Political Economist Lured West for UCI Peace Chair

After years of searching, UC Irvine has landed a distinguished political economist and international security expert to fill one of three endowed professorships for its ambitious peace studies program.

Martin C. McGuire, 57, a professor at the University of Maryland in College Park for 20 years, has accepted the university’s Heinz Chair in economics and public policy of peace that was established in 1988. He officially starts work in January, McGuire said Friday.

UCI aims to position itself as the nation’s leading center for the study of conflict and international cooperation through its Global Peace and Conflict Studies program established in 1983. UCI is believed to be the only university in the nation to have three major endowed chairs devoted to peace studies.

“It’s a really great appointment for UCI,” said Charles Lave, chairman of UCI’s economics department and head of the search committee for the Heinz Chair. “He is certainly one of the very best. He is the guy we wanted when we started our search. . . . He sets a great standard.”

Keith Nelson, director of the peace studies program, said: “Marty McGuire is a superb appointment. . . . He will bring to Irvine imagination, momentum and reputation.”

McGuire, who said he was enticed by “all the growth potential they’ve got” at UCI and the UC system, is the fifth candidate in four years of searching to be offered one of the endowed chairs in peace studies. Previous candidates told The Times Orange County Edition that they could not come to UCI for personal reasons, even though the endowed chairs presented intriguing opportunities.

The Heinz chair was established with a $300,000 endowment in 1988 by Clifford Heinz of Newport Beach, an heir of the H.J. Heinz food company fortune.

Heinz, 71, said Friday: “I’m delighted they filled it. I think this is one of the most important chairs in peace studies.

“I won’t say that economics are the major cause of all wars. . . . It’s gotten to be too easy for countries to spend billions of dollars on ships and airplanes and weapons.”

McGuire, who now teaches at the University of Maryland, said by telephone from his home in Washington on Friday that the international political situation has changed so much in recent years that notions about security and defense spending are shifting.

“The parameters are changing, that’s one of the fun things about this job,” McGuire said.

“UCI’s orientation is less toward national security--the focus is on the global security,” he said. “That is one of the reasons I found the offer so attractive. We’ve got this one globe we all have to live on.”

McGuire said he will come to UCI early in the summer to begin setting up his offices in UCI’s School of Social Sciences, but he is committed to to teach this fall at the University of Maryland.

McGuire was born in 1933 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. The family moved to Los Angeles when he was still a toddler and later moved to Minnesota at the outset of World War II.

McGuire got his bachelor of science degree in engineering at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1955. He followed the path of one of his West Point instructors, George Lincoln, a top adviser to Gen. George Marshall, and became a Rhodes Scholar to study philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University in England, where he received a degree in 1958.

McGuire had intended to spend his life in the military, but conflicting opportunities in 1961 led him to choose a doctoral program in economics at Harvard University. He joined the University of Maryland in 1971 and has remained there. During that time, he has also been a consultant for many government agencies and research firms, including the Defense Department, Georgetown University Law Center and the RAND Corp.