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Political science did not exist as a discipline in the U.S. until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.[1] Before then, American students went to Germany to study Staatswissenschaft, "characterized by carefully defined concepts, and a comparative, systematic, and highly professional analysis of data."[2] Around 1880, Columbia and Johns Hopkins established the first political science programs. Still, by 1914 only thirty-eight institutions across the country had separate political science departments.[3] In 1915, Northwestern University formed a Department of Political Science, 65 years after the unversity was founded. The department was formed by splitting off programs in diplomacy and government from the History Department (formed twenty years earlier, in 1894) and "adding a number of attractive new courses and engaging an additional instructor."[4] The split seems to have been rooted in an opportunistic combination of persons, interests, and money. Writing in early 1915 as the first head of the department, Professor Norman Dwight Harris reported that the new department would be located in a new building, Harris Hall, scheduled to open in September: It is planned to house in this building the Departments of History, Political Science and Economics, which now have a combined registration of over 900 students. . . . The new Hall will be provided with a complete and modern equipment for the work of these departments, including 10 classroosm, an equal number of offices for instructors, seminar-rooms, study-rooms for men and women, a social room, and a lecture hall . . . . In a general way, the work of the department of Political Science will be located on the first floor, that of History on the second, and that of Economics on the third floor, the seminars of all three departments, however, being on the third floor.[5] It's no coincidence that the new Harris Hall had the same name as the new chair, N.D. Harris. The building was named in honor of Prof. Harris' father, Norman Wait Harris, "prominent Chicago banker and Northwestern trustee, who contributed $150,000 toward its construction."[6] (Note that both the history and economics departments were just upper-story tenants then, while political science had the ground floor.) In addition to Professor Harris, whose taught European Diplomatic History, the faculty consisted of P.O. Ray and Benjamin B. Wallace (both primarily in American government). These three faculty members offered an undergraduate curriculum consisting of 13 courses. The actual course schedule for 1915-16 would be familar to today's students.
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