Remembering Kenneth J. Cmiel
In February 2006, the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights (UICHR) mourned the loss of its director, Ken Cmiel. Ken died suddenly from an undiagnosed brain tumor, and his intellectual community, colleagues, friends and family lost an inimitable man and scholar.
Ken Cmiel was the Director of the UICHR, as well as Professor of History and American Studies at The University of Iowa. His broad intellectual interests ranged from music history to the role of image in America to human rights.
Ken did his undergraduate work at The University of California at Berkeley where he met his wife, Anne Duggan. They moved back to his hometown, Chicago, where he received his PhD in history from the University of Chicago and attended law school for one year. He and Anne moved to Iowa City in 1987 for his first full-time teaching position and where they raised three children: Willa, Cordelia, and Noah.
