I was born in the German province of Swabia, home of the poets Schiller and
Hoelderlin, on All Saints Day in the year the Berlin Wall was built. Thus my
Swabian accent, idealistic world view, catholic "joie-de-vivre", and deep interest
in politics all came naturally to me. The youngest of four children of Anne
and Max Hega, who at the end of the Second World War had been forced to flee
their home in what is now Slovakia, where their families had lived for centuries
as part of an ethnic-German community, I grew up in Neckartailfingen, a small
town in southwestern Germany on the river Neckar, close to Stuttgart, the Swabian
Jura mountains, the Black Forest, and Lake Constance.
After
a happy childhood and early jobs as a construction worker, brewery hand, and
on the assembly line “beim Daimler” to finance my extensive travels hitch-hiking
around Europe, I successfully passed my “Abitur” (high school graduation exam
and university entrance certificate) at the Albert-Schaeffle-Wirtschafts-gymnasium
in Nürtingen and was drafted into the German army in 1981. I served as, first,
a “Panzergrenadier” in an armored infantry battalion, before becoming a noncommissioned
officer, squad leader, officer candidate and platoon leader, and learning among
other useful things, how to drive a tank and jump out of a flying airplane.
I was honorably discharged at the rank of lieutenant and continued to serve
in the army reserves to defend the free world until the end of the cold war.
In 1983,
I enrolled at the University of Tübingen, studying political science, history,
and economics, and successfully passed my “Zwischenprüfung” (BA equivalent)
in 1986, after finishing my thesis with Volker Rittberger. The German Academic
Exchange Service awarded me a one-year exchange student scholarship to study
at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. After my first semester at
"WashU" I applied and was admitted to the Ph.D. program in political science.
I studied with Arnold J. Heiden-heimer, John H. Kautsky, and Douglass North and
concentrated in the fields of comparative politics, political economy, and methodology.
I spend most of 1989 in Germany at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research
in Bielefeld, witnessing some of the historic events of the fall of communism
and German reunification.
I received
my MA in 1988 and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1992 after defending my dissertation
on education policies in federal systems, comparing Switzerland and Germany,
subsequently published as Consensus Democracy? Education Policy between Federalism
and Subsidiarity by Peter Lang Pub.., New York, Frankfurt, and Bern, in
1999. I moved to and worked in Cambridge, Mass., for a few years and held my
first academic position at the University of New Hampshire, where I taught comparative
politics and international relations. Subsequently, I also taught classes at
Kalamazoo College and the University of Tübingen during the summer or on sabbatical
leave, and did research at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
I have been teaching at Western Michigan University since 1994. At the undergraduate
level I teach international relations, comparative and European politics, and
at the graduate level I offer seminars in comparative politics and comparative
public policy. In March 2004, I was awarded WMU's College of Arts and Sciences
Faculty Achievement Award in Teaching, and in September 2004 I was honored by
the American Political Science Association and Pi Sigma Alpha-The National Political
Science Honor Society for Outstanding Teaching. I also advise students in the
international and comparative concentration in the political science major and
serve as advisor and faculty director for WMU's study abroad programs in Germany.
My
research focuses on comparative public policies in advanced industrial societies,
European political economy, and German, Austrian and Swiss politics. Currently,
I am working on a book comparing education policy in Germany, Switzerland, and
Austria, and an article on the recent reforms of the German federal system.
My publications to date include a book, several articles in journals like German
Policy Studies / Politik-feldanalyse, Regional and Federal Studies, Compare-A
Journal of Comparative Education, and the Journal of Studies in International
Education, book chapters and review articles, and numerous conference papers,
media interviews and and invited presentations on German and European politics,
comparative education policies, federalism, and welfare state development in
Europe and America.
I enjoy the Michigan outdoors but miss the mountains and lakes of my native
Southern Germany and the Alps. My hobbies include running, swimming, hiking,
and, on good days, playing soccer. I enjoy reading (naturally), traveling, cooking,
and playing chess. I am a dyed-in-the-wool fan of Schalke 04, the greatest of
all German soccer teams, and also like baseball, basketball, hockey, and football
(although I still don't know all the rules). I like German beer and bread, French
wine and cheese, and Italian coffee and cooking. My favorite authors include
“Fritz” Schiller and Martin Walser, and I love the music of the "Three B's"
(Bach, Beethoven, Brahms), Italian operas, and, of course, Johnny Cash. I live
with my partner Mary and our cat Abigail in Kalamazoo, enjoying the occasional
company of three adult children and the frequent visits of three lovely grandchildren,
Henry, Isabella, and Simon.