), Abortion: A Case Study in Law and Morals(Greenwood-Praeger Press, 1983, 1985), and Rational Association (Syracuse University Press, 1987).
He was twice a Social Science Research Council Fellow (the second time for a year’s study in London), served for eight years on the University Hospital Ethics Committee in Syracuse, NY, and was one of the founders and vice presidents of the Institute for Ethics in Health Care, a nonprofit institute that served central New York for almost a decade. He chaired the Political Science Departments at Syracuse University (1985-89) and at the University of Miami (January 2005 – August 15, 2011). He originated and was an on-site director of Syracuse University’s Madrid program, and he created and chaired for 20 summers Syracuse University’s “Politics and Media” program in London. He organized and directed “Security, Globalization, and Human Rights: Ideals and Realities,” a summer study abroad program in London for the University of Miami. In 2002 he was awarded a Chancellor’s Citation by Syracuse University for Exceptional Academic Achievement.
f.frohock@miami.edu cellphone: 315-882-2982; home: 305-661-1341
William C. Smith, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR EMERITUS
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I retired in 2016 after thirty years at the University of Miami. Since receiving my Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University my passion has been the study of the polities, societies and economies of Argentina and Brazil. In the mid-1970s I conducted research on the linkages between authoritarian military dictatorships and Argentina’s volatile and crisis-plagued political economy. While living in Buenos Aires I was a visiting researcher at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella and the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (CEDES), where I formed many deep personal and intellectual friendships. My research was supported by a Social Science Research Council grant. The main findings of my work during that period were published in Authoritarianism and the Crisis of the Argentine Political Economy (Stanford University Press, 1991). In subsequent decades I returned to Argentina many times, including several long research trips working with close colleagues at CEDES and the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO).
In the 1980s my family and I lived for four years in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where I taught and carried out research at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. My research in Brazil was supported by the Fulbright Commission, the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) and the Ford Foundation. Over the next several decades I returned on numerous occasions to Brazil to teach and do research, including stints with Fulbright support as visiting professor and researcher at the Instituto de Relações Internacionais at the Universidade Pontifícia Católica and the Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ).
At the University of Miami most of my teaching focused on graduate and upper division seminars in the fields of comparative politics and Latin American politics. For nearly a decade I served as director of graduate studies for the international studies program. I also participated in many initiatives designed to further the university’s research mission through participation in the North-South Center and the Center for Latin American Studies. While at the university, my primary research interests were the politics and political economies of Latin America, with a particular focus on the study of authoritarianism and democratization, transnational social movements, globalization, and market reforms. I also frequently led study abroad courses to Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Uruguay.
My commitment to promoting high quality scholarship on Latin America has included serving on the editorial boards of numerous academic journals, including Lua Nova: Revista de Cultura e Política (Brazil), Colombia Internacional (Colombia), Contexto Internacional (Brazil), Teoria & Sociedade (Brazil), and the Luso-Brazilian Review (USA). In this regard, one of the accomplishments at the University of Miami that has given me the most satisfaction has been my nearly twenty years of service as the senior editor of Latin American Politics and Society.
In addition to Authoritarianism and the Crisis of the Argentine Political Economy, I have been the editor of numerous volumes, including
- Latin American Political Economy in the Age of Neoliberal Reform (1994)
- Democracy, Markets, and Structural Reform in Latin America (1994)
- El Cono Sur y las transformaciones globales (1994)
- Security, Democracy, and Development in U.S.-Latin American Relations (1995)
- Venezuelan Democracy Under Pressure (1995)
- Latin America in the World-Economy (1996)
- Politics, Social Change, and Economic Restructuring in Latin America (1997)
- Latin American Democratic Transformations: Institutions, Actors, and Processes (2009)
- States, Markets, and Societies in Contemporary Latin America (2010)
My scholarly articles have been published in Studies in Comparative International Development, Revista Mexicana de Sociología, Dados - Revista de Ciências Sociais, Desarrollo Económico, América Latina Hoy, Alternatives Sud, Zeitschrift fur kritische Sozialwissenschaft,Nova Economia, El Cielo por Asalto, Nueva Sociedad, Fuerzas Armadas y Sociedad, Political Power and Social Theory, and the Latin American Research Review. My scholarship has also appeared in more than two dozen edited volumes.
Michael Milakovich, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR EMERITUS
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