UChicago News

Janellen Huttenlocher, pioneering scholar in childhood development, 1932–2016

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 10:42 -0600

Janellen Huttenlocher, a pioneer in the field of childhood development whose research explored how children acquire language, understand space and learn math, died Nov. 20 in Chicago. She was 84.

The William S. Gray Professor Emeritus in Psychology, Huttenlocher was a researcher, teacher and mentor at the University of Chicago for four decades. Her research delved into a broad range of topics such as categorization, spatial coding and memory—themes scholars continue to explore. It was marked by groundbreaking work on the role of environment in the development of language skills, including the importance of parents talking to their young children often and in complex sentences.

“Janellen was a big ideas person and had a lot of influence because of that,” said Susan Levine, the Rebecca Anne Boylan Professor of Education and Society, who worked closely with Huttenlocher. “She was a pioneer in early childhood research, including her work on language development and the effects of parents.”

Huttenlocher’s impact in the field of psychology included co-authoring the books Making Space: The Development of Spatial Representation and Reasoning and Quantitative Development in Infancy and Early Childhood, as well as publishing hundreds of research articles. Her scholarship spanned 60 years from her first publication in 1956 to her last in 2015.

Her work on the role of environment in the development of language skills carry on through a multi-year project at UChicago on children and language funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The group of researchers includes Levine, Susan Goldin-Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor; Stephen Raudenbush, the Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor; and Assoc. Prof. Lindsey Richland.

Kelly Mix, AM’93, PhD’95, a former student of Huttenlocher’s who is chair of the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland, said Huttenlocher’s research explored a broad range of topics, but was always marked by a common-sense elegance that provided simple explanations about how children develop.

“I learned so much from watching how she thought about things, how she tackled problems,” Mix said. “Janellen would always say, ‘We came for the truth.’ She didn’t want the data to support what she already was thinking, but rather, reveal what was actually happening.”

‘An eye on both adult and kid’

Huttenlocher was born in Buffalo, N.Y. in 1932. She received her undergraduate education at the University of Buffalo and married Peter Huttenlocher shortly after graduating. The couple, which their family described as best friends, collaborated on research at UChicago, where Peter was a renowned neuroscientist, pediatric neurologist and professor.

Janellen Huttenlocher came to UChicago in 1974 after earnings a master’s and doctorate at Harvard University and serving as a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University.

Over the next four decades, her research explored many topics, including early mathematical thinking in children from different socioeconomic groups and the relationship between exposure and vocabulary and syntactic growth. Her work on mathematical development showed that children form mental models of sets and set transformations, and that learning of number words propelled their understanding. She also found that nonverbal mathematical thinking was much more similar across socioeconomic groups than verbal mathematical thinking.

With respect to language, Huttenlocher found that the more a parent spoke to a child, the more the child’s vocabulary grew. Her research also found that speaking in complex sentences rather than simple ones is important for the development of children’s language comprehension.

More broadly, Huttenlocher’s work challenged the idea a child’s ability to learn is driven primarily by inherited traits. In one example, her research found that children’s ability to learn fluctuates depending on whether they were spending time in school during the school year or out of school during the summer months. The work was cited as an argument for year-round schooling.

“She was really ahead of her time in wanting to understand childhood development and adult cognition,” said Nora Newcombe, the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University, who collaborated with Huttenlocher in researching spatial development and spatial cognition. “She always kept an eye on both adult and kid. Even today they are very separate worlds.”

Besides her prolific career as a researcher, Huttenlocher helped draw top psychology scholars to UChicago and mentored and taught many students, influencing new generations of psychologists who are on the faculty at universities and colleges across the country. Even into retirement, she remained an active research collaborator and frequently attended colloquia and the weekly developmental seminar in UChicago’s Department of Psychology.

Newcombe described Huttenlocher as having a keen mind and a love of classical music and the arts. She also was deeply devoted to her children.

Huttenlocher was preceded in death by her husband. She is survived by her children: Daniel, Anna and husband Andrew, Carl and wife Tami, and six grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Jan. 28 at Montgomery Place, 5550 S. Shore Drive, Chicago. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the University of Chicago Department of Psychology.

Charles E. Bidwell, scholar who studied sociology of education, 1932-2016

Thu, 17 Nov 2016 16:15 -0600

Charles E. Bidwell, an influential sociologist and former chair of the Departments of Education and Sociology at the University of Chicago, died Nov. 6. He was 84.

Bidwell, AB’50, AM’53, PhD’56, whose time as student and teacher at the University spanned seven decades, was the William Claude Reavis Professor Emeritus. His research focused on the organization of educational institutions and how decisions are made, from the classroom to the community level. He chaired the Department of Education for a decade and later chaired the Department of Sociology. Bidwell also served as editor of the American Journal of Sociology and American Journal of Education.

“Charles Bidwell influenced the thinking of a generation of sociology of education scholars in significant ways,” said Sara Ray Stoelinga, AB’95, PhD’04, the Sara Liston Spurlark Director of the Urban Education Institute and a former student of Bidwell. “But the essence of Charles to me were the values he brought to his daily work: his deep commitment to the mentoring of students and faculty, his integrity and high standards, and his kindness.”

Bidwell’s son Charles L. Bidwell said his father’s interest in sociology took root while a student at the University’s Laboratory Schools when he did a project on the Tennessee Valley Authority. As a boy, Charles remembers driving around Chicago with his father, who would tell him stories about the neighborhoods and how they were changing.

“He was best storyteller I ever knew,” Charles said. “My Dad was fascinated by people and so intrigued by the way the city developed, its ethnic mix and all the standards, practices and values that groups brought to the city and how they interacted and mixed.”

Bidwell was born on Jan. 24, 1932 in Chicago. His initial connection to the University was through his mother, Eugenia Bidwell, who was a graduate of the Class of 1924. He graduated from the Laboratory Schools and enrolled at the University as a 14-year-old under a program created by then-President Robert M. Hutchins.

Bidwell received his bachelor’s degree in 1950 followed by a master’s and a doctorate from the University in 1953 and 1956, respectively. He was drafted in 1957 and spent two years as a researcher and speechwriter in Army headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he met his wife Helen. Bidwell was recruited to Harvard University by famed sociologist Talcott Parsons. But after two years there, he found the lure of Chicago to be strong and joined UChicago in 1961 as an assistant professor.

Bidwell spent the next four decades at the University. Edward O. Laumann, the George H. Mead Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology, remembered his friend as incredibly bright and curious. He loved debating ideas, but never raised his voice and was the consummate gentleman.

“He was an exemplar of much of what we talk about today at the University around diversity, freedom of inquiry, and a willingness to pursue ideas and not celebrate petty wins,” Laumann said. “In his work, Charles was interested in trying to understand something so people could make it more successful, more effective.”

Bidwell’s scholarship has had considerable influence on the sociology of education, beginning with his seminal 1965 chapter, The School as a Formal Organization. Drawing upon and extending Willard Waller’s Sociology of Teaching, Bidwell built a series of scholarly works which sought to understand the motivations of the variety of actors in and around schools within the layered contexts of classrooms, schools, districts and the larger society. His work is known for its attention to micro-level factors, mechanisms that shape organizational behavior and evolution, and broad theoretical applications to other organizational forms.

Bidwell’s work reignited interest in the application of formal organizational theory to schools, influencing the thinking of a generation of scholars focused on the sociology of education. Later in his career, Bidwell extended his exploration of the formal organization of the school into inquiries that considered the work of teachers within schools and classrooms in more detail, drawing upon a variety of methods from grounded theory, to qualitative data collection, to social network analysis.

Bidwell shaped the Department of Education after the closure of the University’s School of Education, recruiting and retaining top scholars as chairman. He presided over the hiring of professors in economics, sociology, psychology and statistics, seeking a comprehensive research approach to education. He executed a similar strategy in the Department of Sociology, hiring six faculty who became the core of a new generation of Chicago sociology.

Bidwell was deeply involved as a teacher and mentor, chairing 39 dissertations and serving on another 30 committees in sociology alone. His students teach at major universities and serve in research centers focused on education.

Bidwell’s honors included the American Sociological Association’s Willard Waller Award, which recognizes distinguished scholarly contributions to the field of sociology of education.

Bidwell is survived by his son and daughter-in-law Rebecca Mullen and two grandchildren, Andrew and Emma. He is preceded in death by his wife. A memorial service will be held at a later date.

Lloyd Rudolph, leading scholar and teacher of South Asia, 1927-2016

Mon, 18 Jan 2016 12:00 -0600

Editor’s note: A memorial service for Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph will be held Nov. 12 at 1:30 p.m. in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel

Lloyd Rudolph, professor emeritus of political science, died Jan. 16, in Oakland, Calif. of prostate cancer. He was 88.

He had a long and distinguished career at UChicago, almost entirely in collaboration with his wife, Prof. Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, who died in December 2015. In 2014, the Rudolphs jointly received the Padma Bhushan Award, one of India’s highest civilian honors. The award recognizes distinguished service of a high order to the nation of India in any field.

“When it comes to thinking about contemporary India, one misses political analysts of the caliber of Lloyd and Susanne,” said colleague Dipesh Chakrabarty, the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations.

The Rudolphs had the capacity to express academic criticism of Indian politics in a way that communicated their concerns for the country—a trait that Charkabarty said he admired.

“They undertook their scholarly work in a true spirit of generosity,” Chakrabarty said. “They were almost proud of what they saw as the achievements of Indian democracy while being critical of what they saw as its shortcomings. They, unlike many other external observers, did not make Indians feel defensive about their nation, and that was one reason why they were deeply respected by Indian leaders and scholars,” Chakrabarty said.

