David Fellman

David Fellman (1907 – 2003) was a political scientist and constitutional scholar and advocate for academic freedom. He taught general constitutional law, administrative law and civil liberties.

In 1905, the Fellmans immigrated to Omaha, Nebraska with two very young sons from what was then known as Volhynia, Belarus (now Ukraine). David was the third born of a brood that would grow to seven: six boys and one girl. When David was 21, he lost an older brother and a few years later, his father passed too.

David Fellman attended Omaha Central High School where he was president of the Mathematics society, a member of the Speakers Bureau and on the debate teams that won the district championship in 1924-25 and the state championship in 1925. He won the state contest in extemporaneous speaking.

He taught Hebrew in a religious school to support himself while attending University of Nebraska in Lincoln. As an undergraduate, he was on the debate team for three years. He was a member of Nebraska’s “Think-Shop” and was elected to Delta Sigma Rho, the national debating honorary society, in May 1927, serving as president of that organization for one year. He was a member of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity, and was a reader for the political science department. For two years, he wrote a semi-weekly column in The Daily Nebraskan, official student newspaper entitled “A Student Looks at Public Affairs."

He received his A.B. in 1929, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa; he also received an M.A. in 1930 from the University of Nebraska. He was granted a teaching fellowship by the University of Nebraska in the political science department while pursuing work to prepare for his doctoral degree. In 1931, Fellman transferred to Yale University, having been the recipient of the Cowles fellowship in government. He studied political theory under Dr. Francis Coker, then a scholarship in philosophy in 1932, then the Sterling fellowship in government in 1933. He was awarded the Ph.D. from Yale University in 1934.

He taught at the University of Nebraska from 1934 to 1947 and the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1947 until he retired in 1979. He maintained an office in North Hall at UW–Madison through the late 1980s. One newspaper remembered him as "beloved of generations of students who were attracted by his friendliness and charm as well as his intellectual stature." One former student, David Obey, wrote of him, "Anyone who remembers John Houseman’s portrayal of the law professor in The Paper Chase will know what Fellman was like – intimidating, tough, clipped, proper, dry, acerbic.”

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