2008 Woodie Awards
My Yeshiva Career
Joan G. Haahr
Issue date: 3/8/05 Section: YUdaica
- Page 1 of 1
I was twenty-nine years old in the fall of 1969, fresh out of graduate school and with a brand new PhD in hand. My husband, small son, and I had moved from Cambridge to Riverdale, in the Bronx. With a three-year-old at home, I was looking for a teaching job no more than half an hour's drive away. I had written letters to a number of nearby institutions, asking about openings in medieval literature - my field of specialization - and had received positive responses from a few. Yeshiva College was certainly within that half-hour radius, but it hadn't occurred to me to apply there, as I was unaware that women were welcome on the faculty. However, when I discussed my job search with my good friend and fellow Harvard graduate student, Charles Persky (YC '62), he suggested that I contact David Fleisher, his beloved professor and mentor at Yeshiva. I mailed David my curriculum vitae, was asked to come in for an interview (held in the very office that, a few years later, became my own), and after a warm discussion of things literary - devoted mostly, as I recall, to the recently published Portnoy's Complaint - I was hired. However, before we went downstairs to see Dean Isaac Bacon, David, with only a small sign of embarrassment, added a little postscript: "I hope you don't mind," he said, "but we already have someone teaching medieval literature. How would you feel about teaching the English novel?" I gulped and, after a moment's hesitation, responded, "Well, I've always liked reading novels." And so began what was to turn into thirty-six years at Yeshiva.
The change from Harvard, my only prior teaching job, was dramatic. Not that the students were not as good as those I had taught in Cambridge. Some were, in fact, as bright and talented as the very best of my Harvard students. Nor was there any difficulty in getting used to all male classes: Harvard, in the 1960's, was still predominantly male, and all my classes there had been "men only." However, there was no question about the difference. Harvard faculty meetings were formal and restrained; Yeshiva's, in contrast, were like family gatherings, both intimate and contentious. The Harvard students' polite reserve was replaced by Yeshiva volubility, with students freely offering opinions on every issue, often without bothering to raise their hands. They also (and this is something that I still can't get used to, even after so many years) freely wandered in and out of class - a holdover, I came to realize, of their customary practice in the morning shiurim. My biggest shock, however, occurred in my first Freshman Composition class.
In order to make the first year's preparation of eight new courses a bit easier, I had decided to assign a textbook I had used in one of my Harvard classes. In those days, we usually taught composition by asking students to read essays, discuss their ideas in class, and then write papers inspired by what they had learned. The textbook I assigned was divided into units focused on broad subjects such as "Heroes and Great Men"; "The Concept of Virtue"; "About University Education"; "Is the Will Free?" All went smoothly until we got to a unit (which I had taught without any problem in Cambridge) called "Does the Theory of Evolution Have Ethical Consequences?" To me, the readings, by writers like Thomas and Julian Huxley, seemed stimulating but innocuous. To my considerable surprise, however, what I had anticipated as an exciting discussion of "ethics" turned into a heated battle about "evolution," with the class divided about 50-50, pro and con. Today, with the conflict over "Darwinism" and "Creationism" a commonplace, this might not seem surprising. However, in the late 1960's - before the dramatic growth in fundamentalisms worldwide, when those of us from the secular world thought Inherit the Wind the last word on the subject - the furor raised in my class astonished me, making me realize that hitherto unexercised tact and caution were sometimes required at my new institution.
Always in the background, that first year, was the Vietnam War. Although considerable antiwar feeling existed on campus, there was little open protest, for, as declared "divinity students," most Yeshiva students had draft exemptions and did not feel immediately threatened. All that changed, however, shortly after midterm examinations in the spring of 1970 (semesters, at that time, commonly ended in mid-June). Although American forces had been secretly bombing neighboring Cambodia for months, on April 30 President Nixon announced publicly that US troops and B-52 bombers would enter Cambodia. Campus protests erupted immediately all over the US. Then on May 4 at Kent State University, inadequately trained National Guardsmen, who had been called in to quell the protesters, fired blindly into a large group of students (not all of them demonstrators), injuring thirteen and killing four. Campuses everywhere exploded in protest against the killings; classes stopped and most colleges and universities held all-day antiwar "teach-ins" to discuss the unpopular war. At last, Yeshiva College joined the protests. On May 5, classes were cancelled and an antiwar rally held on Amsterdam Avenue. The campus was covered with NYC police, as the students marched and the college administrators huddled nervously in the Dean's office, fearing a student "occupation" as had occurred on some other campuses. Their relief was evident when, late in the afternoon, a genial police officer entered with the welcome news that there was no need to worry as the demonstrators had broken up for evening prayer! Nonetheless, much of the remaining semester was spent at teach-ins and antiwar protests, led by faculty members (Professor Manfred Weidhorn always in the forefront) and packed with students. I took my small son to some of these, wanting him to understand, even at an early age, the importance of political action. Many classes never resumed at all that term, instructors basing final examinations solely on work done up to the midterm.
