Author: LSE External Communications

It is with great sadness to report the passing of our dear friend and colleague Wilson Antonio Zabala.

Wilson worked on the LSE campus since 2014 with Noonan having become a member of the Estates Division from in March 2018.

He was a very cheerful individual, hardworking, punctual and full of energy. Wilson had been battling cancer for some time and sadly passed away in Valencia, Spain in August. He will be deeply missed by the team he worked with and our condolences are with his wife and daughter.

Mary Lee, LSE Estates

It is with great sadness that LSE writes in memory of Professor Saw Swee Hock, one of our most eminent alumni, benefactors and Honorary Fellows and Distinguished Alumni Leadership recipient, who died on Tuesday 16 February 2021.

Prof Saw’, as he was so fondly known as across the LSE community, received his BA and MA from the University of Malaya in Singapore (the predecessor to the National University of Singapore), before coming to LSE to study for his PhD in Statistics, which he completed in 1963.

There followed a long and prolific career in academia and public service. Professor Saw’s career included positions at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, the University of Hong Kong and the National University of Singapore (NUS), from which he emerged as a recognised and respected expert on population and investment management.

Pioneering the study of statistics in many of the region’s most renowned and prestigious universities, Professor Saw demonstrated an impressive and unstinting devotion to his field that continued throughout his life. He held visiting positions at universities including Princeton, Stanford, Cambridge and was a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and President’s Honorary Professor of Statistics at NUS.

In an article in 2012 for LSE’s supporter magazine, Impact, Professor Saw reflected on his time at the School and sharing this with his wife who was also studying in London at the time. Professor Saw remember this as “one of the most significant events of my life”. Citing the high level of academic rigour and excellence that he encountered at LSE as “preparing him well to pursue a career in academia.”

Professor Saw’s commitment to education continued through his philanthropy, notable towards his alma maters. In the past decade Professor Saw bestowed extraordinary gifts to LSE. As a result of Professor Saw’s donations, The LSE Saw Swee Hock Student Centre opened in 2013 and the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, a multidisciplinary Research Centre founded in 2014, are named in recognition of his outstanding generosity. His support of some of the most distinguished scholars from LSE to study at the School is also a significant part of his legacy. These tremendous pillars of support across teaching, research and community will have lasting impact for generations to come.

Prof. Yao Qiwei, from the Department of Statistics at LSE and the Saw Swee Hock Professor of Statistics at National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2020, commented “I remember vividly my conversation with Prof. Saw during my time at the Department of Statistics and Applied Probability at NUS in early 2020. His keen interest and curiosity in statistics and data science was almost infectious. One can easily tell that he cared deeply about the study of statistics at NUS and LSE. We all are grateful for his generous support to LSE. I myself am extremely honoured to be Saw Swee Hock Professor of Statistics in 2020”.

Professor Saw’s association with LSE spanned over 60 years, he was highly revered by the LSE alumni community in Singapore and admired by LSE faculty and students alike. It was a great honour for the School to recognise Professor Saw as an Honorary Fellow in 2006 in recognition of his illustrious academic career and his transformative philanthropy. He also received LSE’s inaugural Distinguished Alumni Leadership Award in 2015.

Professor Saw’s generosity has impacted many generations of students and faculty and will continue to do so for years to come.  We will be eternally thankful to call Professor Saw an alumnus of LSE. We will remember his extraordinary modesty, warmth, kindness, judicious insight and, of course, the glint in his eye with his wonderful sense of humour and the laughter that always followed. Prof Saw will be deeply missed. Requiescat in pace et surget in gloria.

A private family funeral will take place in Singapore on Thursday 18 February.

Professor Saw Swee Hock is survived by his wife, Cheng Siok Hwa, daughters Seang Mei and Seang Pin, his son, Seang Kuan, and five grandchildren. Our thoughts and prayers are very much with them at this time. When circumstances allow, we look forward to appropriately honouring Professor Saw’s life and contributions to LSE, both on campus and in Singapore.

It is with great sadness that I share the news of the passing of David Goldstone CBE (LLB 1952) on 21 October 2020.

David was passionate about LSE and was made an Honorary Fellow in 1995 in recognition of his devoted service to the School – which included founding the Emeritus Governors.

A proud Welshman from humble beginnings, David left home for the first time in 1949 to undertake his Law degree at LSE. As a student he lived in Passfield Hall, and it was this lived student experience, and later his successful career in property development that facilitated the School setting up further halls of residence. David continued his relationship with the School throughout his lifetime, serving as a governor and supporting the School philanthropically. He found great enjoyment in his later years engaged in the work of the Law department, where he went on to support the student Mooting Programme, which sees students engage in competitive legal arguments in front of a mock court.

