Back when I was in graduate school, a fellow student approached me to ask if I would contribute an article to a Festschrift for one of our professors, a very distinguished historian who was retiring. A Festschrift, she explained, is a collection of writings, published in honor of a noted scholar by colleagues and former students. I had never heard of such a thing before, but I felt privileged to contribute “Neostoicism and Absolutism in Late Elizabethan England.” (People still talk about that essay—somewhere, I am sure.)
Last September, when exit-polling pioneer Warren Mitofsky died, a number of readers asked if we were going to present something about him. We very much wanted to; aside from his amazing stature in the field of survey research, Warren was a good friend to Public Opinion Pros. But as a monthly magazine with limited resources, we were not equipped to do the kind of fast-breaking journalistic coverage that many other larger and more frequently published periodicals were already doing so well.
Instead, we decided to pay tribute to him by doing what we do best: showcasing important work in public opinion research in a way that’s accessible and informative to people outside the field as well as within. We decided to invite Warren’s colleagues and students of his work to write for us, not about Warren himself, but on subjects that reflect his contributions to the field (although, since the man and his field were inseparable, he ended up appearing in all of the articles that were produced). In short, we decided to do a Festschrift.
The result is what you see here.
The literal translation of Festschrift is “writings in celebration.” We hope you enjoy this celebration of the life’s work of Warren Mitofsky, and perhaps learn something—or things—that you didn’t know before. As these articles make abundantly clear, though Warren may be gone from our presence, his influence will be with us for a long, long time to come.
—Lisa Ferraro Parmelee, Editor
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