Ann Livingstone's Legacy
Posted Jun 29, 2026
Teacher. Mentor. Role Model. Those are just a few of the words that describe Ann Livingstone. Soon after she started teaching Political Science in 1974, she won the Outstanding Teacher Award and later became the Director of the Honors Program. She taught international relations because her parents’ time on the mission field in Japan opened her mind to new cultures and ideas. Even after she left Union to work for the Pearson Peacekeeping Center in Canada, she maintained her Union connections by teaching in the Master's in Intercultural Studies program until her death from cancer in 2016. However, her students remember her as someone who challenged their beliefs and assumptions so they could become better thinkers, writers, citizens, and people.
Jenn McClearan (’02) wrote that Livingstone taught her an “unsettling lesson: that the beliefs we hold most confidently are often the ones most worth examining.” In one class about an identity-based conflict, she “walked us through the commitments, the fears, the historical grievances, and the competing claims on both sides with such care and precision that by the end, every position felt not just understandable but urgent. Then she gave us what seemed like a reasonable task: determine who was right and who was wrong.” The students realized they couldn’t do it. She taught them that “conviction is not the same as understanding. You can believe with everything you have that your view of the world is right and still be missing something essential.” This process was not comfortable, but it laid the foundation for critical thinking.
Justin Phillips (‘00) wrote that she “stretched his worldview through conversations with classmates and herself…The raucous debates, invigorating conversations, and frustrations over her impossible grading standards… taught him that clever was not the same thing as searching for truth or growing in wisdom.” Like McClearan, both continue to use her lessons to teach college students today.
Jay Bush (’98), a minor, wrote that she was not what she was not what he expected from a small Southern Baptist university. She liked to provoke reactions from her conservative students and challenged them to examine their beliefs and be prepared to defend them. He wrote, “Dr. Livingstone did not necessarily care where a student landed ideologically, so long as that position was thoughtfully reasoned. The ability to evaluate information, solve problems, and make decisions based on logical reasoning and objective analysis is a vital skill in any field. These are qualities that, at times, seem in short supply in contemporary politics.” He concluded that Dr. Livingstone best prepared him for his work in law and politics.
Besides being a great teacher, she modeled grace in the face of struggle. She went through a difficult divorce and, like many women, showed her strength of character by starting over. She moved her two daughters to Great Britain, where she pursued a Ph.D. in International Relations at the University of Keele. This experience helped her empathize with those less fortunate and reminded students that they may struggle in her class, but that struggling through difficulty is part of life. For her female students, especially, she was a role model for persevering with grace.
Dr. Evans thought one of the best things Ann did was teach her students to dream. She did not want students to settle for an ordinary life. She wanted her students to do extraordinary things and challenged them to aim high. Consequently, she structured her classes around values like justice to broaden their sense of what was possible.
Dr. Evans also enjoyed playing practical jokes on Livingstone. In the 2004 election, he and Phillip Ryan, the former Linguistics professor, taped a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker to her car. She unknowingly drove around Jackson with the bumper sticker for 1-2 weeks. Then one day, she was bending down to feed her cat and noticed the bumper sticker. The next day, she barged into his office half mad and half laughing, slapped the bumper sticker on his desk, said, “I believe you misplaced this!” and stormed out of the office.
To honor Ann Livingstone, the department has adopted a tree in Union’s arboretum. When Union started removing trees to build the new chapel, we knew she would be a Lorax speaking for the trees. Therefore, we sponsored the relocation of a Japanese Bloodgood Maple tree to the teaching garden on the east side of White Hall, where generations of students and faculty can rest, reflect, and prepare to make a difference in other students or the broader community.