In those days, there was still a considerable amount of prejudice against women in "the Academy" (something one was well aware of at Harvard, where one of the libraries was, by statute, off-limits to women and a few professors made it known that women were not welcome in their classes). I was determined to be an exemplary professional and was pleased by my unexpected nomination, by Yeshiva College, for a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend for the following summer. Therefore, I was somewhat dismayed (though of course very happy, too) when, just two months into my first full-time teaching job, I found myself in the rather awkward situation of being pregnant. Fortunately the baby was due in July, so there would be no trouble completing the school year. However, I knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, with an eight-course teaching load, to resume full-time teaching the following year. Even so many years later, I remain grateful to Dean Bacon for the way he took the news. Though unmistakably surprised, he at once asked my preference and then supported my request for a part-time schedule, designating it a "partial leave" so that I would not lose full-time faculty privileges. Indeed, that schedule proved so comfortable that I kept it for eight years, having a third child four years later. I then slid easily back into full-time teaching upon the retirement of Yeshiva's long time medievalist, Professor Irving Linn, when I was finally able to begin teaching courses in my area of specialization. Incidentally, I did win the NEH fellowship, which I was able to defer until the following summer.
I have many fond memories of my students - and if I cannot always remember their names, I never forget their faces. Some have stayed in touch through the years, and I have had the pleasure of hearing about their families and careers. In some cases, I have had the opportunity to teach their sons and am always delighted to hear from a current student, "My father sends regards. He took your class [many!] years ago." Have the students changed? In the early years, more students came from public schools, and, of course, it is no secret that Modern Orthodoxy itself has changed, so that many students are probably more dedicated to Torah studies than were their predecessors. But I find it as difficult to generalize about my students now as I did then and can only note that they remain as lively, intelligent, and fun to teach as they always were.
Having chaired the English Department for twenty-one years, I am well aware of the many changes in the department. It is, of course, considerably larger than it was when I arrived, with a far greater variety of courses, many of which would have been inconceivable in the "canon" based curriculum of the early 1970's. The department has also become increasingly professionalized - as has the university as a whole: no one would now be hired as I was, on the basis of a single, casual interview. In fact, the department has just successfully completed an intensive search for my successor, consisting of a nation-wide appeal for candidates, off-campus interviews by a departmental committee, on-campus interviews by all tenured and tenure-track members of the department, and an on-campus presentation for both faculty and students.
Yeshiva University, as an institution, has also undergone considerable change. I arrived during the presidency of Dr. Samuel Belkin, when the institution was still finding its identity as an amalgam of an old-world yeshiva and an ambitious American university. The presidency of his successor, Dr. Norman Lamm, was, in many ways, shadowed by the near bankruptcy that had threatened its early years, and the effects of that threat unfortunately persisted throughout his tenure, especially when it came to issues of faculty welfare. For example, it was not until Dr. Norman Adler arrived as Dean of Yeshiva College that department chairs (now called "cluster heads") began to be compensated. Previously they had received no compensation for their work, either in time or money - a situation that certainly created considerable hardship for me during the fifteen years I simultaneously ran the department and taught a full complement of courses. Despite much progress, some of the effects of Yeshiva's long past fiscal crisis are still with us in the form of the still too-high teaching loads and too-low salaries of many senior faculty members, although both have improved in recent years, thanks to faculty persistence and administrative support, notably from the Academic Vice President, Dr. Morton Lowengrub. Nevertheless, as founder and President of the university's chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and as a senior faculty member now preparing to retire, I am especially conscious of the continuing penalty paid by those faculty members who served the university longest, in the form of low retirement income commensurate with our low salaries. Fortunately, President Richard Joel seems determined to continue improving faculty compensation, and younger faculty members will not, it is to be hoped, have to suffer as the older ones have done.
Despite the frustrations of these bread-and-butter issues, my years at Yeshiva have been happy ones, for which I am grateful to both my students and my colleagues. Many of the latter have become close friends, and I can hardly imagine my life without them. I am thankful, too, for the warm welcome I have always felt from the Yeshiva community in general. As a "secular" Jew (married to a "secular" Christian), I was not, initially, entirely at home at Yeshiva, and during those early years, I was sometimes astonished to become suddenly aware that I was the only woman in a roomful of men. Now, however, I think of Yeshiva as my community, too. All through the years, students have been generous and affectionate, starting with those who, in 1970, presented me with a bottle of pink champagne on the birth of my daughter. Wherever I go, I meet former students, who greet me warmly, eager to reminisce about our classroom explorations of Beowulf or Chaucer, of Milton, Austen, or Joyce, and to tell me their own news, both professional and personal. Moreover, my perceptions of the literature I love have unquestionably been influenced by my students, and I can hardly read a familiar text without recalling the particulars of one or another lively and intense classroom (or e-mail) discussion. As I now begin to loosen the ties that have bound me to Yeshiva for so many years, shedding my full-time position for one of greater flexibility, I know that Yeshiva will remain for me a continuing source of friendship and intellectual renewal.
Dr. Joan Haahr is a professor of English at Yeshiva College. After 36 years of teaching at Yeshiva, she will retire this spring.
The change from Harvard, my only prior teaching job, was dramatic. Not that the students were not as good as those I had taught in Cambridge. Some were, in fact, as bright and talented as the very best of my Harvard students. Nor was there any difficulty in getting used to all male classes: Harvard, in the 1960's, was still predominantly male, and all my classes there had been "men only." However, there was no question about the difference. Harvard faculty meetings were formal and restrained; Yeshiva's, in contrast, were like family gatherings, both intimate and contentious. The Harvard students' polite reserve was replaced by Yeshiva volubility, with students freely offering opinions on every issue, often without bothering to raise their hands. They also (and this is something that I still can't get used to, even after so many years) freely wandered in and out of class - a holdover, I came to realize, of their customary practice in the morning shiurim. My biggest shock, however, occurred in my first Freshman Composition class.
In order to make the first year's preparation of eight new courses a bit easier, I had decided to assign a textbook I had used in one of my Harvard classes. In those days, we usually taught composition by asking students to read essays, discuss their ideas in class, and then write papers inspired by what they had learned. The textbook I assigned was divided into units focused on broad subjects such as "Heroes and Great Men"; "The Concept of Virtue"; "About University Education"; "Is the Will Free?" All went smoothly until we got to a unit (which I had taught without any problem in Cambridge) called "Does the Theory of Evolution Have Ethical Consequences?" To me, the readings, by writers like Thomas and Julian Huxley, seemed stimulating but innocuous. To my considerable surprise, however, what I had anticipated as an exciting discussion of "ethics" turned into a heated battle about "evolution," with the class divided about 50-50, pro and con. Today, with the conflict over "Darwinism" and "Creationism" a commonplace, this might not seem surprising. However, in the late 1960's - before the dramatic growth in fundamentalisms worldwide, when those of us from the secular world thought Inherit the Wind the last word on the subject - the furor raised in my class astonished me, making me realize that hitherto unexercised tact and caution were sometimes required at my new institution.
Always in the background, that first year, was the Vietnam War. Although considerable antiwar feeling existed on campus, there was little open protest, for, as declared "divinity students," most Yeshiva students had draft exemptions and did not feel immediately threatened. All that changed, however, shortly after midterm examinations in the spring of 1970 (semesters, at that time, commonly ended in mid-June). Although American forces had been secretly bombing neighboring Cambodia for months, on April 30 President Nixon announced publicly that US troops and B-52 bombers would enter Cambodia. Campus protests erupted immediately all over the US. Then on May 4 at Kent State University, inadequately trained National Guardsmen, who had been called in to quell the protesters, fired blindly into a large group of students (not all of them demonstrators), injuring thirteen and killing four. Campuses everywhere exploded in protest against the killings; classes stopped and most colleges and universities held all-day antiwar "teach-ins" to discuss the unpopular war. At last, Yeshiva College joined the protests. On May 5, classes were cancelled and an antiwar rally held on Amsterdam Avenue. The campus was covered with NYC police, as the students marched and the college administrators huddled nervously in the Dean's office, fearing a student "occupation" as had occurred on some other campuses. Their relief was evident when, late in the afternoon, a genial police officer entered with the welcome news that there was no need to worry as the demonstrators had broken up for evening prayer! Nonetheless, much of the remaining semester was spent at teach-ins and antiwar protests, led by faculty members (Professor Manfred Weidhorn always in the forefront) and packed with students. I took my small son to some of these, wanting him to understand, even at an early age, the importance of political action. Many classes never resumed at all that term, instructors basing final examinations solely on work done up to the midterm.
In those days, there was still a considerable amount of prejudice against women in "the Academy" (something one was well aware of at Harvard, where one of the libraries was, by statute, off-limits to women and a few professors made it known that women were not welcome in their classes). I was determined to be an exemplary professional and was pleased by my unexpected nomination, by Yeshiva College, for a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend for the following summer. Therefore, I was somewhat dismayed (though of course very happy, too) when, just two months into my first full-time teaching job, I found myself in the rather awkward situation of being pregnant. Fortunately the baby was due in July, so there would be no trouble completing the school year. However, I knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, with an eight-course teaching load, to resume full-time teaching the following year. Even so many years later, I remain grateful to Dean Bacon for the way he took the news. Though unmistakably surprised, he at once asked my preference and then supported my request for a part-time schedule, designating it a "partial leave" so that I would not lose full-time faculty privileges. Indeed, that schedule proved so comfortable that I kept it for eight years, having a third child four years later. I then slid easily back into full-time teaching upon the retirement of Yeshiva's long time medievalist, Professor Irving Linn, when I was finally able to begin teaching courses in my area of specialization. Incidentally, I did win the NEH fellowship, which I was able to defer until the following summer.
I have many fond memories of my students - and if I cannot always remember their names, I never forget their faces. Some have stayed in touch through the years, and I have had the pleasure of hearing about their families and careers. In some cases, I have had the opportunity to teach their sons and am always delighted to hear from a current student, "My father sends regards. He took your class [many!] years ago." Have the students changed? In the early years, more students came from public schools, and, of course, it is no secret that Modern Orthodoxy itself has changed, so that many students are probably more dedicated to Torah studies than were their predecessors. But I find it as difficult to generalize about my students now as I did then and can only note that they remain as lively, intelligent, and fun to teach as they always were.
Having chaired the English Department for twenty-one years, I am well aware of the many changes in the department. It is, of course, considerably larger than it was when I arrived, with a far greater variety of courses, many of which would have been inconceivable in the "canon" based curriculum of the early 1970's. The department has also become increasingly professionalized - as has the university as a whole: no one would now be hired as I was, on the basis of a single, casual interview. In fact, the department has just successfully completed an intensive search for my successor, consisting of a nation-wide appeal for candidates, off-campus interviews by a departmental committee, on-campus interviews by all tenured and tenure-track members of the department, and an on-campus presentation for both faculty and students.
Yeshiva University, as an institution, has also undergone considerable change. I arrived during the presidency of Dr. Samuel Belkin, when the institution was still finding its identity as an amalgam of an old-world yeshiva and an ambitious American university. The presidency of his successor, Dr. Norman Lamm, was, in many ways, shadowed by the near bankruptcy that had threatened its early years, and the effects of that threat unfortunately persisted throughout his tenure, especially when it came to issues of faculty welfare. For example, it was not until Dr. Norman Adler arrived as Dean of Yeshiva College that department chairs (now called "cluster heads") began to be compensated. Previously they had received no compensation for their work, either in time or money - a situation that certainly created considerable hardship for me during the fifteen years I simultaneously ran the department and taught a full complement of courses. Despite much progress, some of the effects of Yeshiva's long past fiscal crisis are still with us in the form of the still too-high teaching loads and too-low salaries of many senior faculty members, although both have improved in recent years, thanks to faculty persistence and administrative support, notably from the Academic Vice President, Dr. Morton Lowengrub. Nevertheless, as founder and President of the university's chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and as a senior faculty member now preparing to retire, I am especially conscious of the continuing penalty paid by those faculty members who served the university longest, in the form of low retirement income commensurate with our low salaries. Fortunately, President Richard Joel seems determined to continue improving faculty compensation, and younger faculty members will not, it is to be hoped, have to suffer as the older ones have done.
Despite the frustrations of these bread-and-butter issues, my years at Yeshiva have been happy ones, for which I am grateful to both my students and my colleagues. Many of the latter have become close friends, and I can hardly imagine my life without them. I am thankful, too, for the warm welcome I have always felt from the Yeshiva community in general. As a "secular" Jew (married to a "secular" Christian), I was not, initially, entirely at home at Yeshiva, and during those early years, I was sometimes astonished to become suddenly aware that I was the only woman in a roomful of men. Now, however, I think of Yeshiva as my community, too. All through the years, students have been generous and affectionate, starting with those who, in 1970, presented me with a bottle of pink champagne on the birth of my daughter. Wherever I go, I meet former students, who greet me warmly, eager to reminisce about our classroom explorations of Beowulf or Chaucer, of Milton, Austen, or Joyce, and to tell me their own news, both professional and personal. Moreover, my perceptions of the literature I love have unquestionably been influenced by my students, and I can hardly read a familiar text without recalling the particulars of one or another lively and intense classroom (or e-mail) discussion. As I now begin to loosen the ties that have bound me to Yeshiva for so many years, shedding my full-time position for one of greater flexibility, I know that Yeshiva will remain for me a continuing source of friendship and intellectual renewal.
Dr. Joan Haahr is a professor of English at Yeshiva College. After 36 years of teaching at Yeshiva, she will retire this spring.