The Rudolphs also were known for encouraging other South Asian scholars in a variety of disciplines, and sought to integrate into their work the insights provided by social science scholarship from outside political science.

“I was often surprised to find that they had actually read some of my historical essays and wanted to discuss them with me,” Chakrabarty said.

Rudolph’s research and teaching focused on institutional political economy, state formation, South Asian comparative politics, and Gandhian thought and practice. The Rudolphs co-authored or co-edited eight books together, starting with The Modernity of Tradition (1967), a seminal formulation of the problem of tradition and modernity that has shaped the study of India past and present over the last 50 years.

“The Modernity of Tradition turned out to be one of the most enduring interpretations of modernization of Indian society,” Chakrabarty said. “At a time when reigning theories of the 1950s blamed the so-called backwardness of India on the tenacity of her ‘traditional’ institutions like caste, the Rudolphs showed how traditional-seeming institutions had actually morphed through the colonial period to take on functions that one could only see as ‘modern.’”

Their later work on Indian capitalism, Gandhi and other topics were similarly informed by a deep sensitivity to India’s specific history and culture, he said.

Their other books include Education and Politics in India (co-editors, 1972), The Regional Imperative: The Administration of U.S. Foreign Policy Towards South Asian States (co-editors and contributing authors, 1980, reissued in 2007); Gandhi: The Traditional Roots of Charisma (1983); Essays on Rajputana (1984); and In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State (1987).

More recently they published Reversing the Gaze: The Amar Singh Diary, a Colonial Subject’s Narrative of Imperial India (2000, 2005); and Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays (2006).

In 2008, the Oxford University Press published a three-volume, career-spanning collection of the Rudolphs’ writings entitled Explaining Indian Democracy: A Fifty-Year Perspective.

Lloyd Rudolph also edited or co-edited and contributed to Cultural Politics in India (1984); The Idea of Rajasthan (1994), and Experiencing the State (2006).

In 2002, the Rudolphs co-delivered the University’s Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture, during which they reflected on their intellectual lives and work together. The faculty selects each Ryerson Lecturer based on a consensus that a particular scholar has made research contributions of lasting significance.

Lloyd Irving Rudolph was born in Chicago on Nov. 1, 1927, and grew up in Chicago and Elgin. His mother, Bertha M. Rudolph, was co-operator of the Allied Shoe Company and a leading Hyde Park real estate owner and manager. After graduating from Elgin High School, he was appointed a cadet at West Point in 1945, but resigned his commission to attend Harvard University, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1948. From Harvard he also earned a master of public administration degree in 1950, and a PhD in political science in 1956. He married Susanne Hoeber Rudolph in 1952.

In 1956, the Rudolphs drove a Land Rover from Austria to New Delhi, their first trip to India, launching an almost 60-year partnership studying the country. In 2014, they published an account of that journey, Destination India.

Rudolph joined the Harvard faculty with Susanne in 1957, where they remained until their appointment to the UChicago political science faculty in 1964. At the University he served as chair of the Committee on International Relations and the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences and as chair of concentrations in political science, public policy, international studies and South Asian studies in the College. In 1999, Rudolph received UChicago’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching. He retired as professor emeritus in 2002 along with Susanne.

The Rudolphs were famous for co-teaching courses, and they often lectured together. “They have been so deeply entwined with each other’s thinking and work that it becomes impossible to separate them, even though they each wrote and thought separately,” said Philip Oldenburg, PhD’74, an adjunct associate professor of political science at Columbia University. Oldenburg said that Lloyd was his mentor but treated him as a junior colleague from his first year in graduate school.

He recalled that the Rudolphs would often invite world-famous scholars, tenured colleagues and selected graduate students to social events at their home. “These were gatherings where conversation flowed across the reputation/experience barriers, and where serious discussions melded with conviviality,” Oldenburg said.

Together, the Rudolphs served on the defense committees of approximately 300 students. “The Rudolphs were generous with their time, ideas and resources,” said Kamal Sadiq, PhD’03, an associate professor of political science at University of California, Irvine, who had both Lloyd and Susanne as his advisors. Sadiq remembers fondly how a 15-minute meeting with Susanne would frequently flow into an extended meeting with Lloyd in the neighboring office.

“Soon both the Rudolphs were in an animated exchange over my dissertation. A multitude of concepts and facts were examined, and I would emerge smiling and enthused about the research ahead,” Sadiq said.

Lloyd Rudolph’s family had strong UChicago ties. Both of his brothers attended the University. His older brother Robert, X’46, MBA’54, died in 2012. His younger brother Wallace, AB’50, JD’53, was a professor and dean at two law schools. He practices law in Florida.

“As a University of Chicago PhD myself, I always felt inspired by both Lloyd and Susanne,” said nephew Alexander L. Rudolph, PhD’88, professor of physics and astronomy at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. “I saw them as the model of what an academic can be in a very old-school way, meaning that as a compliment. I also feel a certain pride in having received my PhD from their institution, albeit in a different field.”

The Rudolphs were active in the “Perestroika” movement in political science, a movement that challenged the idea that objective truth had to be divorced from time, place and circumstances. The Rudolphs vigorously promoted the value of area studies to scholarship.

In 2003, the Rudolphs’ colleagues convened a three-day UChicago conference in their honor, titled “Area Studies Redux: Situating Knowledge in a Globalizing World.” The conference, coming less than two years after the 9/11 tragedy, focused on the need to better understand other cultures, the role regions play in world politics, and the significance of “local knowledge” and area studies.

Rudolph received grants or fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, National Science Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies, National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright program.

Rudolph published in scholarly journals such as the American Political Science Review, World Politics, Journal of Asian Studies, Modern Asian Studies, and Daedalus. He also wrote opinion pieces for outlets such as Foreign Affairs, New Republic, New York Times Magazine, New York Times Book Review, Christian Science Monitor and The Nation.

Rudolph is survived by his three children: Jenny, who serves on the faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Amelia, artistic director of Bandaloop, an Oakland, Calif.-based aerial dance company; and Matthew, a political scientist teaching at San Francisco State University; his three grandchildren: Gia (19), Maya (9) and Ry (4); and his younger brother Wallace Rudolph.

Arrangements for a memorial service are pending. Memorials may be made in honor of Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph to the American Institute for Indian Studies.

Terence Turner, anthropologist and human rights advocate for indigenous people, 1935-2015

Tue, 17 Nov 2015 16:15 -0600

Prof. Emeritus Terence Turner, a UChicago anthropologist who did research in the Amazon basin and became a proponent for the rights of indigenous people, died Nov. 7 in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 79.

In 1962 Turner began working among the Kayapo, who live in small villages in central Brazil—returning to the area on an almost annual basis. His research covered topics such as social organization and kinship; myth, ritual and history; political organization and mobilization; values and inter-ethnic relations.

His field work led to an interest in activism for the Kayapo people, who gave Turner the Kayapo name Wakampu during his earliest field visits. His wife, Jane Fajans, a professor of anthropology at Cornell University, said Turner’s activism began when the Brazilian Indian Agency asked him to investigate Brazilian nationals’ incursion into Kayapo territory for both gold mining and poaching. That activism was further fueled around opposition to the Karararao (now Belo Monte) dam in the mid 1980s, she added.

“Terry Turner was both a brilliant theoretical thinker about the nature of social systems and an indefatigable ally of the indigenous people among whom he worked as an ethnographer—the Kayapo people of Brazil,” said Michael Silverstein, the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology at UChicago.

“Increasingly he became a champion of the rights of the Kayapo and other indigenous peoples—not merely to survive, but to negotiate ways of flourishing as participants in the contemporary world,” Silverstein added.

Activism grows out of commitment to anthropology

In his field work, Turner saw the work of missionaries, loggers, miners and ranchers encroaching upon the Kayapo way of life. While a British TV crew was filming a documentary series in 1987 on disappearing cultures, he encouraged the Kayapo to trade access to their villages for the use of camera equipment, which they used to record their way of life.

“Terry’s activism grew organically out of his commitment to anthropology,” said Prof. Adam Smith, chair of anthropology at Cornell University. “It was his long-term relationship with the Kayapo that created the kind of trust that could lead to initiatives like the video project. Terry’s thoughtful approach offers an enduring lesson for scholars and activists alike.”

He helped encourage the Kayapo’s front-line activism in the global movement to protect the Amazon rainforest. In 1990, he founded the Kayapo Video Project to provide the community with film equipment and production training. This ongoing project will be honored in December with a United Nations Equator Prize at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris.

In addition, Turner was a translator for a delegation of Kayapo who joined Cree people from Canada in 1992 at a conference to talk about the problems indigenous people were having with electrical power developments that threatened their environment.

Silverstein said that Turner’s “devotion was returned in the most touching and heartfelt expressions of respect by his Kayapo and other allies.” In a recent letter to Turner, the Kayapo community’s leadership wrote: “You are a great warrior that taught us so much…and fought so hard for the Kayapo…Thank you for sharing your book of life with us and letting us be part of a beautiful chapter written with trust and friendship. To you, Wakampu, all of our respect and admiration.”

A closer look at the Kayapo

Born Dec. 30, 1935 in Philadelphia, Turner received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1957, a master’s in 1959 from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in 1965 in social anthropology from Harvard.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 1968 after serving as a research associate at the Museo Nacional do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro and as a visiting assistant professor of social anthropology at Cornell University. In 1982, he was named professor at Chicago. He retired in 1999 and became an adjunct and later visiting professor in anthropology at Cornell.

