Hans Daalder, professor of Dutch political history. In a packed lecture hall, which I remember as enormous, we hung on his every word weekly in the mid-1980s. A distinguished gentleman, always impeccably dressed in a suit, his silver-gray hair neatly combed, he would recount, without a single note, the highs and lows of Dutch politics. He spoke of the “smoke-filled rooms” — a metaphor for secret meetings of politicians making significant decisions — with Willem Drees, Joseph Luns, Barend Biesheuvel, and Joop den Uyl, as if he had been there himself. And perhaps he had. I never missed a lecture, listening in awe. My love for political science began with him.