In 2018 David was interviewed for Ratio (page 52) where he gives a lovely account of his journey through life with LSE.

David will be missed.

Keith Mackrell
LSE Emeritus Governor

We are shocked and saddened to learn of David Graeber’s death. David was a hugely influential anthropologist, political activist and public intellectual. He was a person with so many facets that it is only by opening up this space to a community of remembrance that we can engage with his legacy.

His brilliant work ranged from studies of Madagascan funerary practices, magic, bureaucracy, financialisation to kings, puppets and pirates. Each conversation with him, and reading of his work, took us on a new path. Striking against learned ignorance everywhere he criticised the banal cruelty of debt, bullshit jobs and the devaluation of our humanity. We also remember him as full of humour and quizzical challenge, encouraging us to take risks and think differently. For us all, perhaps, he was what an anthropologist should be—a messenger of other possibilities.

Professor Laura Bear
Head of Department, LSE Anthropology

LSE Anthropology are holding an open space commemoration for David on Wednesday 16th September from 4:30-5:30 via Zoom.

Please sign up on Eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/commemoration-david-graeber-tickets-120219751513 

We are saddened to learn of the recent death of longstanding former member of staff, Jennifer Pinney, who worked at the School for 25 years. Colleague and friend Celia Phillips shares her memories of Jennifer.

I first met the formidable Miss Pinney when she arrived at the School. She had come from Paris OECD to head up the administration of the then new, post-Robbins Report Higher Education Research Unit headed by Claus Moser, then Social Statistics Professor there, and Philip Redfern, shortly to become the Head of OPCS. I had just finished my degree and embarked on a doctorate in the educational Statistics area with Claus and officialdom was strange to me. I was terrified of her initially. Jenny however, quickly smoothed my way so I was included in all seminars and given rapid access to any information or contacts I might need. In the days when this was not normal for graduate students she even found me a desk to perch on! She remained supportive, and I owe any proofreading skills I have to her careful tutelage over what seemed endless drafts of my thesis!

Once I joined the Staff, we became friends. And I discovered that her rather formal work demeanour concealed a lively sociable and sympathetic person. I have happy memories of her joining the LSE choir of which she remained a loyal supporter, suppers with musical friends, and many happy nights socialising and playing bridge. Later, she became a family friend and our children remember her exciting visits….

After she left EUSSHE (as it became) she continued her career within the School and others will be more fitted than I to talk of her fundraising under Dahrendorf, her other work with alumni and her whole contribution to the LSE. But over the years, we kept in touch.

In the early 2000’s she persuaded me to follow her ten years on as President of the University of London Lunch Club, one of the LSE-connected things which she continued to support and enjoy until relatively recently. Although her last few years were dogged by illness, I have fairly recent memories of lunches at the club, Easter at Kensington, and numerous musical events….

Celia Phillips  

The LSE Community was saddened to learn of the death of Professor Ronald Dore, former LSE Sociologist and Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance.

Professor Ronald P. Dore, CBE FBA died on 14 November 2018 in Italy, at the age of 93.

Ron Dore was an outstanding British sociologist who applied his sprightly intellect seamlessly across a broad range of topics. His distinguished career, evident from his fellowship of the British Academy, the Japan Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, was marked by breadth of scholarship and a deep interest in societal reform.

Ron Dore was at ease crossing boundaries, with his infectious curiosity and sense of humour. First and foremost, he was a Japanologist, and knew an awful  lot about Japan.  He grew up in a working-class background in Poole, Dorset where his father was a locomotive driver.  His encounter with Japan was accidental: in 1942, he was selected to be one of the ‘Dulwich Boys’ aged 17 to study Japanese, one of the languages the War Office deemed critical to the war effort. He studied the language at SOAS, returning to Dulwich college for regular studies in the afternoons.  His first visit to Japan, aged 25 in 1950, launched an academic career at SOAS and University of British Columbia, when he used anthropological and sociological methods to study Education in Tokugawa Japan, City Life in 1950s Tokyo, and Land Reform in post-war Japan.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when Japan attracted attention as a traditional society that succeeded in modernization, Dore at the London School of Economics and later Sussex became a comparative industrial sociologist, who posited the ‘late development’ and ‘reverse convergence’ theses – rather than Japan catching up with the West, some features of Japan as a late developer may be worthy of emulation by the West — through his classic book British Factory – Japanese Factory. He was also, at one stage, an education specialist who, as part of an ILO mission, investigated the education systems in Japan and other developing countries; his interest in education and training led to a pathbreaking book The Diploma Disease and studies on youth unemployment and training.