“He was an extraordinarily charismatic colleague, and one of the most intellectually gifted members of the (UChicago) Anthropology department,” said John Comaroff, a former UChicago colleague who is now a professor at Harvard.

“His are among some of the best essays written in late-20th-century anthropology,” said Comaroff. He hailed Turner’s “The Social Skin,” which analyzed the significance of body decoration among the Kayapo, as “an inspirational piece—one of many that combined a conceptual tour de force with a deep respect for thick description.”

A full version of “The Social Skin” was published in 1980 in the book, Not Work Alone. In an article published on the topic in 1979 in the magazine New Scientist, Turner explained how the way people choose to dress communicates meaning.

He pointed out that while adult Kayapo men wear little clothing, they adorn their bodies with paint and lip plugs. “A closer look at Kayapo bodily ornament discloses that the apparently naked savage just described is as fully covered in a fabric of cultural meaning as the most elaborately draped Victorian lady or gentleman,” Turner wrote in the New Scientist.

Turner was the president of Survival International U.S.A., a group that advocates for indigenous people, and a founding member of the American Anthropological Association’s Ethics and Human Rights Committees. In 1998, he received the Association’s Solon T. Kimball Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Application of Anthropology to Human Rights and Development Issues.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by daughters Vanessa Fajans-Turner and Allison Fajans-Turner; sister Allison K. Turner; and sister-in-law Anne M. Turner.

Philip W. Jackson, education scholar committed to children’s flourishing, 1928-2015

Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:40 -0500

As a leader in the field of education and curriculum studies, Philip W. Jackson was deeply concerned with the role of schools in the moral development of children.

“He believed in creating school experiences that provided children access to wonderful lives,” said Catharine Bell, PhD’07, Jackson’s former doctoral student and friend, “because he believed children have the capacity to see the wonderful in the ordinary.”

Jackson, the David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Education, Psychology and the College, died July 21 due to complications from cancer. He was 86.

The author of several influential books, he was internationally known as an expert on education pioneer John Dewey. In addition to his faculty appointment at the University, Jackson served in prominent administrative roles at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.

Jackson joined the UChicago faculty in 1955 after earning his PhD in developmental psychology from Columbia University’s Teachers College. He served as dean of the Graduate School of Education and chairman of the Department of Education from 1973-75, when the graduate school was merged with the department. He continued as chairman after the merger until 1978.

Throughout his career, Jackson was involved in a number of critical research studies. Trained as a psychometrician, his early work, Creativity and Intelligence (1962), co-authored with J.W. Getzels, relied heavily upon traditional quantitative research methods that were the hallmark of educational psychology at the time.

The two researchers devised tests to measure children’s milestones and famously concluded that high IQ, as measured by tests, was not a mark of giftedness. An October 1960 Time magazine article summed up their findings: “The truly creative child who thrives on novelty is likely to find IQ tests boring and hence do poorly on them.”

‘A BETTER WAY TO UNDERSTAND CHILDREN’

A year’s research leave at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, from 1962-63, changed Jackson’s research trajectory forever. There, he met a primate researcher who described using behaviorist techniques to test and train baboons.

“Phil realized that that’s what he had been doing with children, treating them like animals in a behaviorist paradigm,” said David Hansen, AB’76, PhD’90, the Weinberg Professor in Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College and one of Jackson’s doctoral students during the 1980s. “It was a decisive moment; he realized there’s a better way to understand children, a better way than poking them with sticks.”

Jackson returned to Chicago and shifted to a more anthropological approach. His work Life in Classrooms (1968), based on a year spent observing a fourth-grade classroom, is one of the very first book-length qualitative studies in the field of educational research.

“It is greatly to his intellectual credit that he began to look at classrooms and teaching in a more holistic and imaginative way—one that, among other things, paid attention to the tacit messages that emanated from classrooms and from teachers’ work, matters that had been long ignored,” said Prof. Emeritus Robert Dreeben, Jackson’s colleague at the University for more than three decades.

In 1988, with funding from the Spencer Foundation, Jackson launched a multi-year, field-based research study exploring the role of schools in children’s moral development. Jackson, Hansen and Robert Boostrom, PhD’91, then a doctoral student, observed the classrooms of 18 teachers from six public and private neighborhood schools and brought them together twice a month for dinner followed by open-ended discussion.

“Phil was interested in the positive human influence that the person in the role of teacher can have,” Hansen said. “The discussions were just extraordinary—they were about whatever the teachers wanted to talk about, the most significant and human aspects of being a teacher, the challenging moments and the beautiful moments.”

The study became the book The Moral Life of Schools (1993), which examined the ways that school settings affect children as they develop attitudes about themselves, their education and their society.

Jackson’s influence on the teachers was profound, said Bell, a high school English teacher at the Laboratory Schools who participated in the study and later became one of Jackson’s doctoral students. “[The teachers] decided that ultimately students are always watching, so everything you do has moral content,” Bell said. “As a teacher you have to strive to put on your best self.”

FROM SCHOLAR TO ADMINISTRATOR

Jackson rose to many leadership roles in his field. He served as president of the American Educational Research Association from 1989-90, was a member of the National Academy of Education, and for several years edited the American Journal of Education.

In addition to his career in teaching and research, Jackson spent several years in administration at the Laboratory Schools. He served as principal of the nursery school during the mid- and late-1960s and as director of pre-collegiate education in from 1970-75.

“It wasn’t a path my dad had planned or sought,” said his son David Jackson. “It was something he undertook out of the huge loyalty he felt toward the University and [then-President] Edward Levi.”

During Jackson’s time as director, Lab School teachers pushed for unionization. Jackson found himself caught between his own union sympathies and his duties as an administrator. “He was really in the hot seat, trying to preserve the institution and the school during a tumultuous period,” David said.

David said he would sometimes ask his father if he regretted the years away from teaching and research. “He told me, ‘not at all,’” he recalled. “He said he never could have been the researcher or writer he became if he had not held in his own hands the lives of students, families and teachers in the way a school administrator does. He really absorbed into his bones that profound responsibility.”

‘A force of nature’

Born Dec. 2, 1928, in Vineland, N.J., Jackson was adopted and raised by a family of chicken farmers in rural southern New Jersey. His adoptive parents could not but notice his irrepressible talents, particularly in singing and poetry recitation. At age 6, Jackson began performing a vaudeville act in movie theatres where, between reels, he would recite poems and put on a snake-charmer act, complete with turban, pantaloons and a jersey garden snake coaxed from a basket.

In 1948, Jackson married his high school sweetheart, Josephine D’Andrea, then served six months in the Navy. He had no ambitions of higher education until a fellow sailor encouraged him to attend community college. Jackson enrolled at what is now Rowan University in New Jersey, earned a master’s degree from Temple University and continued on to Columbia University.

Jackson became an internationally recognized expert on John Dewey, founder of the Laboratory Schools. He wrote two widely praised books on Dewey’s philosophy of education, including John Dewey and the Lessons of Art (1998) and John Dewey and the Philosopher’s Task (2002), and served as president of the John Dewey Society from 1996-98.

“He was very taken by Dewey’s focus on experience,” said Hansen, “particularly the idea that you can’t keep piling things onto children, like pouring things down a funnel. You need to engage them in experiences in the classroom that allow them to take intellectual ownership and see learning as alive and dramatic and vivid.”

Jackson retired from the University in 1998, but his quest for learning never stopped. “He was extremely curious,” said David Jackson, who noted that during the last phase of his career his father taught himself German. “His life was a constant effort to press past what he already knew toward what he didn’t.”

Throughout his life, Jackson had a magnetism that drew people to him. “I think he’ll be remembered by every single educator who met him as an extraordinary, brilliant and passionate person,” Hansen said. “He was a force of nature, a man full of life.”

Jackson is survived by his wife, Josephine Jackson; his children David Jackson, Nancy Rudolph and Steven Jackson; and his granddaughter, Hannah Rudolph.

Plans for a memorial service will be forthcoming.

George Hillocks, Jr., teacher of teachers, 1934-2014

Fri, 05 Dec 2014 11:14 -0600

George Hillocks, Jr., a teacher of teachers at the University of Chicago for more than 30 years, died in hospice on Nov. 12. He was 80. A memorial service for Hillocks will take place on Saturday, Dec. 6 at 2 p.m. in Bond Chapel.

Hillocks, professor emeritus in English language and literature, taught in the University’s Department of Education and trained future English teachers in the Master of Arts in Teaching program from 1971 to 2002.

His daughter Marjorie, also a teacher and a former faculty member at the Lab Schools, once had an office in Blaine Hall around the corner from her father’s. She remembers Hillocks as someone who “really did love his students…He could get very easily emotional when talking about his students,” she said. He also had passionate opinions about education—“and he wasn’t afraid to voice his opinions.”

Throughout his career, Hillocks was a dedicated advocate for improving the teaching of writing in schools. His 1995 book Teaching Writing as Reflective Practice outlined both theoretical and practical elements of improving writing instruction at the secondary and early undergraduate level. That book won the National Council of Teachers of English’s David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English.

His last book, Teaching Argument Writing, was used in classrooms across the country and was one of his most popular books among fellow teachers, according to his daughter.

Hillocks also spoke out against the widespread use of standardized writing assessments; in The Testing Trap, he argued that standardized tests actually hindered students’ writing and critical thinking abilities.

His contributions to the field of education earned Hillocks the Distinguished Service Award from the National Council of Teachers of English in 2004. He also received the NCTE’s Richard Meade Award for his 2008 book Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching.

