Remembering Dr. Gerard J. Mangone

It is with deep sadness that we report the passing away of University of Delaware Professor Gerard J. Mangone on July 27, 2011.   The Center for Marine Policy was named in honor of Professor Mangone, the Center’s founder and first director.

Dr. Gerard J. Mangone received his Ph.D in International Law from Harvard University where his dissertation won the Charles Sumner Award for the most distinguished contribution to international peace.

Dr. Mangone has been a professor at Wesleyan University, Swarthmore College, and Syracuse University, where he was also associate and acting dean of the Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.  He has been a visiting professor at Yale University, Mt. Holyoke College, Trinity College, Princeton University, and Johns Hopkins University as well as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Bologna, Peking University, the University of Natal, Capetown University, and the University of Western Australia.  At Calcutta University in India he was honored as the Tagore Law Professor and at the University of Delaware he received the most distinguished faculty award as Francis Alison Professor. 

Dr. Mangone has also been Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Temple University, then Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, administering 11 colleges and 25,000 students. He was then invited to become the first Senior Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, where he headed major legal studies of the world ocean.  Simultaneously he was appointed Executive Director of the President’s Commission on the United Nations and conducted a national study to reform the international organization. 

Gerard Mangone joined the University of Delaware in 1972 as professor of marine studies and political science and organized the Marine Policy Program in the College of Marine Studies. In 1973, he created the Center for the Study of Marine Policy—the first research center at an American university to study the legal, political and economic issues facing the ocean, seabed and coastal zone—and was its director for the next 16 years. In 2003 the Center was renamed in his honor as the “Gerard J. Mangone Center for Marine Policy.” 

Although he reached the University’s retirement age more than seventeen years ago, he has continued to teach and research actively. During his time at the University of Delaware, he has taught nine different courses, supervised over 45 students for master or doctoral degrees and established several different educational programs relating to marine policy and the law. He maintained an active research program and has traveled overseas regularly for the past 60 years on teaching and research assignments.
 
His writings demonstrate a true academic curiosity. His more than 20 books include such titles as A Short History of International Organization (1954), United Nations Administration of Economic and Social Programs (1966), The Idea and Practice of World Government (1975) Energy Policies of the World (1976); Law for the World Ocean (1981); The Future of Gas and Oil from the Sea (1983); American Strategic Minerals (1984), A Concise Marine Almanac (1986) (republished as Mangone’s Concise Marine Almanac in 1991), Marine Policy for America (1988) and US Admiralty Law (1997). He was also Series Editor of the Martinus Nijhoff Monograph Series International Straits of the World of which volume 14 was published in 2004. 

In addition, he has produced a stream of scholarly articles and two of his more recent ones are a fifty page review of “Marine Boundaries – States and United States” published in the June 2006 Issue of the International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law and an article on “American beach law and policies” published in Ocean & Coastal Management in 2010.

Gerard Mangone was a prolific scholar, a great teacher and mentor, a pioneering contributor to the field of marine policy.   He was also a wonderful colleague, always willing to share his vast knowledge and experience with the marine policy faculty and students.  While invariably focused on the big questions and issues, he was always mindful of the small details that matter so much to people—we all came to treasure (and expect!) his yearly birthday missives. 

In his nineties, he was still a model of the active scholar and the active man—his lanky figure could be seen walking rapidly across campus and up the three flights of stairs to his Robinson Hall office, always with a smiling hello, reminiscent of the young man who used to give dancing lessons on Mediterranean cruises.

The marine policy faculty, students, and alumni and all of us at the Mangone Center will miss him dearly for his great contributions and for the wonderful and inspiring human being that he was.

Dr. Biliana Cicin-Sain, Director, Gerard J. Mangone Center for Marine Policy

Dr. George R. Parsons, Associate Director and Professor, School of Marine Science and Policy

Dr. Willett Kempton, Professor, School of Marine Science and Policy, and Director, Center for Carbon Free Power Integration

Dr. Miriam Balgos, Associate Scientist, Gerard J. Mangone Center for Marine Policy

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The website of the Gerard J. Mangone Center for Marine Policy is temporarily under reconstruction to achieve more effective information delivery.

While reconstruction is underway, readers are invited to view two major activities of the Mangone Center:  The Global Ocean Forum, which reports on global commitments on oceans, coasts, and island states (http://www.globaloceans.org/), and the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Research Plan, which reports on ocean and coastal issues in the Mid-Atlantic ocean region, with an emphasis on regional ocean research planning (http://www.midatlanticoceanresearchplan.org/).