Essays originally submitted as a discussion in H-Diplo's Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum on July 31, 2024. Below are some excerpts to serve as a collective memory of the impact he had on academia and his colleagues.  The full tribute can be found through this link: A Tribute to the Scholarship and Legacy of Bear Braumoeller. 

It is an unfortunate honor to write a remembrance of someone like Bear. Unfortunate, of course, because we have lost a great colleague and friend. But it is an honor because it allows us to recall how fortunate we have been to have his influence enrich our lives. Not everyone we encounter makes a lasting impact on us—or cares to when they can. Bear seized these opportunities to lift up the people around him and build a community. His generosity and openness made the field a better place to work, and he encouraged us to be better versions of ourselves in the process.  -  Andrew Goodhart, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Bear’s model of advising did not simply identify problems in your work, but would solve them for you with an idea that was often totally off-the-wall. Long after I graduated, I would still come back to Bear whenever I had a problem with a paper that I couldn’t figure out, and he would solve it for me. -  Joshua D. Kertzer, Harvard University

How can something be a loss if it doesn’t exist yet? Isn’t there enough to grieve when you lose a friend? It’s not that people can’t think without Bear. His advisees continue to impress and surprise the discipline, let alone me, with all that they do. But there are many conversations that would have gone differently if we could have turned and said, what do you think, Bear? Maybe he’d laugh and say, “Well I don’t know!” Or maybe he’d say, “Oh! it’s just like this,” and then give a long, seemingly rambling but super precise example of, say, a French war that ties it all together. Then we’d go back and forth, and modify our priors, and experiment with different propositions, and end up in a new thinking space. It’s those lost conversations, and the places a conversation might have gone. The other day David and I reminisced about “Relation-Based Modelling for a Feminist Social Science.” “We should do it! Let’s get Kara and go back to that!” Then a hiccup of silence, imagining Bear’s joy at pulling that “misfit toy” into the lab. -  Jennifer Mitzen, Ohio State University

It was a joyful reunion where Bear got to meet new research connections and friends in Oslo, and we caught up about the MESO lab and his various projects. I did not know at the time that it was goodbye, but the evening exemplified everything that made Bear a great friend beyond an academic powerhouse: he was larger than life, intellectually serious, devoted to his family and students, and humbly charming to all that crossed his path. He will be sorely missed. - Ayşe Zarakol, University of Cambridge

I met Bear when I was 19. In the 25 years that have passed between now and then he was first my teacher, then my colleague, but, most importantly, he was my friend. He knew me longer than anyone else in this discipline, and played a fundamental role in making me the professor and person I am today. I know that not everyone has someone who comes into their life at a critical point, and who knows how to do and say everything right to help them grow into the person they were meant to be. But Bear was that person for me. And I miss him terribly. - Sarah E. Croco, University of Maryland