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Susan Hadden
``` Date: Tue, 17 Jan 1995 10:30:53 -0600 From: gary21cp@bongo.cc.utexas.edu (Gary Chapman) Subject: Susan Hadden
Dear friends,
I have some sad and terrible news to pass on.
Susan Ginsberg Hadden, a beloved friend and colleague, was killed the day before yesterday while on vacation with her husband in Cambodia. Susan and her husband Jim Hadden were visiting the temples at Angkor Wat, a trip that was Jim's present to Susan for her 50th birthday. It was a trip she'd dreamed of for many years, a lifelong passion. Their caravan of tourist vans was attacked in an ambush, and Susan was killed by gunfire. Jim was severely wounded, but was successfully evacuated and is currently in a hospital in Singapore in critical but stable condition. He is expected to return to Austin, Texas, by the end of the week.
It is not known whether the ambush was by Khmer Rouge guerrillas or by highway bandits. Susan's death has prompted the Cambodian government to close Angkor Wat.
We are all, here in Austin, numb with grief and shock.
Susan, a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, described her academic interests and specialty as "public participation in science and technology decisions." In 1993 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for "research contributions to the study of democratic response to science, related social controversies, and to broader public discussion of these issues."
Susan was not only an academic, although she was at the top of her field in research on the public assessment of technological risk. She as also an empassioned activist for social justice, environmental quality, and, especially in recent years, for a public, civic, and democratic vision of new technologies. Susan was a member of the Interim Governing Council of the The 21st Century Project's National Forum program. She was an active member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Public Technology. She was a strong supporter of and contributor to Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. She was a key person in the Science for Citizens Program of the National Science Foundation in the late 1970s. She was an advisor to both the State of Texas and the City of Austin on environmental issues and telecommunications policy. In collaboration with her husband Jim, she pursued a project for Austin residents to have electronic access to environmental databases. Recently, Susan and I appeared on Austin's public television channel twice, where she argued for a vision of a "public network" for the city, something that she believed would help support civic participation and democracy. Last year she met with Vice President Al Gore and pressed the same vision on him. She also virtually wrote the language on "universal access" that was used in the last Congress' telecommunications reform legislation.
Susan was raised in Austin, attended Radcliffe College, and earned her Ph.D in political science from the University of Chicago. She returned to Austin in 1979 as an assistant professor at the LBJ School. She became a full professor in 1990, and a full professor in the Department of Government in 1992. She wrote two books -- A Citizen's Right to Know: Risk Communication and Public Policy (1989), and Read the Label: Reducing Risks by Providing Information (1986) -- and edited another volume, Risk Analysis, Institutions, and Public Policy (1984). She also published many articles.
Susan was very interested in Asian culture, and she and Jim lived in India for a year. She taught classes in Asian politics and culture, and she was associate editor of the Journal for Asian Studies from 1972 to 1976.
Susan's last writing was for me. She will be a contributor to a book I am editing for the MIT Press, to be published later this year, on the future of science and technology policy. She turned in her manuscript to me, something she said she had worked on harder than anything she'd ever done, two days before she left for Cambodia. The chapter is on the "information superhighway" and democracy.
Beyond all the biographical data, Susan was a warm, generous friend, a great source of energy and passion, someone who just embraced life. She was one of the principal reasons I moved to Austin, and she and I had our plans intertwined at the LBJ School. We spent over an hour talking the last day she was in Austin about what we would do in 1995, after she returned.
I tried to talk her out of going to Cambodia, because of the danger. I urged her again, that last day, to think twice about going, or at least to be very careful. She said that she was more worried about Jim, because she figured "they wouldn't hurt a woman." I wish that I'd had a clairvoyant moment, as she walked down the hall for the last time, waving cheerfully.
A good part of Austin is mourning her loss; she had many friends. She will leave a large hole in our lives and in our work for a better world. We will miss her painfully and always.
-- Gary Chapman gary21cp@bongo.cc.utexas.edu
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 95 08:54:46 -0800 From: eroberts@Eeyore.Stanford.EDU Subject: NYT and Gary Chapman on Susan Hadden
Everyone,
The following is this morning's New York Times report on the death of Susan Hadden (it appears on page 3 of the National Edition):
GUNMEN KILL AN AMERICAN TOURIST IN CAMBODIA By Philip Shenon (Special to The New York Times)
SINGAPORE, Jan. 16 -- Gunmen in northwestern Cambodia killed an American tourist and her Cambodian guide in an attack Sunday on [sic] near a remote stone temple outside the ancient Khmer capital of Angkor, American and Cambodian officials said today. The woman's husband was seriously wounded in the attack, which Cambodian officials said was carried out by Khmer Rouge guerrillas, who kidnapped and killed at least six tourists last year. But foreign diplomats said the attack was just as likely to have been the work of bandits. A state department official in Washington identified the woman as Susan Ginsburg Hadden of Austin, Tex. He husband, identified as James Hadden Jr., was transferred to a hospital in Singapore, where he was reported today to be in stable condition. The guide was not identified. It was the first reported fatality among foreign visitors to Angkor since the temples were reopened to tourists in 1991. The Angkor area is about 140 miles northwest of Phnom Pehn, the Cambodian capital. American and Cambodian officials said the tour van carrying the American couple was attacked Sunday morning after it stopped at a roadblock more than 15 miles outside the Angkor complex.
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Tourist Killed Was Professor
AUSTIN, Tex., Jan. 16 -- Susan Ginsburg Hadden, the American tourist kiled on Sunday in Cambodia, was a nationally recognized expert in public policy issues. Ms. Hadden, a professor at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas here, recently testified before Congress on providing the poor with access to the so-called information superhighway. She also recently met with Vice President Al Gore to discuss the role of information systems.
Gary's recent message to cpsr-activists gives more background on Susan's work and her contributions to the 21st Century Project.
/Eric ```
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