Obituary
Michael M. Harris
On April 15, 2009, the seventh day of Passover 5769, Michael Harris passed away in his home surrounded by his family. He was 51 years old. Diagnosed with colon cancer in late 2005, Mike bravely fought the disease and continued to teach and write and to learn, taking medical leave only a few weeks before his death. Throughout, Mike’s wife Pat was a model of love, shared faith, support, and courage. Mike was a loving father of three (David, Anne, and Yoni Harris), stepfather of two (Nathan Rosenfeld and Rachel Daugherty), and grandfather of four (Eliyahu Dovid, Zechariah Yosef, Yitzchak and Esther Raizel, children of Nathan and Ora).
Mike received his degree in I-O psychology at the University of Illinois-Chicago under the mentorship of Paul Sackett, with whom he published a groundbreaking and much cited article on integrity testing. He went on to teach at Purdue and then, for over 20 years, in the College of Business Administration at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. At UMSL he was professor of management and the recipient of an array of honors for excellence in teaching and in research, including the State of Missouri’s prestigious Thomas Jefferson Professorship.
Mike contributed widely and materially to the field in articles, books, chapters, and conference presentations on a range of topics including multisource performance ratings, discrimination and employee rights, interviews, pay and compensation, assessment centers, and biodata. Some of his publications have become citation classics. He had a strong interest in cross-cultural aspects of I-O and recently edited the Handbook of Research in International Human Resources Management. Mike was a long-time contributor to TIP, serving on the board and writing a long-running column on leading-edge trends in our field. He was on the editorial board of several of our leading journals and on SIOP’s Professional Practices Series. In recognition of his scholarly contributions to the field, Michael was elected a Fellow of SIOP in 2008.
As comfortable discussing religion and philosophy as I-O psychology, Mike was the consummate intellectual—detached and engaging, thoughtful, endlessly curious, and patient. He was deeply involved in the St. Louis Orthodox Jewish community; among his most fulfilling hours each week were those he spent engaged in studying the Torah, Talmud, and other classical texts at his synagogue. He especially enjoyed learning with and from his children and stepchildren. Michael blended strong religious convictions with an openness to all knowledge and a passionate commitment to social justice.
He will be very much missed by his family, personal friends, academic peers, students, and business colleagues, in the U.S. and abroad. His memory will be long cherished by those of us privileged to have known him.
Contributed by Tom Baker (Thomas.baker@kraft.com) and Seymour Adler (Adler-SeymourAdler@Aon.com).