Longtime KU political science professor, known for challenging students, dies at 73

Allan Cigler

For years Allan Cigler taught an entry-level honors political science class at the University of Kansas, which became a mini-pipeline of sorts for students aspiring to major in the field.

“After that class, out of 20 students we’d get 10 or 12 majors because he was so good,” said longtime colleague Burdett Loomis, also a KU professor of political science. “He loved the interaction with new students, challenging them … he did see that he was shaping people who would have terrific careers, and many of them have.”

Cigler, who spent his entire professional career at KU, died Jan. 13. He was 73.

Cigler was born in Braddock, Penn., according to his obituary. He got his bachelor’s degree from Thiel College (Greenville, Penn.), his master’s from the University of Maryland and his doctorate from Indiana University. He started teaching at KU in 1970, and in 1992 was named a Chancellors Club Teaching Professor.

“Professor Cigler’s body of work as a researcher speaks for itself, and it is even more notable given his tireless efforts as a teacher and a mentor who helped shape the minds of countless students during his 44 years at KU,” KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little said in a statement from the university.

Cigler did serve about 20 years as an undergraduate adviser for the political science department, Loomis said. Beyond that, he was not interested in climbing the administrative ladder.

“I think that he was pretty much constitutionally unwilling to do any more administration than represent undergraduates, which were really his passion,” Loomis said.

Cigler, who himself came from a working-poor family, would probably be called “a little bit curmudgeonly” by a lot of people, Loomis said.

“He knew what he thought,” Loomis said, and he had high standards in the classroom — giving in to grade inflation less easily than many peers, but managing to still get good student reviews.

Mark Hansen, now a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, was in Cigler’s honors class in 1978.

“He had an enormous enthusiasm for his subject, and it was clear he genuinely enjoyed teaching and genuinely enjoyed students,” Hansen said.

Hansen said Cigler, who advised his senior honors thesis, was the teacher who encouraged him to think about graduate school, then how best to prepare for it.

Years later, when Hansen helped establish KU Endowment’s Allan J. Cigler Fund for Academic Enrichment, he said he realized he was far from Cigler’s only grateful alumni.

“He had student after student after student whom he was just really committed to and went out of his way to help, and made a big difference in their lives,” Hansen said.

Cigler’s areas of expertise were American political parties and interest groups, topics on which he published several books and many articles, including some co-authored with Loomis.

Their first joint book stemmed from when Loomis planned to teach a class on interest groups in the early 1980s but couldn’t find a “decent” text. So, Loomis said, he and Cigler approached a publisher and co-wrote the reader “Interest Group Politics,” which is now in its ninth edition.

Loomis said Cigler, who retired from KU a couple years ago, suffered from a degenerative neurological disease.

According to his obituary, Cigler donated his body to the KU Medical Center.

Cigler is survived by his wife, Beth, and daughter, Kirsten Cigler Nelson. No public memorial services are planned.