Hillocks was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1934. He received his BA from the College of Wooster, and his MA and PhD in English from Case Western Reserve University. He taught English at the secondary level from 1956 to 1961.

The son of a Scottish immigrant, Hillocks was an accomplished bagpipe player who performed throughout the city and internationally. He was the Pipe Major for the Invermich Gaelic Society Pipe Band from 1984 to 1989. That band later became the University of Chicago Alumni Association Pipe Band, which performs at Convocation and other major University functions.

He is survived by his children, Marjorie Hillocks and George “Mac” McInnes Hillocks; and three grandchildren, Geoffrey, Cameron and Dylan Hillocks. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Wounded Warrior Project and the Midwest Palliative and Hospice Care Center.

Michael R. Sosin, AB’72, SSA scholar committed to social justice, 1950-2014

Tue, 02 Dec 2014 14:50 -0600

Michael R. Sosin, the Emily Klein Gidwitz Professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, died Nov. 25 after an extended illness. He was 64.

Sosin served on the faculty at SSA for 26 years and was a longtime member of the UChicago community, having earned his bachelor’s degree in sociology in the College in 1972. Sosin conducted widely influential research on the problems of homelessness, substance abuse services and urban poverty, and he held a special interest in the relationship between social institutions and disadvantaged clients.

“Mike cared deeply for the most marginalized and disadvantaged in society, and I think this concern motivated his insistence on rigorous scientific inquiry in social work and social welfare,” said Assoc. Prof. Julia Henly. “He was brilliant and had extremely high standards of scholarship. I don't know that most of us could ever live up to his standards, but his mentorship has motivated many of us to do our best.”

One of the hallmarks of Sosin’s career, representing a major contribution to the profession, was his role serving as editor of Social Service Review, the oldest and most highly regarded scholarly journal in the profession. During his tenure as editor of SSR from 1998 through 2014, he led major advances to the journal, including enlisting an external review board, editing manuscripts electronically and making all issues, starting from the first volume in 1927, accessible online.

Many on the faculty remember Sosin as a mentor, particularly during their early careers. “Michael would help you see your possibility, your promise,” said Assoc. Prof. Susan Lambert, the current editor of SSR. “He took your work as seriously as he took his own, and he was willing to invest his time and his substantial intellectual prowess in helping you improve your work. He was never patronizing, was always willing to explain what he knew in a matter-of-fact manner and was happy to learn from others. These qualities made him such a good mentor to doctoral students and junior faculty, as well as a good editor of Social Service Review.”

“Michael was especially valued for his deeply thoughtful and incisive mind,” said Neil Guterman, dean of SSA and the Mose & Sylvia Firestone Professor. “He was committed to those most deeply disadvantaged, as well as to the high standards in his own social welfare scholarship and in his role as editor of Social Service Review. He was a colleague and friend, and he will be sorely missed in the SSA community.”

Sosin joined the SSA faculty as a professor in 1988, after serving as a scholar in residence at SSA from 1986 to 1987. He was named the Emily Klein Gidwitz Professor in 1997. Sosin was also an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an affiliate at UChicago’s Population Research Center.

Assoc. Prof. Yoonsun Choi also remembered, “Mike was an incredible mentor to me and many others. He was an exemplary scholar of excellence, integrity and was committed to social justice. Personally, I greatly benefited and learned from his advice and wisdom in matters of research and career decisions. Mike also fostered independent thinking and opinion, and I felt safe to disagree with him.”

Sosin is survived by his sister Sybil and several cousins. Funeral services already were held.

Alumnus George Anastaplo, 88, taught for nearly six decades at Graham School

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 14:54 -0600

George Anastaplo, AB’48, JD’51, PhD’64, who sacrificed a promising legal career by defending his First Amendment rights before the McCarthy-era Illinois Bar and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court, died Feb. 14 after teaching nearly six decades in the University of Chicago Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies.

The son of Greek immigrants who operated a restaurant in Carterville, Ill., Anastaplo pursued his bachelor and law degrees from the University of Chicago after serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, navigating B-17 and B-29 bombers.

Anastaplo was denied admission to the Illinois Bar in 1950 after refusing on principle to answer whether he was a member of the Communist party—calling questions about political affiliation and religion irrelevant. The Committee on Character and Fitness, which routinely interviewed Bar applicants, also asked if Communist Party members should be allowed to practice law in Illinois.

“I should think so,” replied Anastaplo, who then went on in his characteristically polite yet pithy manner to defend the right of revolution, if justified, as established in the Declaration of Independence.

Anastaplo argued his own case before the Illinois and U.S. Supreme Court. He lost the federal case in 1961 by a 5-4 decision. Justice Hugo Black, comparing Anastaplo to Clarence Darrow and other brave lawyers, wrote a dissenting opinion famously asserting, “We must not be afraid to be free.”

With his unblemished record, Black wrote, “the very most that can fairly be said against Anastaplo’s position in this entire matter is that he took too much of the responsibility of preserving that freedom upon himself.”

As the case went through appeals, Anastaplo worked on his doctorate in the Committee on Social Thought at the University under the guidance of mentor Leo Strauss. In 1957, he joined the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults faculty and continued to teach through December 2013. He also taught at Dominican University (then Rosary College), and later at the Loyola University School of Law, frequently riding his bike from Hyde Park to Loyola until he was nearly 80. He also authored scores of books and hundreds of articles on topics ranging from political science to philosophy to religion to classic literature.

Anastaplo was the “heart and soul” of the Basic Program, said former chair Cynthia Rutz. “He inspired everyone around him—students and fellow faculty alike—to always continue learning and never be afraid to pose difficult questions,” she said. She noted that longtime Hyde Park alderman Leon Despres, PhB’27, JD’29, perfectly dubbed Anastaplo the “Socrates of Chicago” for his tireless role of good-natured gadfly, poking and prodding ideas, whether he was in a courtroom, classroom or elsewhere.

Anastaplo’s unwavering commitment to free thought earned him many admirers. In 2005, he was the inaugural recipient of the Graham School’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and received the school’s Distinguished Service Award in 2012. But the Bar interview wasn’t the only time his devotion to the ideal rendered him an outsider.

Keith Cleveland, AB’64, AM’69, JD’79, also a former chair of the Basic Program who taught with Anastaplo for 45 years, recalled that Anastaplo was kicked out of Russia in 1960, while driving through Europe on vacation with his family after defending a group of fellow tourists handing out American literature. He also was expelled from Greece in 1968, for asking some embarrassing questions of the right-wing military junta in power. Recalling these events and Anastaplo’s case against the Illinois Bar, political scientist C. Herman Pritchett wrote: “As W. C. Fields might have said, any man who is kicked out of Russia, Greece and the Illinois Bar can’t be all bad.”

Although Anastaplo never became a lawyer, his legal training served him well in academia, Cleveland said. “George brought his extraordinary cross-examination skills to the classroom,” he said, “not in a hostile manner, but to open up and explore ideas and pursue them in an interesting and intelligent way.”

Larry Arnhart, AM’73, PhD’77, a former student of Anastaplo’s who teaches political science at Northern Illinois University, said he tries to live up to his mentor’s patient intellectual prodding at the podium.

“Sometimes, you ask a provocative question and there’s silence,” Arnhart said. “George always said if students don’t respond, don’t just resume lecturing and let students get away with being so passive. Wait, and wait some more until someone shares their thoughts. Soon enough, students discover that a class organized around stimulating discussion is more interesting,” he said.

Michael Allocca, current chair of the Basic Program, said Anastaplo had a “hard-core” following of people who would sign up for every course he taught, and he was known for never having missed a session.

“During the last week of autumn semester in December, when he called to say he wouldn’t be well enough to make it in,” Allocca said, “he asked if we could set up a phone in the classroom so that he could lead the discussion from home via telephone.”

Miriam Redleaf, Anastaplo’s daughter and a professor of otolaryngology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, said his family wasn’t surprised by his efforts to finish the semester despite prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.

“He was proud of teaching all the way till the end,” Redleaf said. “He never considered missing a class.”

Anastaplo is survived by his wife of more than 65 years, Sara Prince Anastaplo; his daughters, Helen Newlin, Miriam Redleaf and Theodora Anastaplo; his son, George Malcolm Davidson Anastaplo; and eight grandchildren. A memorial service will be held at Bond Chapel on the University of Chicago campus on Friday, June 6. More information about the memorial service will be published on this website when it becomes available.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to The George Anastaplo Basic Program Lecturer Fund, Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, the University of Chicago, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL. 60637.

Lindy Bergman, longtime supporter of higher education and the arts, 1918-2014

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 13:26 -0600

A lifelong resident of Chicago’s South Side with deep ties to the University of Chicago, Lindy Bergman enriched and helped transform the life of her native city and former school through six decades of dedication and generous financial commitment to the arts, education and medical care. Known for her indomitable spirit, she became a tireless champion of helping the blind after losing her eyesight in later years.

Betty Jane (“Lindy”) Bergman, AB’39, died peacefully in her home on Jan. 18. She was 96. A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 21 at Chicago Sinai Congregation at 15 W. Delaware Place.

Bergman’s contributions to the UChicago community included service on the boards of the University of Chicago Medical Center, the Lying-In Hospital, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Her late husband, Edwin A. Bergman, served on the University of Chicago’s Board of Trustees from 1976 to 1986 and was chair of the Board of Trustees from 1981 to 1985. Her son Robert was a member of the UChicago Medicine board until 2013, and her son-in-law Andrew Rosenfield, a University alumnus, is a University Trustee who joined the board in 1996. Her daughter Betsy is a member of the University’s Woman’s Board.

“Lindy Bergman was an extraordinary woman,” said University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer. “She and her husband had an abiding dedication to the issues of medical care and the arts, and Chicago and its residents have benefited through the commitments they made. She was a wonderful model for how to live a rich and deeply engaged life.”

Bergman’s connection to UChicago dated back to her earliest years. She graduated from the Laboratory Schools in 1935 and then the College in 1939. Over the years, Bergman, along with her husband, also a UChicago alumnus, supported the University in creative and generous ways. She established the Bergman Gallery, home to the Renaissance Society in Cobb Hall, placed artwork throughout the corridors of the University of Chicago Medical Center and was a devoted advocate for the Renaissance Society.

“Lindy cherished the arts and valued her relationships with the artists,” said Arthur Sussman, a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, who served with Bergman on institutional committees. “She contributed to many of their accomplishments and valued her many relationships with students, staff and faculty. She was a true friend of the University.”

Bergman endowed the Lindy Bergman Distinguished Service Professorship, currently held by Prof. Mark Siegler, and the Edwin A. Bergman Scholarship in the College. During the University’s Campaign for the Next Century in the 1990s, she was committed to long-term funding for the Bergman Family Eye Center.

In addition, Bergman was a life member of the University of Chicago Medical Center Board of Trustees, a life member of the Humanities Visiting Committee, a life member of the board of governors of the Smart Museum of Art, a member of the Women's Board and a life member of the Music Visiting Committee.

Patron of the Arts

Bergman and her husband were passionate art collectors—she attributed her interest in modern art to a course she had taken at UChicago in the 1950s. A teacher at the class recommended her a book called Masters in Modern Art. “Every night we would start reading about art,” she told her friend Beth Finke, an author and journalist. “That’s how it (art collection) all began. We really educated ourselves.” Subsequently, Bergman and her husband became established as modern art collectors and assembled a legendary collection of mostly Surrealist art, including the definitive collection of works by Joseph Cornell.

In 1991, Bergman gave the bulk of her family collection, including seminal works by Magritte, Ernst, Picasso, Miro, Dali and Cornell, to the Art Institute of Chicago. With this donation, which was hailed as “one of the most important gifts of art in [the Art Institute’s] 112-year history,” Bergman transformed the stature of the museum as a repository of the Surrealist and near-Surrealist material. The collection is now a core part of the permanent collection and displayed cohesively in the Edwin A. and Lindy Bergman Gallery in the Museum’s Modern Wing.

Other important works from the Bergman’s collection were also donated and currently reside in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, and The Israel Museum, among others.

After donating her collection, Bergman took to writing and in 2011, authored a book “Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind,” which documented her fight with vision loss due to macular degeneration. She provided guidance and advice for those with the same affliction

“While everyone knew that Lindy was smart, gracious, generous and charming, what they didn't always expect was that she had a sharp, irreverent, wicked sense of humor,” said David Epstein, who was a family friend of Bergman.

“Lindy Bergman was a woman of great warmth and generosity with an exceptional gift for friendship," said University of Chicago President Emerita Hanna H. Gray. “She demonstrated through her wide-ranging philanthropy, her constructive participation in so many different areas of university life, and her unwavering advocacy for its purposes an unmatched devotion to the University. Lindy brought good cheer to every gathering and a spirit of optimism and caring to every encounter. Her modesty and grace, and her determination to support the best in education, medicine and art, made her a special and greatly cherished member of our community.”

In addition to her son Robert and daughter Betsy, Bergman also is survived by daughter Carol Cohen, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her honor to the University of Chicago’s Odyssey Scholarship program.

Paul J. Sally, Jr., influential mathematician and educator, 1933 – 2013

Thu, 02 Jan 2014 15:20 -0600

Update: A memorial service will be held for Prof. Paul J. Sally, Jr., at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 7, at Bond Chapel, 1025 E. 58th St.

Known for his contributions to the field of harmonic analysis and his passionate commitment to teaching, Prof. Paul J. Sally, Jr. built a legacy of love for mathematics at the University of Chicago for nearly 50 years.

Professor Sally died on Dec. 30, 2013. He was 80 years old.

Sally taught at the University since 1965 and served as chairman of the mathematics department from 1977 to 1980. He was resident at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., in 1967-68, 1971-72, 1981 and 1984. He produced notable research results on such topics as SL(2), supercuspidal representations and Fourier transforms. His many professional affiliations included service as chairman of the board of trustees of the American Mathematical Society.

“Paul had a fierce belief in mathematics and in people,” wrote Professor Shmuel Weinberger, chair of mathematics, in a note to faculty. “I will miss him deeply.”

Sally’s impact in the classroom was legendary. He produced 19 PhD students and was director of Undergraduate Studies in the Mathematics Department for decades. He pioneered outreach programs in mathematics for elementary and secondary teachers and students. From 1983 to 1987, Sally served as the first director of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project, home of the nation's most widely used university-developed mathematics curriculum. In 1992, he founded Seminars for Elementary Specialists and Mathematics Educators (SESAME), a first-of-its-kind program for elementary school teachers from Chicago Public Schools.

'A force of nature'

Diane Herrmann, the co-director of Undergraduate Studies in Mathematics and a Senior Lecturer, described Sally as “a force of nature.” Herrmann worked with Sally as a teacher, mentor and then as a colleague for the past 30 years.

“He was passionately interested in mathematical education at all levels,” said Herrmann, who with Sally co-founded the Young Scholars Program, a groundbreaking enrichment program for mathematically talented seventh through 12th graders.

One student who benefitted from the Young Scholars Program starting in seventh grade was Maryanthe Malliaris, who is now an assistant professor in UChicago’s department of mathematics. She recalled the experience as “exhilarating” and “decisive for my future in mathematics.”

“He had an incredible psychological astuteness, and a forceful clarity,” Malliaris wrote in an email. “He devoted a great deal of his time to creating possibilities for others. He concerned himself with the field as a whole. He would be there on Saturdays, on evenings, in the summer. His door was always open. He would show by example what it is to be a great human being.”

David Vogan, AB, SM, ’74, another former student of Sally’s, went on to be a Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and president of the American Mathematical Society.

“What distinguished Paul Sally was not only his passion for mathematics, but also his love and care for everyone studying mathematics,” Vogan said. “He had an appreciation for all the different levels of mathematics. He was a remarkable individual who seemed to have an unlimited supply of energy.”

Sally’s motto for SESAME reflected one of his core beliefs: “To teach real mathematics, you better know some.” Aspiring teachers who took Sally’s courses such as Elements of Math Instruction, a graduate class in UChicago’s Urban Teacher Education Program, found that he expected them to understand concepts ranging from elementary-level to graduate-level math.

“He overcame tremendous obstacles to provide education and outreach at the University, in the city of Chicago and nationally” said Robert Fefferman, the Max Mason Distinguished Service Professor in Mathematics. “He lost both legs and lost his eyesight to childhood diabetes and it did not stop him at all.”

Type 1 diabetes affected Sally since he was a teenager, resulting in the loss of both legs and one eye; degeneration in the other eye meant that he was legally blind. Students affectionately nicknamed him the “Math Pirate” or “Professor Pirate” for the unmistakable black eye patch that he wore. Speaking with the University of Chicago Magazine in 2008, he said his true love had been the classroom since he walked into a class of high school seniors in 1954, at the age of 21.

“This is just where I belong. I just have this incredible desire to teach,” he told the magazine.

David Sally, one of Paul Sally’s three sons, said his legacy will be felt in ways large and small.

“The family is gratified to hear words of condolence from students, teachers and colleagues to let us know how much our father meant to the University, to Chicago, and to so many people around the world,” he said. “Dad died on December 30. That’s 12-30-2013, a numerical anagram! He would have appreciated that.”

Numerous honors include Quantrell

Sally was born in Boston on Jan. 29, 1933. He earned his B.S. and M.A. degrees from Boston College and his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. He was an instructor at Washington University before coming to the University of Chicago in 1965.

Sally won many honors and awards for his teaching and educational outreach, including the University’s Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1967. Part of the citation for the award reads: “His informal but infectiously enthusiastic classroom manner has shown his students the delights of a subject sometimes thought to be austere. Always rigorous but never pompous, he leads his classes through difficult problems by clear, careful steps.”

Other awards include the Boston College Alumni Award for Excellence in Education (1999); the American Mathematical Society Award for Distinguished Teaching (2002); and the University of Chicago Provost’s Teaching Award (2005). In addition to his leadership at the American Mathematical Society, Sally’s professional service included the U.S. Steering Committee for the Third International Mathematical and Science Study.

Sally is survived by his wife, Judith, and his three sons, David, Stephen, and Paul III, and their families.

Services will be held Saturday, Jan. 4 at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Hyde Park. A wake will be held from 10 to 11 a.m., with a funeral mass at 11 a.m. A reception and luncheon will follow in the Tea Room on the second floor of Eckhart Hall on the UChicago campus.

George W. Stocking Jr., historian of social anthropology, 1928–2013

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 14:25 -0500

George W. Stocking Jr., a groundbreaking historian of the social sciences, focused anthropology’s culturally observant eye back on its own past, tracing the field’s development on two continents. Stocking, the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and in the Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, died July 13 in Chicago.

Considered the foremost historian of American sociocultural and British social anthropology, Stocking wrote Victorian Anthropology (1987), The Ethnographer's Magic and Other Essays in the History of Anthropology (1992), After Tylor (1995) and was the author or editor of numerous other books. In the early 1980s, he founded the book series History of Anthropology and served as its editor for 18 years. The ultimate 2010 volume consisted of Stocking’s autobiography, Glimpses into my Own Black Box: An Exercise in Self-Deconstruction.

Michael Silverstein, the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology, Linguistics, and Psychology and in the Committee on Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, said Stocking solidified the history of anthropology as an academic discipline.

“George in a very real sense created this field by professionalizing it,” Silverstein said. He said Stocking’s work guided scholars in how the field has come to understand culture and cultures, and in how to assess the influence of internal and external factors on the field since its inception.

In addition to being one of the field’s early founders, Stocking was perhaps its most influential writer, said Robert J. Richards, PhD’78, director of the Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine and the Morris Fishbein Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Science and Medicine in the departments of History, Philosophy and Psychology.

“He wrote a different kind of essay,” Richards added, “a more penetrating one that put the development of ideas within a historical context that often was missing from similar efforts.” Richards said Stocking also shifted anthropology’s strict emphasis on British structural-functionalism more toward symbolic analysis and historicism—particularly through his interpretation of the work of Franz Boas, the turn-of-the-century anthropologist considered the founder of American anthropology.

Stocking also was devoted to teaching and enriching student life on campus. He was a 1994 recipient of the University’s student-nominated Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and a 2011 recipient of the Norman Maclean Faculty Award. The latter was given by the University’s Alumni Board of Governors for his “influence and encouragement of decades of students, his tireless efforts in advancing their careers, and for creating and supporting a community among them.” Stocking also received the Huxley Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1993 and the Franz Boas Award from the American Anthropological Association in 1998.

Richards, a former student of Stocking’s, said he was not surprised when his former professor was honored with the Quantrell and Maclean awards. “George had a crusty layer that for some was a bit forbidding, but once you got to know him you found a marshmallow under that crusty layer. He was extremely helpful to students and many, many students just simply adored him for that.”

Matti Bunzl, PhD’98, another former student, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who assigns several of his mentor’s essays to his history of anthropology class, said Stocking taught him “everything I know about the life of a scholar…. I will try to continue to live up to his example, knowing full-well that that’s an impossible task.”

Stocking was born in Berlin in 1928 to Dorothea Reichhard and George W. Stocking Sr., a University of Texas economics professor doing research overseas, and later a member of Franklin Roosevelt’s Brain Trust. Stocking Jr. attended Harvard College, where he became involved in socialist causes. Shortly after graduating in 1949, he married Wilhelmina Davis and became active in the Communist Party. The couple worked on organized labor issues and had five children before they divorced in 1965. After growing disillusioned with the Communist movement, Stocking entered the University of Pennsylvania’s American Civilization program and received his PhD in 1960. He began teaching at Berkeley, earning tenure in 1966, but a National Science Foundation anthropology fellowship brought Stocking back to the University of Pennsylvania and then to the University of Chicago during 1967 to 1968, where he accepted joint appointments in anthropology and history in 1968.

That same year, Stocking married Carol Bowman, PhD’78. In 1981, he became director of the Fishbein Center, through which he organized several international meetings and worked in collaboration with members of the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science. Stocking retired in 2000, after which he continued to teach and indulge in his wide-ranging hobbies.

“He was an enthusiastic runner and ran in a local race with his last class in 2000,” Carol Stocking said, adding that he also enjoyed gardening, cooking and needlepoint. “George was a big Bears and Bulls fan, and during games on TV he needle-pointed Christmas stockings for his children and grandchildren. He designed each stocking to reflect the interests and hobbies of the person,” she said.

In addition to his wife, Carol, Stocking’s survivors include daughters Susan Baltrushes of Malibu, Calif., Rebecca Reidy of Boston, Mass., Rachel Stocking of Carbondale, Ill., Melissa Stocking of Pomona, Calif.; and son Thomas Stocking of San Raphael, Calif.; along with 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. A memorial service is being planned for the fall.

Pastora San Juan Cafferty, distinguished scholar of Hispanics, 1940-2013

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:06 -0500

Pastora San Juan Cafferty, one of the nation’s leading scholars of race and ethnicity and a specialist on Hispanics, died April 16 in her Near North Side home in Chicago. Cafferty, professor emerita at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, was 72.

In addition to her research, she was heavily involved in Chicago civic life. She was appointed to the founding board of directors of the Regional Transportation Authority, serving from 1974 to 1977 and 1983 to 1995. She also was a member of numerous corporate and non-profit boards.

Cafferty was a distinguished author or editor of 11 books and monographs about problems facing Hispanics.

Her former student and later co-editor David Engstrom, AM’83, PhD’92, said: “Professor Cafferty was ahead of the curve in many areas. Up until the 1970s, social work generally thought of ethnicity only through the prism of black/white relations.”

Engstrom, now associate professor at the San Diego State University School of Social Work, called her 1976 book, The Diverse Society: Implications of Social Policy, “the start of her career exploring race and ethnicity, and the process by which individuals take on an ethnic identification. She was in the first generation of scholars to focus on Hispanics and was ahead of the game on immigration policy, looking at more than just the economics of the issue.”

Cafferty and Engstrom were co-editors of the 1999 book Hispanics in America: An Agenda for the Twenty-First Century. In an interview with the University of Chicago Chronicle, she explained her interest in studying Hispanics.

“We think that all Hispanics are alike—when in fact, Hispanics are racially very diverse,” Cafferty said. “If they migrated from the Caribbean, they may be Hispanics of European descent, or European with African, or just of African descent. From Mexico, there’s a very strong Native American component of descent as well as European.

“Hispanics are a fascinating panethnic, a very diverse population racially, ethnically and nationally,” she added. “I believe that the way we incorporate this diversity into our national consciousness will say a great deal, not about Hispanics necessarily, but about our whole system of political and social justice.”

probing 'complexities of culture'

Born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, on July 29, 1940 Cafferty and her family moved to Miami in 1948 and eventually settled in Alabama, where her mother taught college Spanish. Cafferty pursued a career in higher education and received her bachelor’s degree in English from St. Bernard College in Cullman, Ala. in 1962 and a PhD in 1971 in literary and cultural history from George Washington University.

She worked as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Transportation from 1969 to 1970 and as a special assistant to the General Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1970 to 1971. She joined the faculty at the School of Social Service Administration as an assistant professor in 1971; she was named a full professor in 1985.

She wrote on a wide set of topics including bilingual education, economic development in Chicago, urban planning and transportation. A particular area of her research was on language retention in the Hispanic community. Hispanic immigrants tend to retain their language, Cafferty found, contrasting with many earlier European immigrants who ceased using their native languages after arriving in the United States.

Dolores “Dodie” Norton, the Samuel Deutsch Professor Emerita and a colleague of Pastora’s, said: “Pastora can be described by the words 'elegant, edgy, probing scholar': elegant, her presentation of self; edgy, she was on the uncompromising forefront of probing the complexities of culture, race and diversity with her well-grounded scholarly research.”

She was a research associate and senior study director with NORC (formerly the National Opinion Research Center) at UChicago and oversaw a planning grant to establish an Hispanic Research Center in 1981. She was a founding member of the faculty of the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy.

The Pastora San Juan Cafferty Lecture on Race and Ethnicity in American Life was established in 2005 on the occasion of Cafferty’s retirement from SSA. The lectures, given annually since 2006, are forums for prominent social theorists, business executives, community leaders, philanthropists and politicians to convene and discuss the issues critical to a well-functioning and secure society.

“Pastora tirelessly helped weave connections between the University of Chicago and the city of Chicago through her role as a professor here at the School of Social Service Administration—through her service on numerous civic boards, during her retirement, even continuing all the way up to the day before she passed away,” said Neil Guterman, SSA dean and the Mose & Sylvia Firestone Professor. “She was a vivacious ambassador for the school who really left an indelible legacy on the city and the University.”

dedicated civic leader

In addition to her work at UChicago, Cafferty sat on the boards of the Harris Financial Corporation, Peoples Energy, Kimberly Clark and Waste Management, as well as Rush University Medical Center, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Casa Central.

In 1986 she led a team that interviewed business and political leaders in downtown Chicago to study public-private interactions in what was called the Chicago Project, an effort sponsored by the Chicago Central Area Committee. The report urged broader cooperation among municipal, business and all sectors of the community.

She was also a governmental advisor, serving on the President’s Commission for a National Agenda for the Eights, the National Public Advisory Committee on Regional Economic Development of Commerce, and the U.S. Federal Advisory Committee on Immigration and Nationalization. She was also a White House Fellow, a Smithsonian Research Fellow and a Wall Street Journal Fellow.

Cafferty was preceded in death by her first husband, Michael Cafferty, who was the former chairman of the Chicago Transit Authority from 1970-73, and her second husband, Henry P. Russe, MD’57, the former dean of Rush Medical College and vice president of medical affairs from 1981-91. She is survived by her sole brother, Rafael San Juan.

A memorial gathering will be held at Old St. Patrick’s Church, 700 W. Adams St. in Chicago, on Tuesday, April 23 from 3 to 7 p.m. A memorial Mass will follow.

Joseph Cropsey, expert on political philosophy and esteemed teacher, 1919-2012

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 16:16 -0500

Update: A memorial service will be held for Prof. Joseph Copsey beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 29 at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel.

Joseph Cropsey, a UChicago professor who was one of the nation’s leading figures in the study of political philosophy, died July 1 in Rockville, Md. He was 92.

Cropsey, a distinguished service professor emeritus in Political Science, was a beloved teacher at UChicago and wrote a series of important books in which he examined political science from ancient through modern times. He is particularly remembered for his work on Socrates, Plato and Adam Smith, and for his collaboration with famed UChicago political scientist Leo Strauss.

Mary Nichols, PhD’75, likened the “profound effect” of Cropsey’s instruction on students to the Greek figure Meno falling under the wizardry of Socrates. “We entered a world of immense beauty and awe, where questions touching the essence of human life—of knowledge and virtue, of individual excellence and common good, or philosophy and politics—were directly before us,” said Nichols of Cropsey, who chaired her dissertation committee.

“We were filled with a desire to engage in a lifelong task of exploring possible answers, their implications and ramifications, even if we could never come to any final resolution,” added Nichols, now a professor of political science at Baylor University.

Cropsey was born in New York and received a BA in 1939 from Columbia University. A first lieutenant in the Army during World War II, he served in anti-aircraft artillery units in Hawaii, North Africa, Sicily, Italy and as a staff officer in France. He returned to Columbia after the war to complete a PhD in economics in 1952, writing his dissertation on the 18th-century British economist Adam Smith.

It was in New York that he met Strauss, who joined UChicago’s political science department in 1949 and was one of the leading figures in the study of the history of political philosophy. A friend introduced them while Strauss was at the New School for Social Research.

“My contact with Strauss was what directed me toward the literature of political philosophy. I used to go to his courses down at the New School for a couple of years, and it just won me over,” Cropsey said in an interview with the UChicago publication Dialogo in 2007.

Cropsey taught at the City College of New York and the New School before joining the UChicago faculty in 1958. He came to Chicago as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in 1957 to work with Strauss and joined the faculty the following year.

Strauss encouraged Cropsey to examine texts deeply. “When Strauss was at the head of his class, sitting up there, he would at a certain point say, ‘What does this mean?’ When I have to deal with a text of Plato, I have constantly to be asking myself, ‘What does that truly mean?’ Until one comes to grips with the question, one has not done one’s duty to the object or to oneself,” he told Dialogo.

Working with Strauss, he co-edited and contributed to the History of Political Philosophy, first published in 1962 and reissued in 1972 and 1987. He was also the author or editor of a number of important books: Polity and Economy: An Interpretation of the Principles of Adam Smith (1957); Ancients and Moderns; Essays on the Tradition of Political Philosophy in Honor of Leo Strauss (1964); Hobbes’s A Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England (1971); Political Philosophy and the Issues of Politics (1977); and Plato’s World: A Man’s Place in the Cosmos (1995).

He was particularly proud to see his final book, On Humanity’s Intensive Introspection, published before his death.

Cropsey’s writing illuminated the limits and potential resources of modern liberalism, and in his later years, came to focus on the problem of Socrates and the implications of his philosophic sobriety for understanding humanity’s place in the whole.

He retired in 1990, but continued to teach until 2004.

Cropsey had an enormous influence on the profession of political science, both in the United States and abroad, serving as a committee member for 134 PhD dissertations — of which he chaired 76. The Department of Political Science awards the Joseph Cropsey Prize for Master’s Thesis in Classical and Political Philosophy annually in his honor.

Cropsey was also a beloved teacher of thousands of undergraduates, and in 1970 he received the University’s Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Cropsey said upon receiving the Quantrell Award that he enjoyed teaching Plato and Aristotle to a generation of students focused on finding relevancy in their classes. “Students are quick to realize that things that happened 2,000 years ago can have as much relevancy to their lives as something that happened yesterday,” he said.

Christopher Colmo, PhD’79, chair of Political Science at Dominican University, said, “What inspired me most about Joseph Cropsey as a teacher was his practice of taking a fresh look at the problem, of asking again, really asking, the questions of which one had already disposed. That, in my eyes, is something to aspire to.”

Cropsey is survived by daughter Rachel Simons, son Seth Cropsey, and two grandsons and a granddaughter. He was preceded in death in 2006 by his wife Lilian.

Bertram Cohler, psychologist and esteemed teacher, 1938-2012

Mon, 14 May 2012 10:54 -0500

Update: A memorial service for Bert Cohler will be held at 6 p.m. June 4 in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel.

Bertram Cohler, a UChicago psychologist and celebrated teacher who was an expert on family life and transitions, died May 9. Cohler, 73, was the William Rainey Harper Professor in the College.

Cohler’s primary appointment was in Comparative Human Development, with joint appointments held in Psychology, Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, and the College. He was a mainstay of the Self, Culture and Society Core sequence, which he co-chaired for many years, and he also previously served as a Resident Head in the housing system.

He sustained an interest in clinical psychology throughout his career. He played a major role in the intellectual life of the Chicago psychoanalytic community and trained several generations of clinical PhD students.

“Bert Cohler was the embodiment of intellectual seriousness and love of assumption-questioning discourse that typifies the University of Chicago. I have long thought that the color of his blood must be maroon,” said Richard Shweder, the William Claude Reavis Distinguished Service Professor in Comparative Human Development.

He twice won the University’s top prize for College teaching, the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, first in 1975 and again in 1999.

In 2006 he won the Norman Maclean Faculty Award from the UChicago Alumni Association for outstanding contributions to teaching and student life on campus.

The essence of good teaching begins with respect for students, he said in an interview with the University of Chicago Chronicle in 1999. “I learn a tremendous amount from what the students say in class, and I want them to know I consider that important,” he said.

As a professor, he normally taught more classes than were required, as well as evening and summer courses through the University’s Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies.

“Bert’s love of students and teaching combined with an almost fanatical zeal to do his part in ensuring that the University fulfilled its responsibility to teach. He often said he was merely carrying out the ideals of his beloved University of Chicago, but it is clear, in the end, that Bert himself was a beacon of these ideals,” said Michael Kaufman, a doctoral student in human development.

Cohler’s research interests included life-story and response to adversity and stigma. He taught a course, “Sexual Identity and the Life Course of Gay and Lesbian Lives,” which looked at the social contexts of gays and lesbians at various points in their lives, from childhood to old age.

The course was inspired by a book Cohler co-authored with Robert Galatzer-Levy, clinical professor of psychiatry at UChicago, The Course of Gay and Lesbian Lives: Social and Psychoanalytic Perspectives, published in 2000.

“Bert never separated his professional and personal life. His love and respect for people led him to use tools ranging from empirical research to deep examination of his own struggles to explore how individuals, in all sorts of contexts, ‘search after meaning’ across the course of life,” said Galatzer-Levy.

“Bert leaves behind not only a massive scholarly accomplishment but also an ideal of compassionate comprehension in the study of human lives,” he added.

Cohler was part of the University community much of his life. He attended the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School and University High School and continued his work at the College, where he received an AB in human development in 1961.

He received a PhD from Harvard University in 1967 from the department of social relations, where he deepened his interest in psychoanalysis as a means of understanding life course development.

“He was an erudite clinical psychologist trained in the interdisciplinary spirit of the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, where anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists were members of the same department,” said Shweder.

UChicago’s Department of Comparative Human Development carries on the tradition “in a large measure because of intellectuals such as Bert Cohler,” he added.

He came to Chicago in 1969 to become director of the Orthogenic School at the request of its legendary leader Bruno Bettelheim, who was retiring. In Chicago he resumed his psychoanalytic studies, completing psychoanalytic training at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, where he later became a prominent faculty member.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 1972 and was the principal investigator in a continuing study funded by the National Institute on Aging, concerning relations among young adults, their parents and grandparents in a Midwestern community.

He was co-editor of Mentally Ill Mothers and Their Children (1975).

His work led to a new understanding of the roles between parents and children brought on by aging, which can lead to an imbalance in mothers’ and daughters’ social ties, he pointed out.

“The older mother is increasingly preoccupied with the psychological consequences of her own aging at just the time her daughter is expressing the desire for increased contact and additional assistance in performing the roles of housewife and mother,” Cohler wrote in Mothers, Grandmothers and Daughters (1981), a book he co-authored.

He continued his publications on lifetime and transitions and was the author and editor of a number of important scholarly works, including the Essential Other, which he co-wrote with Galatzer-Levy (1993). He was a co-editor of the Handbook of Clinical Research and Practice, also published in 1993.

After his wife, Ann, died in 1989, Cohler entered a new phase in his life as a gay man. His research moved to include issues of homosexual identity, and he wrote a number of articles on the issues confronting young gay people as well as aging gays.

Cohler put into practice what he studied and took leadership roles in fighting homophobia on campus and bringing psychological care to underserved populations. He held several leadership roles including the Presidency of the American Orthopsychiatric Association. Throughout his life he remained an active clinician, often working with troubled adolescents.

In his final years he also worked extensively studying the life narratives of Holocaust survivors.

He is survived by sons, Jonathan and James; granddaughters, Emma and Kate; grandson, Logan; and his partner, Bill Hensley.

A memorial service will take place in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel on June 4.

Paul Gitlin, beloved teacher of social work, 1926-2012

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:26 -0600

Paul Gitlin, a beloved teacher and associate professor emeritus at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, died Jan. 23. He was 85.

Gitlin’s early experiences as a social worker helping school-age children informed his later work as an educator. He helped build SSA’s group work program along with Profs. Irving Spergel and Mary Lou Somers. The group work sequence, initiated in 1958-59 and directed by Somers, was an important bridge between high-level policy and on-the-ground casework.

Gitlin helped to establish the Families, Individuals, and Communities (FIGS) sequence of classes for second-year master’s students and taught many sections of foundational clinical social work classes. He imparted to his students his love for working with and helping children who suffered from emotional and behavioral problems.

“Paul Gitlin was a true social worker. His concern for vulnerable children was unparalleled. He cared deeply about ways in which theory could inform practice to enhance the well-being of children and their families,” said Karen Teigiser, former senior lecturer and deputy dean for the curriculum.

