Edward Beiser, professor emeritus of political science at Brown University, died Sept. 4, 2009, of Parkinson’s disease at an assisted-living facility. He was 67.
Beiser graduated from the City College of New York in 1962 and received a master’s degree in politics from Princeton in 1964 and a Ph.D. in 1967.
He began teaching at Williams College in 1965 and joined Brown’s political science department in 1968. Very popular with students, he was voted “best teacher” for many years. He retired in 2003.
In 1977, Beiser earned a law degree from Harvard. Later, the dean of the Brown Medical School asked him to develop the program in liberal medical education. Beiser then became associate dean of biomedical ethics wherein he helped to develop a third-year clerkship program in applied clinical ethics.
He was considered an expert witness in medical ethics by the Rhode Island Supreme Court. Tom Bledsoe M.D., associate professor of medicine and a colleague at Brown, said Beiser “had a remarkable capacity to get the group to stop and think about what, culturally, had become a matter of routine.”
Beiser is survived by three sons and 10 grandchildren.