Talk:Robert Engler

Robert Engler died recently
Robert Engler died recently. Someone needs to update the categories. As of 3/3/2007, no obituary had yet appeared in the New York Times or on the CUNY Graduate Center web site, http://www.gc.cuny.edu/

This email was sent on 3/1/2007 to a CUNY listserv:

I regret to inform you that Robert Engler, a long-term political science faculty member at the Graduate Center, recently passed away. Prof. Engler, born in 1922, received his undergraduate degree from CCNY, and his graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin. He was appointed to the staff of Queens College in 1964, later moved to Brooklyn College, and held visiting appointments, at various points, at the University of Puerto Rico, University of Saskatchewan, the American University in Cairo, and Princeton. Prof. Engler was the author of The Brotherhood of Oil (University of Chicago, 1977), and of The Politics of Oil: Private Power and Democratic Directions (Macmillan, 1961), among other works. He was a recipient of the Sidney Hillman Foundation's prize for political writing, and of a number of other fellowships and awards. Our condolences to his widow and children.

Sincerely,

Jack Jacobs

According to the CUNY Graduate Center web pages, Professor Jack Jacobs is currently the Acting Executive Officer of the Ph.D./M.A. Program in Political Science, and is Professor of Government at CUNY’s John Jay College.

source: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/Politicalscience/pages/faculty/altprints/a_l.htm

69.121.127.183 16:52, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

We need better sources
OK, now that I see the above about the listserve I know how we know he is dead. We clearly need better sourcing for the article, as in any source that is not a link to a book he wrote. This article reflects the fact that it dates to the early days of Wikipedia when sourcing was rare, and many fewer editors understood that in this type of encyclopedia unlike a classic encyclopedia, all things need to be clearly and publicly sourced. When I was in college I had a professor tell us that one did not place sources in an encyclopedia article, and for about the first year of editing Wikipedia I operated on this assumption, until I came to understand that Wikipedia lacks the backing of experts and close oversight of a strong editorial team going over everything before print which are 2 of the 3 reasons encyclopedias do not need sources and Wikipedia does. The third reason is that the statement by my professor was made in 2002, but built out of consensus earlier, when people trusted authority in a different way than they do now.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:00, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, my google search first turned up a different Robert Engler who is a research medical expert. I strongly suspect there are sources on this Robert Engler, finding them may take some digging though.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:01, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

The start of sourcing

 * Well I found this which is an analysis of Robert Engler's The Brotherhood of Oil is a much larger book. It a,ounts to basically a paragraph on pages 262-263. This is The Structure of Firm Size, Market Structure and Social Performance which is a 388 page book. So we can tell that his work was noticed by other scholars.
 * This is really random is the memoires of his cousin, and mentions that he was trying to contact him, but he had just died, and goes on to tell us there were obituaries in The Washington Post on March 6, 2007; the Boston Globe on March 11, 2007 and The Nation on April 2, 2007.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:10, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

More sourcing
Here is a lead showing that his 1961 book was reviewed. I do not have access to view that review but hopefully someone else does.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:25, 10 September 2021 (UTC)