Linda B. Miller, a scholar of political science and a Wellfleet resident since 1976, died on Jan. 19, 2025 at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis. She had a distinguished career as a professor of political science and international studies at Wellesley College for 30 years and then at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University for another 15 years. She also taught courses on politics and film at the Open University of Wellfleet and served on the board of the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown. She was 87.
The daughter of Louis Miller and Helene (Chase) Miller, Linda was born on Aug. 7, 1937 in Manchester, N.H., where she grew up with her sister, Devra. “She loved the outdoors,” said Devra, “and was very bright,” excelling at the Emma Willard School in Troy, N.Y. and going on to graduate from Radcliffe College in 1959 and Columbia University, where she earned her M.A. in 1961 and her Ph.D. in 1965.
An expert on American foreign policy in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, Linda published extensively on negotiation, the international order, and diplomatic history. Her first book, The United Nations and International Disorders, was published in 1965, followed by Cyprus: The Law and Politics of Civil Strife and World Order and Local Disorder: The United Nations in Internal Conflicts, both in 1967.
She was co-author with Stanley Hoffman and Michael Joseph Smith of Ideas and Ideals: Essays on Politics in Honor of Stanley Hoffman in 1993 and with Inderjeet Parmar and Mark Ledwidge of Obama and the World: New Directions in U.S. Foreign Policy in 2014.
While still a graduate student, Linda wrote for the Great Decisions Program of the Foreign Policy Association; she received fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefeller Foundation, NATO, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, and from 1999 to 2001 she was a senior scholar at the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University.
When she returned from Tel Aviv, she became editor of the International Studies Review, and she co-founded and co-edited Agentia for the British International Studies Association.
During her early years at Wellesley, Linda spent summers on the Outer Cape and fell in love with Wellfleet. In 1976, she moved to the house she had built overlooking Blackfish Creek, commuting first to Wellesley and then to Brown. Her partner, Wellesley physics professor and former dean of the college Phyllis Fleming, joined her in Wellfleet in 2003.
“Linda devoted her entire life to education,” wrote Kathleen Schatzberg, former president of Cape Cod Community College, in an online remembrance, “for her students at Wellesley and Brown, of course, but also for her community in Wellfleet.” She was well known for her annual talks in the Linda B. Miller Lecture and Discussion Series in International Affairs at the Wellfleet Public Library.
Linda served on the board of the Friends of the Library and “was an amazing booster,” said Director Jennifer Wertkin. She “was a relentless teacher,” Schatzberg wrote, “and she was fussy about her middle initial ‘B,’ which she often said stood for ‘Bossy.’ ”
Her Open University course in 2021 was titled “Politics in Fiction and Film: Lost in Translation,” and her 2024 library lecture focused on climate change and its deniers, a topic she had explored since the late 1970s. The last class she taught at the library was on art and politics viewed through the lens of the Vietnam War, a topic she chose for the 50th anniversary of the war’s end in 2025. “She always had big audiences,” Wertkin said.
Linda also worked on the Science and Education Program at the Center for Coastal Studies, which in recent years has emphasized climate change in coastal communities. In the mid-1990s, she organized the Coastal Solutions Initiative to guide public policy on environmental issues, and she encouraged the Center “to hire, promote, and support women,” said her former fellow board member Kathy Shorr.
She endowed the Center’s Chase Miller Policy Forum, a series of free lectures and discussions designed to educate the public on the role of science in public policy in relation to the marine environment. A secondary purpose was to encourage “presentations by women in science,” said development director Sue Nickerson. “Linda was a person of so much depth.”
Her sense of humor was “very dry,” said Shorr. “I appreciated Linda’s stern countenance,” wrote Jennifer McMullen in an online remembrance, “always delightfully mixed with her jovial attitude, usually ending with a wink.”
Linda is survived by her sister, Devra Breslow of Los Angeles, and by several cousins and friends and former students.
She was predeceased in 2009 by her partner, Phyllis Fleming.
A celebration of Linda’s life will take place on Sunday, May 18 at the Center for Coastal Studies, 5 Holway Ave., Provincetown. In lieu of flowers, donations in Linda’s memory can be made to the Center.
