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Ernest Harold Swayze Jr. , known professionally as Harold Swayze, graduated from Reed College in Portland with his B.A. and received his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard in Political Science. In addition to these degrees, Swayze studied Russian Studies at Middlebury, Harvard, Balliol College, and Oxford. While he was a student, he received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1952, scholarships and teaching fellowships at Harvard, a Ford Foundation fellowship at Harvard in 1956, a Julia Henry fellowship for Oxford in 1954, and finally a Guggenheim fellowship to study at Yale. Swayze also won a grant from the United States State Department to study at Moscow University from 1958-1959.

In 1962, Swayze wrote “Political Control of Literature in the USSR, 1946-1959” which is a standard work in the study on Soviet era literature. After working at Smith College and the University of Michigan, Swayze became a professor at the University of Washington in 1963 as a professor of Slavic Languages and Literature.

Apart from his academic career, Swayze was also an accomplished musician after studying at the Boston Conservatory of Music in both 1952 and 1953. From 1945 to 1948, he played piano for the Portland Junior Symphony and played chamber music at Reed College as well as playing music while at Harvard. Ernest Harold Swayze Jr. passed away in Seattle in 1991. The Slavic Language and Literatures Department established the E. Harold Swayze Graduate Fellowship Fund to continue research in the field and funds students’ travel.