Eric Cyril Bellquist, Berkeley Professor: A Biographical Memoir

For a time, Eric Bellquist was thought of by many of his students and peers as synonymous with the University of California at Berkeley itself. He began as an undergraduate at Berkeley in 1925, where he ultimately became the nation’s leading political scientist of Scandinavian government and politics. For over 50 years he was intimately involved in the university’s development into a major institution of higher learning. This biography, written by his son, is a tribute to his memory. It includes tales about the university unlikely to be found elsewhere, from the days of Andy Smith’s Wonder Team through the six years war of the Free Speech Movement and campus political upheaval, with which he was intimately, if not publicly, involved. Eric Bellquist is often remembered as a prominent opponent of the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII; he served in the Office of War Information during WWII, in the State Department after the war, and in the Foreign Service in Stockholm from 1949 to 1951. This book can be recommended for those interested in California history, the history of the University of California, and of Swedish immigration to the United States.