Dr. C. Sylvester Whitaker Jr.

CANAAN -- Dr. C. Sylvester Whitaker Jr., a retired professor of political science and university administrator, passed away on Nov. 29, 2008, in Waterville. The cause of death was cancer.

Whitaker, who was known by his nickname "Syl," was born on Feb. 21, 1935, in Pittsburgh, the son of funeral directors Cleophaus S. Whitaker Sr. and Edith (McColes) Whitaker in one of the black neighborhoods of the city celebrated in the plays of August Wilson. Raised a Baptist, he embraced the study of Quakerism and non-violence as a teenager. Those passions led him to enroll at Swarthmore College, where he graduated with honors in 1957.

At Swarthmore, Whitaker met his first wife, Jeanne Theis Whitaker, a French literature professor who had fled her native France during World War II. The couple had two sons before divorcing in 1963.

Whitaker earned a doctorate from Princeton University, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on political development in Nigeria. He later developed the study into a book, "The Politics of Tradition," published in 1970. For the rest of his career, he continued to make regular visits to Africia and to write scholarly papers on its post-colonial conflicts.

Beginning in the late 1960s, Whitaker became increasingly involved in academic administration -- as the head of African-American studies at the University of California at Los Angeles and Princeton University, and later as a dean at Rutgers University and the University of Southern California, from which he retired in 1995.

While teaching in New Jersey in the 1980s, Whitaker began to visit a colleague who owned a cabin on Lake George in Canaan. He later purchased an adjacent cabin himself, and began to pass the warm weather months there when he retired. Although he continued to spend winters in California, he told family and friends that he had come to view Canaan as his home.

Throughout his retirement years, Whitaker remained a practicing Quaker, an avid tennis player and a devoted fan of the University of Southern California Trojans and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

He is survived by his wife, Shirley Kao; two sons, Mark of New York City and Paul of San Diego; two stepsons, James and Jason Kao, both of Los Angeles; two grandchildren; and one sister, Cleo McCray of Princeton, N.J.

According to his wishes, he will be cremated. A memorial service will be held in the spring and his ashes will be buried.