Twiley W. Barker, Jr. (January 29, 1926 – July 13, 2009) was an American political scientist and scholar of constitutional law. He was a founding faculty member of the department of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, were he worked from 1962 to 1994.

Life and career

Barker was born on January 29, 1926, and he grew up in Franklinton, Louisiana. The political scientist

Lucius Barker Lucius Jefferson Barker (June 11, 1928 – June 21, 2020) was an American political scientist. He was the Edna Fischel Gellhorn Professor and chair of the political science department at Washington University in St. Louis, and then the William ...

was Twiley Barker's brother. He attended

Tuskegee University Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature. The campus was d ...

as an undergraduate, but he joined the Air Force during his studies, and after his service he completed his bachelor's degree at

Southern University Southern University and A&M College (Southern University, Southern, SUBR or SU) is a public historically black land-grant university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is the largest historically black college or university (HBCU) in Louisiana, a ...

. He attended Southern at the same time as his brother Lucius Barker, and the two were persuaded to study politics rather than medicine after taking classes with the political scientist Rodney Higgins. He then obtained his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 1955. From 1955 to 1960, he taught at Southern Illinois University, and in 1962 he moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he worked until his retirement in 1994. In addition to being a founding member of that department, Barker was undergraduate director for two decades, and helped set up the pre-law program there. Barker's scholarship focused on constitutional law and judicial politics in the United States. For example, he wrote a comparative analysis on the first terms of Clarence Thomas and Thurgood Marshall. In 1970, he and his brother Lucius Barker coauthored the textbook ''Civil Liberties and the Constitution''. This textbook had been published in 9 editions by 2020, and is considered a classic textbook on the structure of the American legal system. Barker was particularly noted as an instructor and a mentor, and his students included Carol Moseley Braun and Tony Podesta. In 1966 Barker won his university's highest teaching award, the UIC Silver Circle Award. He also won the 1969

E. Harris Harbison Elmore Harris Harbison (1907–1964) was an American historian and scholar on the topic of Christianity and history. He was the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton University and a trustee of the Princeton Theological Seminary. Per ...

Prize from the Danforth Foundation for "unusual accomplishments in college teaching". In addition to his academic work, Barker was also involved in local activism; for example, he worked against inequitable gentrification of his Chicago neighborhood, Groveland Park. He had two children. He died on July 13, 2009, having remained Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of Illinois at Chicago.

Selected works

*''Civil Liberties and the Constitution'', with Lucius Barker (1970)

Selected awards

*UIC Silver Circle Award (1966) *E. Harris Harbison Prize, Danforth Foundation (1969)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barker, Twiley 1926 births 2009 deaths African-American political scientists American political scientists People from Franklinton, Louisiana Southern University alumni Southern Illinois University faculty University of Illinois Chicago faculty 20th-century African-American people 21st-century African-American people 20th-century political scientists Tuskegee University alumni University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences alumni