Magazine of the American University Summer 1991

Magazine of The American University Summer 1991 AU's new leader, Joseph Duffey PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE ven before I formally arrived on campus this summer, I had the E pleasure of meeting many of you at some of the university's spring functions. On every occasion from Freshman Day and Alumni Reunion to the President's Circle dinner, I was struck by the pride you expressed in the university. It is heartening to be part of a community that is confident of itself and giving serious consideration to its special mission as a major university in the nation's capital. And it is a privilege to be asked to lead such a community into its second century. I bring to the tasks you have asked me to assume more than a fe11· years of experience, an inquiring spirit, a tough skin, a lot of ideas I want to test in the crucible of discussion and debate, and a passionate concern about the future of the nation and the course of our culture and civilization. I do not underestimate the problems we face. Higher education is now a truly competitive enterprise. Students and parents are asking serious questions about value and quality of campus life. Graduate and professional students are scrutinizing the quality of teaching and the resources for learning. Donors and businesses are looking to our col leges and universities to educate people capable of competing in a global economy. And the general public, more critical and a11·are than ever, is challenging the old pecking order of prestige in American higher education. Thanks in large measure to your efforts, The American University is well positioned to meet these difficulties. It already has a reputation as a well-managed university, serious about its educational mission, open to its unique role as a truly international center of learning. Now as we prepare to celebrate the university's centennial, the challenge before us is to build upon this firm foundation so that those who come after us will have a legacy that ennobles, enables, and empowers. joseph Duffey President The American University TABLE OF CONTENTS Vol. 42 No.3 Features Amml:on is the official alumni publication of A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: A PORTRAIT OF The American University. h is wrinen and designed by the University Publications and JOE DUFFEY . ... 2 Printing Office. Office of University Rela A look at the multifaceted character and career of tions. Personal views on subjects of public interest expressed in the magazine do not AU's new president necessarily reflect official policies of the uni versity. Suggestions and comments concern· SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE: ing Ameritan should be sent to American Magazine, Uni\ersity Publications and Print· REUNION '91 . ... .... ........ 10 ing Office. Constitution Building. Tenley The many events of Reunion '91 offered alumni Campus. The American University, Wash ington. OC ZOO 16-81 Z I. activities and opportunities to meet, greet, and share Anita F. Goulieb, Assistant Vice President the pleasure of one another's company. for University Relations Karen Sloan Lebovich, Director, UniversitY Publications and Printing Office . SAYING ADIEU TO AU .... .. .. .. ....... 16 Managing Editor: Mary Jo Sinker Commencement speakers advise, encourage, and Editorial Staff: warn AU grads. Beuy Fritzius. C.j. Houtchens, judy Miller, Karen Way Photographer: Hilary Schwab Designer: Kevin Grasty Ameriron is published quarterly by The American University. With a circulation of aboUl 65.000, Amml:an is sent to alumni and other constiruems of the universiry commu nity. Copyright 1991, The American Uni versity, an equal opportunity/affirmative action university. 92-001 Thankful international business grad Jon Landsman '91, right, with proud dad Bob. Departments Campus News .... .. .. ....... ..20 Centennial News ....... ..•......24 Sports . ....... _..........•. ....26 Alumni Chapter and Group News . .. .28 Class Notes and Alumni News .....•3 1 SUMMER 1991 AMAN fOR All ~tA~ON~ A Portrait of Joe Duffey f you want to know something about who and what Joseph Duffey considers important, look at the wall of his study in the University of Massachusetts Chancellor's house in Amherst. Photos of Duffey with Coretta Scott King and Mother Teresa speak to his concern about those for whom the playing field isn't level. The pictures with Issac Bashevis Singer, Raymond Aaron, and Claude Levy Strauss reflect his lively interest in ideas. A framed quote from Albert Camus, "In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer," speaks to what his friend and former National Endowment for the Humanities colleague Tom Litzenburg calls "his affirming outlook" on life and people. Another framed quote-this one from Robert Bolt's A Man for AI! Seasons-could have been written to describe the activist who sought to open up the political process in Connecticut, brought