In Memoriam

John “Jock” McLane, Evanston, Jan. 24, at age 84.  After graduating from Harvard College in 1957, he earned a doctorate in South Asian history at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies in 1961. He came to Northwestern in the same year and Evanston was his scholarly home for the rest of his long career, through 2010. 

McLane taught not only South Asian history, his primary field of study, but also Southeast Asian history, and for many decades operated as one of the only people on campus to provide expertise on those parts of the world. 

His two major books were Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress (1977), which won the Watamull Prize awarded by the American Historical Association, and Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth Century Bengal (1993). McLane’s research was supported by the American Institute of Indian Studies in Calcutta, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council and Northwestern University. 

McLane served as history department chair three times (1983–86, 1994–97 and 2004–05) and associate dean of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, where he served twice, from 1990 to 1994 and for his final three years at Northwestern, from 2007 to 2010. 

Equally importantly, McLane was a significant force in expanding, diversifying and internationalizing the college curriculum. He chaired the Committee on Afro-American Studies in the 1970s and the Advisory Committee for the Program on African and Asian Languages. He also led an ad hoc committee on non-western studies requirements in the 1980s. McLane created and then directed the Asian Studies Program and also served as interim director of the Asian American Studies Program in the early 2000s. Northwestern remembers his achievements through the annual John R. McLane Prize for best undergraduate essay in Asian Studies. 

McLane also supported student life beyond the classroom. He was one of the founders of the Residential College system, took a special interest in establishing the International Studies Residential College and served as its first Master in the 1980s. 

But most of all, McLane was quite possibly the nicest guy in the building — for more than half a century. James Sheridan, a long-retired colleague, wrote of Jock in 1972 that “I cannot exaggerate Mr. McLane’s personal qualities. At Northwestern, he is universally regarded as a man of towering humanity and integrity. I and all my colleagues consider him a unique and indispensable member of the department who invariably acts to bring out the best in all of us.”

McLane is survived by his wife, Joan Brooks in 1957; their two children, Derek and Rebecca; and five grandchildren, Cooper, Hudson, Kathryn, Nick and Luke Pemberton. 

Photo courtesy of Northwestern University Archives

Read Anupama R. Oza and Rajesh C. Oza's remembrance of McLane, “Great Expectations: A Guru's Life Lessons for His Chelas.”