Increasingly concerned about industrial decline and rising unemployment in Britain, he urged British policy makers and business leaders to ‘Take Japan Seriously’, articulating a philosophy of original virtue as a basis for better and fairer economic institutions. His policy prescriptions were wide-ranging, from incomes policy to youth training and industrial policy, to mention a few.  He was one of the pioneers of ‘varieties of capitalism’ thinking, stimulated by spells at Harvard and MIT, which he summed up in Stock Market Capitalism–Welfare Capitalism. In contrast to the Company Law Model adopted in Britain and the US, the Community Model in Japan had the added benefits of improving dynamic efficiency, and inculcating a sense of fairness.

To his increasing alarm, however, the ideological tide of Reagan-Thatcher neo-liberalism spilled out of its Anglophone strongholds, and began to sweep into Japan itself.  Championed by ‘second generation middle class’ urbanites and returnees educated in the US, Japan’s community firms started to implement shareholder-favouring reforms, and financialization started to take root.  He wrote many books in Japanese, expressing increasing frustration by this turn.  And he moved to Italy, where he felt an affinity to political economists less influenced by neo-liberalism, and to its civic communitarianism.

Along with the breadth of scholarship goes disciplinary openness that underpins his work.  Openness is not just about disdain of academic tribalism; it is more a mindset and a firm belief about the role of social sciences, which is to understand human motivation and behaviour in order to improve society. Ron Dore refused to lead a double life of some academics, of endlessly refining theories based on the pursuit of self-interest, while living social lives belieing those theories.  Most of all, he was driven by curiosity, and an appetite to dig deeper into the real world to understand human behaviour and its moral, cultural, and economic bases.

Throughout his life, Ron Dore made an extremely valuable contribution in furthering the understanding of Japan in the UK and elsewhere.  He remained fiercely energetic and engaging, and was generous in spirit. He is survived by his wife Maria and their son Julian, and two children from his first marriage, Johnny and Sally.  We extend our deepest condolences to his family.

Professor Mari Sako, University of Oxford (LSE Lecturer and Reader in Industrial Relations, 1987-97)
Professor Hugh Whittaker, University of Oxford

It is with great sadness that we learnt of Tessa Jowell’s death. Tessa was Professor in Practice at LSE Cities and the Department of Government and contributed with energy and passion to our programmes.

She was most recently at the School in December 2017, reflecting with master’s students on the importance of leadership. Apart from her commitment to public life, Tessa recognised how critical it is to work with young people to improve their life chances, everywhere from young women in India to school-kids in deprived areas of south London. We will miss her enthusiasm, commitment and belief in public service.

Professor Ricky Burdett, Director of LSE Cities

Tessa Jowell had been a leading figure in London government since the early 1970s, when she first became a Labour member of Camden Council (in 1971) before going on to chair the authority’s social services committee from 1973.  In the late 1970s, she stood for Parliament in Ilford North before being elected MP for Dulwich (subsequently Dulwich and West Norwood) from 1992 to 2015.  She was also a leading contender for the Labour nomination to be Mayor of London in 2015.

In Parliament, Tessa was involved in select committees before Labour took office in 1997.  Thereafter she held a series of ministerial posts, culminating in her appointment as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and then Olympics minister.  London 2012 might never have happened were it not for Tessa Jowell’s empowering optimism, working alongside mayors Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson.

I was a member of the Lambeth and Southwark Childcare Commission she chaired in 2014-15.  The committee typically held its meetings in children’s centres and community centres, reflecting Tessa’s desire to talk to those most closely affected by local services for children.  Her experience at the neighbourhood level, in Parliament and in the internationally-focused effort to win the Olympics was remarkable.

During the last year, she used her position in the House of Lords to make the case for access to innovative treatments for cancer.  Downing Street has announced that funding for brain cancer research will be doubled as a response to Tessa Jowell’s final campaign.

Tessa was simultaneously delicate and powerful, empathetic yet determined.  In an era of aggressive political discourse, she remained enthusiastic to work across party lines to achieve outcomes which would improve the lives of people, particularly children, rendered powerless by the complex machinery of government.

Professor Tony Travers, LSE Department of Government 

It is with great sadness that we announce Professor Sir Tony Atkinson, Centennial Professor at LSE, died on Sunday 1 January 2017.

