Wichita State Emeritus Professor Melvin Kahn died of natural causes at the age of 92 on Sept. 13.
For over five decades, Kahn served as one of Wichita State’s more highly acclaimed political science professors. He received the Regents’ Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1982, the Carnegie Foundation Kansas Professor of the Year in 1989, the WSU Academy of Excellence Teaching Award in 2007 and the Marquis Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018, among many other honors and accolades.
Kahn is best known for dressing up as historical characters, like Alexander Hamilton and Plato, to engage students during lectures. Kahn and his late wife founded the Joan & Melvin Kahn Native American Indian Scholarship to support high-performing high school students of Native American descent.
Kahn was also a delegate at the Democratic National Convention in 2000 and, since 1985, has been featured in over 190 newspaper articles and radio and TV interviews.
A graveside service for Kahn will be hosted on Monday at the Old Mission Cemetery. In place of flowers, Kahn will have a memorial established by the Circle of Friends at Larksfield Place Independent Living.
John Anderton • Sep 17, 2023 at 4:20 pm
Mel was a great instructor who challenged students from the first lecture through the final exam. He had a catalogue of alter egos that he would roll out with relish so you could debate with Plato or Reagan. He took several of us one afternoon to visit with his mentor, one Earl Johnson, to discuss whether or not formal academic education was worth it. Never occurred to me to ponder that point before that interesting reminiscing with his own favorite teacher. I had a half dozen classes with him where we would read a book a week and argue about it for four hours on a Thursday afternoon. One class was so into this approach that Mel and Joann invited us all to dinner at his house twenty-five years later for a recap of those great discussions. He assigned a book and chapters to all five of us who made it to this unique post-grad gathering and we were immediately back to arguing like teenagers. It was extraordinary, as was he. He reminded us-in the words of Plutarch-that `the mind is a fire to be lit, not a vessel to be filled.´ My mind is filled with admiration, gratitude, and happiness that I had the chance to learn from this great scholar.