Richard A Arenberg

Richard Alan Arenberg, beloved husband, father, and grandfather, public servant, and educator, passed away on Friday, October 9 in his home. He was 80 years old. He had a distinguished career, first in the Senate and later as a professor of the practice at Brown University, and took enormous pride in his family.

Rich was born in Norwich, Connecticut on October 16, 1945. He was the cherished first child of Bernard and Mary Arenberg, later followed by his two loving sisters, Linda and Cherri. Bernie worked in his father’s tailor shop when Rich was young and from these humble beginnings eventually became Vice President of the men’s clothing brand Dickies. With his parents’ work ethic, Jewish identity, and self-made success instilled in him from a young age, Rich became the first in his family to go to college. He followed a pre-med track at Boston University, and trained in a surgical hospital in Boston, but ultimately decided that he wasn’t interested in medical school and would rather pursue his growing passion in political activism. He was in firm opposition to the Vietnam war and he worked as a community organizer while completing a stint in the Army Reserves as an alternative to being deployed.

Rich went on to complete his master’s degree in political science, and had just begun work on a PhD dissertation when his plans were interrupted by an opportunity to work on the fledgling congressional campaign of Paul Tsongas. Then a young lawyer from Lowell, Massachusetts, Tsongas was running as an extreme long-shot, but Rich was energized by working for a candidate with whom he was so ideologically aligned. When, against all odds and on the winds of post-Watergate reform in Washington, Tsongas ended up winning the campaign, all plans to return to the PhD were abandoned. Rich began what would be a thirty-four-year career in Washington DC. After two terms in Congress, Tsongas ran another long-shot campaign for Senate, which he also won, and Rich followed him to the institution that would occupy his attention to the end of his life, and which defined his career. Over the next 30 years, Rich served under two more senators, George Mitchell of Maine, who became Majority Leader in 1989, and Carl Levin of Michigan. He was especially proud of working for men whom he considered to be principled and fundamentally good. He upheld a firm set of ethical principles that he stood by his whole career in proximity to power. During his time in the Senate, some of his standout accomplishments were his work on the Alaska Lands Act preserving wilderness in Alaska, his work on the Iran-Contra Committee investigating the covert arms-for-hostages deal to support the Contras during the Reagan administration, and his work as Special Assistant for National Security Affairs under George Mitchell. When he left the Senate in 2009, Senator Carl Levin wrote a tribute to Rich in the Congressional Record, in which he praised his work on preserving the Great Lakes, and put special emphasis on his role as a mentor to junior staffers in his final position as Levin’s deputy chief-of-staff.

Around the time most people begin considering retirement, Rich embarked on a second career in higher education. In 2009, upon leaving Washington, he fulfilled what had become a decades-long dream of passing on what he had learned about the on-the-ground workings of government at the federal level. Beginning with classes across three universities in the greater Boston area, Rich eventually dedicated himself exclusively to Brown University where he taught courses on Congress, the presidency, and political polarization. In both packed lecture halls and intimate seminar rooms, Rich’s classes were prized and popular. He relished his role as a professor and mentor, often bragging about the successes of his students and how much he loved helping these smart and eager young people to make sense of the often tumultuous politics of our times. He also authored two books during these years – the first, the award-winning Defending The Filibuster: The Soul of the Senate, written with Robert Dove and published in 2012, highlighted his lifelong love of the Senate and its traditions and procedures. A treatise on the importance of the filibuster rule to the Senate as an institution and to the protection of minority rights, the book argued for its preservation as a stabilizing force in our democracy. He would go on to make this case in many media appearances and interviews over the subsequent years. In 2018, Rich was named Visiting Professor of the Practice of Political Science and Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs at Brown University’s Watson Institute, a title that he shared with prominent diplomats and former officials, largely on the back of his extensive experience in the Senate. From July 2020 to July 2021 he served as the interim director of the Taubman Center for American Politics.

Despite his impressive career, Rich’s greatest pride was always his family. In 1973, he married Jane Kenworthy and they had their first son Joshua in 1976. In 1979, his daughter Meg was born, during the final negotiations of the Alaska Lands Act, and Senator Tsongas famously stopped a speech in committee to give Rich a cigar, referring to Meg as the “Alaska Baby.” Their son Ned was born in 1982, after the family moved into a house in Alexandria, Virginia that would be the family home for the next thirteen years. A quiet, suburban block where the kids could walk to their elementary school and ride their bikes to the Seven-Eleven for Slurpees. Rich served on the board of Tauxemont Preschool where the three kids attended, and Burgundy Farm School, which ran the camp where all three children spent summers, and where Meg would eventually meet her husband. This home would also host Rich’s long list of hobbies and passions. It saw the laundry room converted into a darkroom for photography, the study to house his antique clock collection, and later multiple Stairmasters that he would ride until they broke in half. The walls were lined with antique wood and glass book shelves filled with the biographies and political commentaries of a voracious reader and the family computer was the site of endless number crunching of fitness data and early video games with his children. From here he would train for his first of many marathons, in a time when this was still quite a niche interest.

After Rich and Jane decided to part ways, Rich relocated to the small town of Churchton, Maryland, on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and eventually reconnected with his high school sweetheart, Linda Baron, who he would forever forth refer to as the love of his life. They were truly inseparable, even when they would have to split their time between the Churchton house and Linda’s home in Pembroke, Massachusetts. Their reconnection was also a joyous introduction to Linda’s daughter Gigi, who he would consider his daughter as well, and who would give them their grandsons, Ethan and Owen. Linda and Rich were married in 1997 at a small ceremony in Senator Levin’s office in the U.S. Capitol. After his retirement from the Senate, they would move permanently to that Pembroke house, set in an idyllic location in the woods, from where he would make the long commute to Providence and his work at Brown, but also close enough to the city for the occasional trip to Fenway Park to see his beloved Red Sox. In Pembroke, Linda and Rich would foster a love for dogs, first breeding cocker spaniels, then providing a home to golden retrievers and goldendoodles. Rich took endless pleasure in walking them around the local cranberry bogs and letting them chase squirrels and soccer balls around their yard. In 2017, his grandson Noah was born, a truly joyous event for him, and he would travel to Oregon to visit or have them to Pembroke as often as he could. Noah shared his father Ned’s love for sports, and the three of them loved to shoot hoops together. Despite the fact that he would never settle into a classic retirement, his life in Pembroke, his family, and his teaching at Brown made him immensely happy and content.

Rich is survived by his wife Linda, his children Joshua (Mai Lara Tisdale), Meg (Jonas Ehudin), Ned (Jill Sweney) and Georgina Segal (Brent), his grandchildren Noah, Ethan, and Owen, and his sister Cherri Brooks. He was preceded by his sister Linda and his parents Mary and Bernard.

A memorial service will be held at the Sullivan Funeral Home 551 Washington St.(Rte 53), Hanover, on Thursday, October 22nd at 2pm. Burial will be private.