Expected to become a minister, WSU’s Jim Short is an eminent sociologist

• Photo caption: The Jim and Kelma Short family in front of Wilson-Short Hall (l-r): daughter, Susan Short Castleberry, Jim and Kelma and son Michael Short.
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• This story appeared originally in the Summer 2010 issue of the WSU Retirees Association newsletter.
  
  By Al Ruddy
  WSU News Service retired
  
  Many honors have come to professor Jim Short, but none he wears more proudly than to have his name on a major academic building.
  
  Last fall, Wilson Hall, named for an early 20th-century U.S. secretary of agriculture, was officially rededicated the Wilson-Short Hall. Short is in a rare company of academics to have a building in his name, rarer still to have his own office there. Only veterinarian Leo Bustad shares that honor in recent university history.
  
  Short’s quarters are unpretentious, but with a view of popular Terrell Mall that was a two-way street when he arrived in 1951 with a newly minted doctorate from the University of Chicago’s prestigious sociology program. Instead of framed citations of the dozen awards and honorary degrees he’s received, the walls a lined with sociology texts, some of which he has authored or edited. There are no pictures taken of him with famous politicians, but photos of kids and grandkids. Most prominent are colored snapshots of him posing with steelhead caught years ago at the Snake River. You’ll find Short most days in front of his computer, which he manages skillfully, writing and re-examining data of his exhaustive research on urban gangs and violence.
  
  His road to Pullman has had many unusual turns. He was raised in a rural town in Sangamon County, Ill., that was established around the time that A. Lincoln represented the area in Congress. The house he was born in was on property homesteaded by his great-grandfather and remains in the family. He talks with a reverence of his roots, “there’s something about the America’s heartland.“ It’s also where he was introduced to the subject of sociology, taught by his father, who was also principal of the high school. “It wasn’t much like the introduction students receive today. The course really focused on institutional settings, penitentiaries, asylums and the like,” Short says.
  
  And he didn’t set out to have a career in the field. His family expected him to enter the ministry. But like so many others of the “great generation” his prospects were altered by Pearl Harbor. As a college freshman, Short was recruited to the Navy’s V-12 program at Denison University to educate future officers. Commissioned a lieutenant in the Marines, he was stationed in Japan as part of the U.S. occupation forces. Among his assignments was serving as defense counsel for enlisted men at their court-martials. He wrote about them in a 1988 essay for the journal, The Criminologist. His experiences in Japan “aroused a curiosity in criminal behavior and in human behavior generally, including my own,” he wrote.
  
  His return to Denison after his discharge was serendipitous. On his first night back on campus he met Kelma, his wife of 62 years. Upon graduation, Short began graduate studies at the University of Chicago and research on violence, aggression and gang behavior. In his 60-year career, he has risen to the top of the profession with election by his colleagues to the presidencies of the American Sociological Association and the American Society of Criminology. He also has co-directed research for national presidential commissions on violence and crime.
  
  Those accomplishments brought him interest and recruitment from some of the largest and most influential universities in the country. But he elected to stay at WSU to help build one of the most successful sociology programs in the country, one that hooded more black doctoral degree graduates than any other in the l960s and 70s.
  
  Short jokes about the curves in his career path. “I’ve been very fortunate to have been guided toward research. I might have been a social worker, but I’m afraid a not very good one, because I take some situations much too personally.” As for the ministry, Short grew away from the church. In later years his mother declared, “I don’t know what happen to you Jim, you’re an atheist and a democrat.”
  
  He says he didn’t correct her about his religious convictions, “and I’m not sure which of the two she thought was the worse. But I know she was proud of me and of all her children.”
  
  The Short family stayed in Pullman, because “we love the place and the people.” And they don’t really leave it for the summers at the vacation get-away. They’ve been part of the WSU compound at Priest Lake for more than 50 years.
  
  Asked what he considers the social problems that the country faces, he was quick to answer. First-- racism, a subject that has been central to his work as a social scientist. His second answer address a more recent phenomenon--the bias and polarization of the media which he believes limits the ability of citizens to reach informed and intelligent decisions. He admits he has no easy solutions to those conditions, but you can be sure he will continue to think and write about them, for Short remains a seeker and the consummate scholar.