the humanities closer to the common citizen, and in Massachusetts, home of some of the most prestigious names in American higher education, took an average public institution and made it selective and sought after: "God made plants for their simplicity, animals for their innocence, but he made man to serve him wittily in the tangle of his mind." By Mary Jo Binker 2 AMERICAN Like Bolt's hero, Sir Thomas More, AU's twelfth president is a man for all sea sons. "All the parts of his life have come together," says his longtime friend and Carter administration associate Stuart Eizenstat. "AU's getting Joe Duffey at the peak of his career." The early years G owing up in Huntington, West Vir ginia, in the 1930s and 1940s, Duffey's compassion for others surfaced at an early age. When he was fourteen, his mother died and he helped his father, a former coal miner turned barber, look after his four younger siblings, then aged twelve to two. "1oe was liberated even then," says his sis ter Helen Phillips, who recalls that as the two eldest she and her brother shared much of the work of looking after the younger children. Phillips says Duffey showed an early interest in teaching and learning. She remembers him sharing his interest in books and music with her-and using tin cans to build a crystal radio set from instructions in a library book. Because of the lingering Depression in West Virginia, money was scarce, so Duffey had outside jobs, too, first as a car hop at a local drive-in restaurant and, later, on the railroads and in the steel mills of Huntington. Despite family and job responsi bilities, Duffey still had time to bicycle through the city streets, go on YMCA sponsored field trips, be active in the Bap tist Church, and help his father with local Democratic party chores. After graduating from high school, ~ Duffey went to Marshall University in ""~ Huntington, where he majored in history ~ t · and classical Greek and earned a bachelor's ~ degree in 1954. He began graduate work a ~· year later and in 1958 obtained a degree in theology from Andover ewton Theologi- SUMMER 1991 3 cal School. He was then ordained a minis nized teach-in programs on local campuses ate from Connecticut in 1970. To get the ter in the Baptist Church. to discuss the war in southeast Asia. In nomination, he first had to take on the Duffey chose the ministry in part 1968 Duffey was co-chairman of Eugene po\\·erful political machine of state Demo because of his positive experience with a McCarthy's presidential campaign effort in cratic Party chairman John Bailey, who \\·as progressive and socially aware Baptist Connecticut with another local political supporting another candidate at the state's Church in Huntington. "In those days, the activist, Anne Wexler, whom he later mar convention. Even though Connecticut law clergy were the most educated, articulate ried. (See "A Different Kind of President's provided for primaries, the Bailey organiza people in the community," he says. "They Wife," page 9.) tion had, up to that time, always managed were the individuals who gave you entree In the course of that campaign effort, to keep its opponents from obtaining the to the outside world and to ideas. The Duffey led a group of dissenting delegates, necessary twenty percent of delegate votes church also opened my eyes to questions including playwright Arthur Miller and the law required to hold such a contest. of social justice and racial discrimination." actor Paul Newman, to the Democratic To thwart the Bailey organization, After his ordination, Duffey contin National Convention in Chicago, where Duffey took his campaign to people in the ued his studies while serving as student Hubert Humphrey won the nomination. state \\·ho had never before been formally minister at a church in the Boston area. In After the convention, Duffey was among involved in politics-students, antiwar 1960, at the age of twenty-seven, he was the first to go to work for Humphrey's activists, homemakers, shopkeepers, and invited to join the faculty at the Hartford election. blue-collar workers. He ended up with Seminary Foundation in Hartford, Con enough convention delegates to force a necticut. Shortly thereafter, he entered Duffey's race for the Senate Democratic primary, which he then won. Yale University to study for a master's Duffey probably would have won the degree, which he received in 1963. B elieving that the political process general election, too, had not incumbent A year later Duffey resigned his needed to be more inclusive, Duffey Democratic senator Thomas Dodd teaching position and began studies for his decided to run for the United States Sen- entered the race as an independent candi- doctorate at the Hartford Seminary Foun dation, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1969, after completing a dissertation on the work of American social philosopher and archi tectural critic Lewis Mumford.

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