Departures

Joe Lieberman

An unconventional politician who stood as the Democrat Party’s vice presidential nominee and at other times stood as its critic, Lieberman died March 27. He was 82. Lieberman became a U.S. senator after a 1988 election in which he garnered support from conservatives and moderates in a race against a liberal Republican. Al Gore chose the Connecticut moderate to balance the Democrats’ 2000 presidential ticket, and the pair came within hundreds of votes of winning. As the Democratic Party moved left, though, Lieberman, a pro-Israel foreign policy hawk, found himself more isolated politically. Unseated in the 2006 Senate Democratic primary, he came back to win the general election as an independent for his final term in office.

Daniel Kahneman

An American-Israeli public intellectual who blended his expertise in psychology and economics to explain how humans think and make decisions, Kahneman died March 27 at age 90. Kahneman began collaborating with research partner Amos Tversky in 1969, and together they published a bevy of academic papers that challenged contemporary economists’ understanding of humans as rational actors. The work earned Kahneman a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 and helped form the basis of a new field of study named behavioral economics. He summarized his academic work for a popular audience in his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow.