David Kettler, Research Professor of Social Studies

In a letter to the Bard community, President Leon Botstein memorialized Professor Kettler.

To the Bard College Community:

It is with great sadness that I inform the Bard community of the death of our esteemed colleague David Kettler on Sunday morning. He was 94. Although he had retired from teaching seven years ago, he continued to pursue research and writing. He lived a full and incredibly productive long life.

David Kettler held the position of Research Professor in the Division of Social Studies here at Bard. He taught at the College from 1990 to 2017. His first contact with Bard was in the 1980s when he was a Fellow of The Bard College Center. David was brilliant. He was learned and an exceptional, subtle, and original scholar whose range and command were unparalleled. He excelled in analysis and interpretation and in the capacity to negotiate complexity and ambiguity. His scholarly accomplishments and unrelentingly high standards earned him international fame and recognition. He was unusual in that he delighted in collaborating with other scholars; he published numerous books and articles with collaborators from all over the world.

He was, at the same time, a person of wit, humor, and generosity. He lived the life of the mind with rare intensity, convinced that true learning was a vital key to a just and civilized society. His commitment to writing and research was complemented by a devotion to teaching, particularly in seminars and tutorials. There are many generations of students who credit him with introducing them to the pleasures and rewards of close reading and archival research on issues of historical, philosophical, and political significance. The subjects to which David Kettler devoted himself included social and political theory, above all the work of Adam Ferguson, Karl Mannheim, Franz Neumann, and György Lukács. Throughout his career, he also maintained a focus on labor history, labor law, unions, and the theory of negotiation, especially the intersection between labor law and democratic politics.

His last and perhaps most enduring project was the scholarly examination of exile and émigrés, particularly those from Nazi Germany, and the fate of intellectuals and artists whose careers began and flourished during the Weimar Republic. He led a wide-ranging examination of how these émigrés and exiles, at the end World War II, interacted with former colleagues and friends, those who remained in Germany. He christened this collaborative research program “First Letters,” since the primary sources were the first exchange of letters between the two groups.

David Kettler was himself an émigré. Born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1930, to a modest, middle-class Jewish family with roots in Eastern Europe, David, his brother, and his parents fled to America in 1940, settling in New Jersey. Three months after the family’s arrival, his father died. David worked and so managed to pay tuition to attend Columbia University for his undergraduate degree. He taught night school and then entered graduate school at Columbia where he earned his PhD. He began his academic career at Ohio State University, where he was promoted to full professor. In 1969, he accepted a post at Purdue University as Professor of Political Science.

But David Kettler had gained a reputation as a scholar as well as an activist. As a result of his supportive stance for student activists at Ohio State, the Board of Trustees of Purdue cancelled his appointment in 1970, violating the principles of academic freedom and tenure. He was suddenly without a job. Through the intervention of one of my teachers, the eminent political theorist Judith Shklar, David accepted a job at Franconia College for the academic year 1970–71. In 1971, he became a tenured professor of politics at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. Among his accomplishments during his nearly two decades at Trent was the establishment of a collective bargaining agreement between the faculty and the university.

David was a cherished and close friend. He was thoughtful, self-critical, and consistently committed to the traditions of philosophical, historical, and sociological inquiry and reflection. He delighted as well in music, the arts, and literature.

David is survived by his wife Janet, who worked at Bard for many years as an administrator, and their twin daughters, Hannah and Katherine, who both graduated from Simon’s Rock and Bard. He is also survived by a daughter from a previous marriage, Ruth. David was devoted to his family, and was shamelessly open about celebrating the accomplishments of his children.

A burial service will take place on Monday, October 14, at 3:00pm, at the Bard Cemetery. It will be followed by a reception at President’s House.

Leon Botstein

Post Date: 10-09-2024