“We are very sad to report that Tony Atkinson died on the first of January. He was 72. Tony Atkinson was one of the most distinguished economists of the 20th and 21st centuries. He profoundly influenced our thinking on poverty, inequality, mobility, public policy and the economics of growth. From his first book in 1969, Poverty in Britain and the Reform of Social Security (Cambridge University Press), to his last, Inequality: What Can Be Done? (Harvard University Press, 2015), he demonstrated the great care and rigour which should characterise serious economics. His approach was: identify the issues, examine the facts and the forces that shape them, and ask what we can or should do. And through his technical work on his index of inequality and on public policy in imperfect economies he showed how analytical rigour could change our understanding. Based on his work on inequality and market imperfections, his was one of the clearest voices challenging the “market fundamentalism” of the 1980s and 1990s.

“He was Tooke Professor at LSE from 1980-92 and Centennial Professor from 2010. He was Chair of the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD) from 1980 to 1988 and, with its founding chair (1978-80) Professor Michio Morishima, made it one of the world’s leading research centres.

“Tony was not only an extraordinary leader through his writing  but also in his building and reinvigorating of institutions, from his time at Essex (where he went as a professor aged 27) to Nuffield College, Oxford where he was a much loved Warden, 1994-2005. He founded the Journal of Public Economics in 1971 and was editor for nearly two decades. With Mervyn King and Nick Stern he initiated at STICERD the ESRC programme on “Taxation, Incentives and the Distribution of Income” which lasted for 12 years coinciding with his time at the School. This was one of the ESRC’s first and longest lasting research programmes. There are many more examples of Tony building and nurturing institutions that were both of the highest quality and endured.

“His distinction was recognised across the world. For example, he was President of the Econometric Society, of the Royal Economic Society, of the European Economic Association, and of the International Economic Association. He was awarded 19 honorary doctorates.

“He was a great European; the majority of his honorary doctorates were from European non UK universities. He worked in a hospital in a deprived area of Hamburg before going to University. He was involved in the economic analysis of the potential effects of joining the European Economic Community in the early 1970s prior to the referendum on joining in 1975. He was President of the Luxembourg Income Study from 2011 which has made a great contribution to international comparisons of well-being and inequality. He was a member of France’s Counseil d’Analyse Economique, 1997-2001, and was Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. Last year he was awarded the prestigious Dan David Prize for his work on poverty and inequality (shared with Francois Bourguignon and James Heckman).

“It was not just as an academic and leader of academic institutions that we remember Tony. He was the finest of human beings. His decency, humanity and integrity were profound and extraordinary. He was quiet and understated but deep and strong. He was charming and he could be very funny, including irony of the highest class. He was a special colleague, always ready with his support and wisdom.

“He met his wife Judith (neé Mandeville) at Cambridge as undergraduates when they were 19. They were married for more than 50 years. They shared and reinforced their commitment to making the world a better place and tackling injustice. They took great pride in and strength from their three children Richard, Sarah and Charles, their spouses and their eight grandchildren.
Nick Stern
IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government
Chair of STICERD, 1988-1993

“Tony made fundamental and original theoretical contributions to economics in general, and to public economics and the analysis of economic inequality in particular. He also undertook original and innovative empirical analysis of economic inequalities, and of their relationship to economic institutions such as the welfare state. He made major contributions to applied statistics and the development of social indicators. His work brought the analysis of distributional issues back to a central position in economics. It is no overstatement to say that the modern analysis of economic inequality started with Tony’s 1970 paper in the Journal of Economic Theory.

“Aside from his academic contributions (which made him a leading contender for a Nobel prize), Tony made major contributions to social and public policy in the UK and internationally throughout his career, from his first book (Poverty in Britain and the Reform of Social Security, 1969), to his major report in October 2016 on Monitoring Global Poverty completed as chairman of the World Bank Commission on Global Poverty. In between, he made many other major contributions including to the measurement of government outputs and productivity, and to development of indicators on social inclusion and poverty for the EU. Tony was a pioneer (with Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez) of the study of ‘top incomes’ and inequality.

“Tony will also always be remembered for his outstanding personal qualities. He was sagacious in so many fields and yet so modest and kind, and the epitome of decency, humanity, and collegiality. Despite being very busy, Tony provided many of us friendly but incisive comments on our work, and was a continuing source of encouragement, support, and inspiration. He will be sorely missed.”
Professor Stephen Jenkins
Head of the Department of Social Policy

“He was a remarkable academic and a wonderful colleague who will be sorely missed.”
Professor Julia Black
Interim Director

You can explore STICERD’s wall of remembrance for Professor Sir Tony Atkinson here http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/atkinson/ 

If you would like to post a tribute to Tony; leave your condolences or share any memories you have of him please comment on this post.