John Herz, 97, scholar on law

WASHINGTON -- John H. Herz, a scholar of international relations and law and one of a number of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who found positions at historically black colleges and universities, died Dec. 26 of congestive heart failure at his home in Scarsdale, N.Y. He was 97.

Dr. Herz was born in Dusseldorf, Germany, and received a doctorate from the University of Cologne in 1931. In 1938, he published ''The National Socialist Doctrine of International Law," a book warning about Nazi aims and intentions. He published it under a pseudonym, Eduard Bristler, and managed to immigrate to the United States soon afterward.

He found a position in 1939 with the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University through the assistance of Abraham Flexner, a founder of the institute. He remained there until 1941.

Unable to land a faculty position at a large university, he found a haven at Howard University. In 1941, Ralph Bunche, then chairman of the political science department, hired Dr. Herz as a government instructor. ''From his own experience of discrimination, [Bunche] had special understanding for refugees like my wife and myself," Dr. Herz wrote in a self-published memoir titled ''On Human Survival."

In a 1994 letter to the editor published in The New York Times, Dr. Herz wrote: ''The helping hand stretched out by black colleges and black scholars should not be forgotten at a time when, alas, Jewish-black relations have become strained. I will forever remember in gratitude."

His experience was among those featured in the documentary ''From Swastika to Jim Crow: Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges."

While at Howard, he wrote ''Political Realism and Political Idealism," which won the 1951 Woodrow Wilson Prize awarded as the outstanding book in political science for that year.