Marshall Louis Windmiller

Marshall Louis Windmiller
March 21, 2024
Marshall L. Windmiller, Professor Emeritus of International Relations at San Francisco State University, died on March 21, 2024, in Menlo Park. He was 99 years old. He joined the faculty in 1959 and retired in 1994. For more than 30 years, he was well-known in the San Francisco Bay Area as a commentator on world affairs on local radio and television stations. In 1976, he was the moderator of World Press, a weekly TV news program originating at KQED and broadcast nationally on PBS.
Like his father and grandfather, he was born in Sacramento, to Louis and Gladys Windmiller. He graduated from Stockton High School and the University of the Pacific, followed by post-graduate work at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), University of Pennsylvania, and UC Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D. in Political Science in 1964.
His first academic interest, India, derived from his service there with the United States Army Signal Corps 1944-1946. He was a radio operator at the China-Burma-India Theatre headquarters in New Delhi.
Before joining the San Francisco State faculty, he was employed as a research political scientist with the Modern India Project at UC Berkeley. There, with Gene D. Overstreet, he co-authored Communism in India (UC Press, 1959).
Windmiller became interested in the Peace Corps when he participated in training volunteers. Based on this experience, he published The Peace Corps and Pax Americana (Public Affairs Press, 1970).
When it was revealed that the Watergate burglars had ties to the Central Intelligence Agency, Windmiller became interested in intelligence and covert action. He was one of the first in the country to offer university courses exclusively on intelligence.
Windmiller was also interested in promoting greater public understanding of foreign affairs. He was a member of the World Affairs Council of Northern California beginning in 1948, and for some years served on its Board of Directors. He was a frequent speaker at the Council and at other Bay Area organizations.
For eight years, he was a regular weekly commentator on world affairs on Pacifica's KPFA, Berkeley, and his commentaries were also broadcast on WBAI in N.Y., and KPFK in Los Angeles. Listener requests for scripts prompted the publication of a collection entitled Five Years on Free Radio.
Windmiller was active in California Democratic Party politics for several years, beginning with membership in the San Francisco Young Democrats in 1950, when the late congressman, Philip Burton, was its president. In 1960, with Tom Winnet, he co-founded the liberal democrat (small l, small d), a magazine widely circulated among California Democrats until it ceased publication in 1964.
An opponent of the Vietnam War, Windmiller traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia in 1966, to report on political aspects of the war.
While he was working on his doctorate in political science, he met his wife of 48 years, Myra Bailey Henry, in the Berkeley Young Democrats. They were married in 1960. She became a much-loved UC Berkeley lecturer and Alameda school psychologist. She died in 2008. They had no children.
He is survived by his partner, Dorothy North, of Woodside.
In accordance with the wishes of the deceased, there will be no memorial gathering.