Dr. Mike Reese explains Republican senators’ option to implement the “nuclear option.” Photo by Dr. Carl D. Cavalli.

The Political Science Student Association dedicated its March 29 Crossfire event on the Dahlonega campus to Dr. K. Michael Reese, professor of criminal justice who was about to retire after 23 years at NGCSU and UNG.

In his honor, the association selected a public-law topic for the discussion‑‑“The Supreme Court and the ‘Nuclear Option’”‑‑and invited Dr. Reese to address the attendees.  Dr. Reese explained that the appointment of a U. S. Supreme Court justice has enormous implications for the American legal and political systems, so that emotions were running heatedly among the members of the U. S. Senate who decide whether to confirm a president’s appointee.  President Donald Trump’s appointment of Neil M. Gorsuch, who had been serving as a judge on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, elicited so much controversy and emotion that Democratic senators adhered to their filibuster strategy and Republican senators voted on April 6 to eliminate filibusters thereinafter in the case of Supreme Court appointments, as Dr. Reese anticipated.

In 1994, Dr. Reese joined the faculty of the Department of Social Sciences, which would soon divide into the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice and the Department of History and Sociology, and since then taught many political-science students about public law and judicial process.  The Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice divided in 2012 into separate political-science and criminal-justice departments.  His courses were very popular among students in both majors, and Dr. Reese has been acclaimed over the years as an outstanding teacher and faculty advisor.  In 2010, he received NGCSU’s award of merit for the faculty member who models one of the university’s core values; Dr. Reese was honored for emulating the core value of wisdom.  Among his other honors is a leadership award presented to him on April 7 by the UNG Circle of the Omicron Delta Kappa leadership honor society.  A productive scholar, he is one of the authors of the PSIA department’s popular American-government textbook, The Basics of American Government.

The Crossfire event in his honor attracted a crowd that filled the Young Social Science Center’s lobby.  The discussion topic stimulated the attendees’ appetites, as revealed by their consumption of a total of 8 feet of Subway sandwiches.

Dr. Reese has bravely battled prostate cancer since 2011 and, in doing so, has been a model of courage and determination for members of the UNG and Lumpkin County communities.  He has served as the honorary chairman for the “Relay for Life” fund-raising effort in Dahlonega for the American Cancer Society.  His colleagues and students wish Dr. Reese a peaceful, comforting, and rewarding retirement and honor him, his cherished wife Susan, and his children on this sentimental occasion.