What an inauspicious start to a great career. In the fall of 1945 you set out from your home in Wyoming in a decrepit 1936 Chrysler, fueled by the G.l. Bill, to begin your academic work here at Williams. A Moody Fellowship sene you further east for a second B.A. at Oxford. After a Ph.D. in English at Yale, you remained in New Haven to the delight of students and colleagues. There you set the example of a lively and engaged teacher and prolific, much,ciced scholar. Your books and papers expanded understanding of topics from Renaissance literature to the effects of printing on intellectual history. You edited the Yale Edition of Ben Johnson’s work. At the same time, you developed a reputacion for wisdom and integrity and as someone willing to challenge established points of view, often with refreshing wit. You took on important roles in administration-Chairman of the Literature Major, Director of Humanities, Associate Provost, and Acting Provost during the politically tumultuous spring of 1970. Three years later, you moved to Princeton as Professor and Dean of the Graduate School. In that position and subsequently as Director of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities you helped shape a generation of scholars and teachers across the country. You followed the widely read book of your experiences as an enlisted man in the Pacific battles of World War II with one on the slightly less contentious arena of academe. In Plato’s Cave has been called “one of the great American academic memoirs of our time,” which “makes the reader both smile and think.” Your teaching, scholarship, administration, and perhaps most of all your appropriately irreverent candor, have greatly enriched all of higher education.
Megamenu Social