Professor Lepgold and his 10-year-old son were killed after a hotel fire in Paris over Thanksgiving. His wife is apparently still unconscious and in critical condition. There are several stories on the front page of The Hoya.
He was my International Relations professor for the basic intro course. He was extremely passionate about his subject, and did an excellent job of boiling a huge subject down to something manageable and basic. Sometimes too basic - we used to make a bit of fun of him for overusing Rousseau’s Stag Hunt* analogy to describe disincentives and incentives to international cooperation among states. After about a month of discussing it, someone in my class raised his hand and said “I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we GET the Stag Hunt thingy.”
He was extremely pro-Israel and anti-Arab, which made for some interesting and heated class discussions. It was good that you knew where he stood, though. I know that he was a good mentor to his students - many of my friends in the Foreign Service school chose him as their advisor and loved him dearly. I did well in his class and learned a great deal from him and I’m very sad - he was a young man, and absolutely in love with his wife and young son.
[sub]* Four men are lost in the woods together. If they work together, they can kill a stag that will feed them all. However if one of the men comes across a rabbit and kills it, he will have enough to feed himself and will not participate in the Stag Hunt. The other men will not be able to kill the stag without him and will go hungry or have to search for their own rabbits. This is all too often what happens in any international cooperation. Nations can work together to pursue common interests for the benefit of all, but will abandon each other for an opportunity to satisfy their own goals. See, Professor Joe, I remember![/sub]