Looking in at Iowa

ARCHIVES: Biographical article about missing University of Iowa professor Arthur H. Miller August 21, 2008

From January 2, 2000 Iowa City Gazette (Section B, Page 2):

Chemistry of politics lured Miller to field

Shawn Gibbs
News correspondent

IOWA CITY – Arthur Miller has always dealt with hypotheses and conclusions.

He’s helped gauge why people feel the way they do about political candidates, work that brings national attention to the Iowa Social Science Institute that he founded at the University of Iowa.

He was part of a UI team that did the first organized public opinion polling in the the Soviet Union as that confederation crumbled in the 1990s.

Not bad for someone who originally thought he’d be studying chemical compounds as a chemical engineer.

Now Miller virtually is assured that in at least every four years people passionate about politics want to know what he knows about the people who try to win political office. National campaigns and media check out his research in an effort to explain during this Iowa caucus season why one person makes a more popular presidential candidate than another.

Miller is a political science professor at the UI. His area of expertise is public opinion, and as part of his responsibilities, he is the director of the Iowa Social Science Institute that conducts public opinion surveys in a number of different fields.

Miller grew up in a politically active family. His father was Minnesota chairman of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

“I think growing up immersed in those experiences played a big part in my lifelong interest in politics,” Miller said.

Miller attended the University of Minnesota during the late 1950s and early 1960s during a time another famous Minnesotan flirted with college.

“I remember watching Bob Dylan a couple of times play late at night in this cafe in Dinkytown,” Miller said. Dinkytown is a business district at the University of Minnesota campus.

Miller graduated with a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering in 1961.

In the final semesters of his undergraduate education, Miller began taking public opinion classes and was interested in what he was seeing. “I met a professor who was looking for someone to do computer analysis on the redistricting of legislative districts in Minnesota, and I jumped at the opportunity,” Miller said.

“I was excited to be able to combine statistics and computers, things I learned as part of my chemical engineering degree, with my interests in public opinion.”

Miller enrolled at the University of Michigan’s graduate program for political science. He earned his doctoral degree there in 1971.

Miller briefly served as an assistant professor at Ohio State University before returning to Michigan in 1973. He became director of the American National Election Studies in the Institute for Social Research at Michigan, which is widely regarded as a premier school in public opinion research among political scientists.

Miller joined the faculty at the UI in 1985. Miller’s responsibilities include teaching an undergraduate course in the fall, a graduate seminar in the spring and directing the Iowa Social Science Institute.

The institute is a big part of his academic life. It was established to train students in survey research methods, collect data, generate external funds for faculty research and provide research services to the university and surrounding region.

The institute, which maintains a staff of approximately 70 people, is funded partially through the university, but outside grants, fellowship funds and contracts with clients contribute as well.

The Social Science Institute has conducted several projects, dealing with anything from consumption of alcohol among university students to the repercussions of the fall of the old Soviet Union.

An integral component of institute’s research is the Heartland Poll. The poll, conducted biennially, provides research of public opinion in Iowa and six surrounding states.

Miller is quick to point out that not all polling research is conducted the same way.

Institute researchers strive to be more complete than national polls such as the MSNBC/Wall Street Journal and CNN/Time magazine polls, Miller said. They ask more in-depth questions and conduct follow-up surveys in order to research how public opinion forms and shifts.

“We are not commercially based so we don’t cut corners like they often do,” Miller said. “They have a tendency to do ‘quickie polls’ conducted overnight, while our research generally carries over a period of several weeks and is much more rigorous.”

The scientific approach is not foolproof. Miller’s data, along with other polls done in the state, incorrectly indicated in 1998 that Republican Jim Ross Lightfoot would defeat Democrat Tom Vilsack to become Iowa’s governor.

“We got that one wrong, but I think more importantly we conducted polling after the election to determine why we got it wrong and hopefully learn something from it,” Miller said.

One of Miller’s favorite pastimes has been to travel. Miller recently went to the Ukraine, part of the former Soviet Union, to monitor that country’s first democratic elections.

“Since 1989 William Reisinger, Vicki Hesli, from the political science department, and I have been carrying out research gauging how public opinion has changed in the former Soviet Union with the rise of a free market system,” Miller said.

Miller, an avid jogger, continues to ride his bicycle to work as long as the weather remains cooperative. He and his wife, Anne, also enjoy gardening at their home.

Miller said he sometimes ponders what would have become of him had he pursued a career in chemistry. “I have friends who were studying chemistry with me, and a couple of the guys I know have gone on to create drugs that are fighting the effects of mental illness,” Miller said.

“I love what I do though, and it is important. It just serves an importance in a different way.”

From today’s Gazette, Accused UI professor missing.