She added that “relationships were at the heart of his life and work. His connection to his students modeled the essence of social work practice. He invited them to develop self-awareness and honesty in their work.His warmth and genuineness were deeply affirming to his students, clients, colleagues and staff.”

Gitlin’s students were equally devoted, and many implemented his wisdom into their careers. Several former students who he inspired, guided and influenced remember Gitlin fondly:

“SSA taught me to always view the big picture, and I believe that my success with people comes from my ability to see the problem as a whole and not just in pieces,” said Rory Gilbert, AM’79. “I owe a lot to SSA and professors such as Paul Gitlin.”

“Paul did more than impart knowledge about how to effectively intervene to help families and individuals,” said Charles Curie, AM’79. “He challenged me to consider what I brought to the problem solving process and consider how to utilize my experiences in conjunction with the evidence of what works. He became a true mentor and friend to each of us, helping us to be more effective through being genuine. It was a great gift.”

“What I appreciated most about Paul during our 36-year relationship was his unwavering commitment to honesty and forthrightness. Paul was resolute about truthfulness and candor, and these are vitally important qualities in social work — indeed, in life. Paul gave meaning to the word integrity and modeled it for generations of students,” said Frederic G. Reamer, AM’75, PhD’78, now a professor in the School of Social Work at Rhode Island College.

Gitlin attended Case Western Reserve University, where he received his masters of science in 1954 and doctorate of social work in 1968. He started as an assistant professor at SSA in 1964.

Gitlin retired from SSA in 1992. He was preceded in death by his wife Dorianne, and is survived by his three children: Naomi (David Saltz), Ruth, and Lew (Laura) and his two grandchildren, Todd and Justin. Services were held.

Charles Montgomery Gray, legal history scholar, 1928-2011

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:07 -0500

Charles Montgomery Gray, a leading scholar of legal history and a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, died Friday, April 22 at the University’s Bernard Mitchell Hospital. He was 82.

He was the author of the books, Copyhold, Equity and the Common Law; History of the Common Law, Hugh Latimer and the Sixteenth Century; and Renaissance and Reformation England. He also had written numerous articles about legal history and Volumes I, II, III and IV of Jurisdiction in Early Modern English Law.

He was the husband of Hanna H. Gray, president emeritus of the University, who is the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor in History Emeritus. The Grays were married in 1954 after meeting in a seminar at Harvard University.

Services will be held at 4 p.m. Monday, May 2 at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. To accommodate the services, parking will be prohibited along the north side of 59th Street and the west side of Woodlawn Avenue, immediately adjacent to the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel grounds.

“Charles is already sorely missed,” said Neil Harris, the Preston and Sterling Morton Professor Emeritus in History, who further described Gray as “a major presence” in the life of the University as well as “an extraordinary person — learned, individualistic, gracious, cordial and a wonderful friend.”

Harris also marveled at the range of Gray’s talents. “In addition to his impressive legal and historical scholarship, he was an accomplished painter, an evocative poet and at home in a number of languages, some of which were learned not long ago. He wore these distinctions with modesty,” Harris said.

Kathleen Neils Conzen, the Thomas E. Donnelley Professor in American History, praised Gray as “a wonderfully generous departmental colleague and always a voice of reason and civility in departmental discussions.”

“He offered an imaginative range of courses in medieval British history, history of law and history of legal theory,” Conzen said, “but it was his role as ‘Western Civ. Teacher’ that he once described as the persona ‘that has almost become the center of my life.’”

Gray was named professor in history in 1978 after serving on the faculty at Yale University from 1974 to 1978 and previously at UChicago from 1960 to 1972. He also served as master of the New Collegiate Division and associate dean of the College.

He was a Guggenheim fellow from 1965 to 1966, and he also held fellowships with the American Council of Learned Societies and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He and Mrs. Gray served as co-editors of the Journal of Modern History for five years.

In addition to being a distinguished researcher, he was also an outstanding teacher. In 1992, he received the University’s top award for undergraduate teaching, the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award.

He taught courses in Western civilization, medieval and early-modern English history, and the history of English and European law, jurisprudence, and political theory. He also taught courses in “Fundamentals: Issues and Texts,” a program in the College devoted to examination of major Western and non-Western texts.

“I enjoy the process of teaching,” Gray said in an interview with the University of Chicago Chronicle. “In teaching you are forced to think about how you’re going to explain something to your students. You have to make something comprehensible to yourself and then explain it to them.

“I feel satisfied in teaching when the students and I have looked at a text, come as close to it as we can and discussed it exhaustively,” he added.

Students who recommended Gray for the Quantrell honor spoke of his joy in teaching, as well as his ability to explain the issues involved in their classes.

"He definitely glows from his eternal enjoyment of teaching, and in turn, this inspires his students to learn. I never leave his classes without serious reflection on my own ideas and the ideas that are greater than myself,” one of the students wrote.

Gray was born Nov. 23, 1928, in Champaign, Ill. He received a BA summa cum laude from Harvard in 1949, was a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows and received his PhD from Harvard in 1956. He was a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1956 to 1960.

In addition to his wife, Gray is survived by his sister, Nancy Gray Sherrill of Wichita Falls, Texas, and several nieces and nephews.

Irving Spergel, leading scholar on gangs, 1924-2010

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 12:00 -0600

Irving Spergel, a professor at the University of Chicago and one of the nation’s leading experts on gangs, died Friday at his home in Chicago. Spergel, 86, was the George Herbert Jones Professor Emeritus in the University’s School of Social Service Administration.

Spergel wrote seven books and wrote, co-authored and edited more than 100 articles, reports, chapters and monographs on street gang intervention, including works on community mobilization and gang problem-solving.

His interest in research on gangs began while working with gang youth from 1952 to 1960 as part of the New York City Youth Board, an agency he joined after doing social work in Wilmington, Del. and New York City. “It seemed to me that the typical methods of dealing with gangs weren’t working,” he said. “Social organizations were pulling out of helping with the issue, and the police were becoming more involved, but the gangs still existed, even after individuals were caught and jailed.”

His initial experiences led to the publication of Racketville, Slumtown, Haulburg: An Exploratory Study of Delinquent Subcultures (1964), a groundbreaking book based on his Ph.D. dissertation. He was also the author of The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach (1995), a seminal work that described a model — now commonly referred to as the Spergel model — for intervention that has been adopted by the U.S. Department of Justice to combat gang violence around the country.

Spergel said of the model: “This project goes beyond traditional programs, because it facilitates communication and coordinates efforts by all the groups who want to reach out to youth who are seriously at risk of joining gangs or who are violent gang members. It provides opportunities for both adolescents and young adults in gangs to change their lives. All gang kids are not the same, and this model recognizes that and provides different solutions for different problems.”

The model calls for a coordinated effort against gangs characterized by community organization and neighborhood mobilization; social intervention, including jobs, job training and education; suppression, including arrest, incarceration and supervision; and organizational development and change.

The U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention demonstrated and evaluated the model in Bloomington, Ill.; Mesa and Tucson, Ariz.; Riverside, Calif.; and San Antonio, Texas from 1992 to 1999, proving through quasi-experimental evaluations that the model was successful when correctly implemented.

In the years since, the model has been successfully implemented at five additional test sites and has been adopted by more than 20 cities around the country. The model is the central component of the National Gang Center, an OJJDP program that disseminates research on gangs and offers training and assistance to law enforcement, social workers and communities. It was later renamed the OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model.

A test of the model in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago, described in Spergel’s book Reducing Youth Gang Violence (2007), demonstrated a 40 percent reduction in serious violence for 200 program youth, compared to an equivalent sample of non-served gang youth from the same gangs over a five-year period.

Spergel recently contributed a chapter to Youth Gangs and Community Intervention: Research, Practice and Evidence, edited by Robert Chaskin, associate professor at SSA. The book, published this year, was created from a series of papers by leading colleagues and gang researchers that were presented at a 2006 conference honoring Spergel’s retirement.

At SSA, Spergel helped build the school’s group work program with Mary Lou Somers, Professor Emeritus, and Paul Gitlin, Associate Professor Emeritus at SSA. He also revitalized its community organizing program by linking theory and practice through examples drawn from his grassroots activism and ongoing research in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood.

Though retired from the faculty, Spergel continued to do research and lecture, and he was available to faculty, researchers and students until his passing. Most importantly, Spergel wanted to be known and remembered, first and foremost, as a social worker.

“Over the course of his career, Spergel has played many roles—youth worker, scholar, teacher, program designer, evaluator, mediator, activist,” Chaskin said. “He embodied a particular orientation to scholarship in the world, and a particular drive to build knowledge that has a real and practical effect on critical social problems of the day.

“He embodied the commitment to bridge scholarship and action, and was remarkably successful in concretely translating his research findings and theoretical arguments into policy and practice that could be empirically tested,” Chaskin added.

After serving in the U.S. Army in Europe in World War II, Spergel studied at City College of New York and received a B.A. in social sciences in 1946. He went on to earn an M.A. in social work in 1952 from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in social work in 1960 from Columbia University. Spergel joined the University faculty in 1960 and was named the George Herbert Jones Professor in 1993. He also held the position of research associate (professor) in the Department of Sociology. He became an emeritus faculty member in 2002.

He is survived by his wife, Annot; sons Barry, Mark and Daniel, from his first marriage to Bertha Jampel Spergel (who died in 1989); brothers Philip and Martin; and granddaughters Elizabeth and Sarah.

A memorial service will be held at a later date.