‘The world has lost an icon’: Beloved FIU professor, dean dies. There from early days
John F. Stack Jr. arrived at Florida International University in 1976, four years after the Miami-Dade public university first opened its doors in 1972, when the university was housed in two makeshift buildings on an abandoned airfield and barely served 10,000 students.
Fast forward nearly 50 years, Stack, who died Thursday morning at 71, leaves behind a far different FIU, one boasting two sprawling campuses and about 56,000 students.
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As one of its earliest faculty members, Stack impacted FIU. He served as the founding dean of the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs, and founding director of the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy. He helped open the College of Law. He taught and mentored thousands.
“He was a legend, an institution at FIU,” said Frank Mora, director and professor of the FIU Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center who first met Stack in 1991 and has worked directly with him since 2013.
Stack’s two sisters survive him: Nancy Stack Savoie, who works at FIU’s human resources division, and Pam Stack, who retired from FIU in 2015. Stack, who passed away about two years after a rare diagnosis of peritoneal cancer, which affects the tissue lining the abdomen, never married or had kids.
“I think his spouse was FIU and his children were FIU students,” said FIU President Kenneth Jessell.
A scholar with a funny side
Stack grew up in Brockton, Massachusetts, said Nancy Stack Savoie. His parents never attended college, but instilled in him and his two sisters a love for learning, often reading to them Shakespeare and other classics.
Stack earned a bachelor’s from Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, as well as a master’s and doctorate in international studies from the University of Denver in Colorado. In the later part of his life, he attended the University of Miami School of Law at night and graduated with a law degree.
During his career, he wrote or co-wrote 13 books, plus multiple papers.
Stack moved to South Florida in the late 70s because he saw an ad for an instructor of political science and applied. He took the train south — but only after calling FIU to confirm he would get at least an interview, because he lacked money and couldn’t waste the train fare.
He got the gig. Then he became professor and chair, and kept rising.
Jessell, who joined FIU in 2009 and has known Stack since, remembers stopping by Stack’s office and sitting on his rocking chair just to snap a selfie and bug Stack: “I’m so glad you’re not here so I can enjoy this beautiful chair,” he would tell him.
“He’d always write something funny back,” Jessell said. “He had a very good sense of humor.”
Mora also enjoyed teasing Stack.
“John sometimes had a short temper, and when I saw it coming at me, I’d say, ‘Hey John, come on, John, please don’t go all Latino on me,’” recalls Mora, a Cuban American. “And he would always say, ‘No, there’s no difference between a Cuban and an Irish, in terms of temper.”
Nancy said she appreciated how her older brother and best friend could both command a classroom and chase her around the pool with a hose.
“He was a serious scholar, but also had a funny side,” she said. “The world has lost an icon.”
“I miss him like crazy,” she added, crying.
Championed FIU’s program on a national stage
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a former visiting professor of politics at FIU, lamented the loss.
“I am deeply saddened by the passing of my friend John F. Stack,” Rubio said in a written statement to the Herald. “He was an incredibly passionate professor and made an impact on the lives of so many students. He served the university and the community with great honor.”
Orlando Pérez, one of those students touched by Stack who is the dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of North Texas at Dallas, took Stack’s course on American foreign policy during his senior year, back in 1989.
He described him as engaging and rigorous, as well as his role model.
“He was certainly somebody that I looked up to and admired,” he said.
Perhaps Stack’s most important influence on students came through Model UN, a simulation program about diplomacy, international relations and the United Nations that teaches critical thinking and debate skills. Stack stepped up as the group’s adviser, training and traveling with his students.
For more than a decade, FIU has placed among the top five among all universities in the U.S. In 2019, the team was named No. 1 — a first in the program’s 34-year history.
‘He always looked for the best in other people’
Stack worked as professor and dean until he died. FIU will soon name an interim dean of the Green school and start a national search for Stack’s permanent successor this fall, Jessell said.
The university will soon announce an event to celebrate Stack’s legacy. His family asked for donations to the John F. Stack, Jr. First Generation Scholarship Fund, in lieu of flowers.
The family will hold visitation from 4 to 8 p.m. July 7 at Stanfill Funeral Home, 10545 S. Dixie Hwy. The funeral Mass will take place at 11 a.m. July 8 at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary – St. Richard, 7500 S.W. 152 St., Palmetto Bay. The interment will follow at Our Lady of Mercy Cemetery, 11411 NW 25th St., Doral.
Jessell praised Stack’s “can-do attitude.” When the state Legislature didn’t provide all of the money needed for the second building of the Green school, expected to open next spring, which lead to a $2.5 million deficit for the construction project, Stack fundraised until he got the rest.
Nancy, who often accompanied her brother to his medical appointments, said Stack, despite confessing at times he felt fear, kept his optimism up until the end.
She loved that about him — his ability to point out the good in situations and, more importantly, in others.
“He believed in the power of pausing and thinking. He had a good way of processing and said there’s always a good side; he always looked for the best in other people,” she said. “He always wanted to create a better world.”
This story was originally published June 24, 2022 at 7:18 PM.
