Richard Gordon, Professor Emeritus in Psychology

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

To the Bard College Community:

It is with great regret that I inform the Bard community of the death of Richard Gordon, professor emeritus in psychology, initially in the Division of Social Studies and subsequently in the Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing. He died yesterday at his home in Red Hook. He was 83. He came to teach full time at Bard in 1973 and retired in 2009. He continued to offer courses every so often until 2017.

Richard Gordon was beloved and widely admired. He was uncommonly friendly and compassionate. As a consistently active member of the Bard community, he displayed intellectual rigor, exceptional candor, modesty, and independence. Professor Gordon helped build the Psychology Program alongside his two closest colleagues, Frank Oja and Stuart Stritzler-Levine. During his more than three decades at Bard, he was admired for his teaching and advising, especially on Senior Projects.

Richard Gordon graduated from Harvard College in 1962 with a degree in physics. Later in the 1960s, he enrolled in the graduate program in clinical psychology at the New School for Social Research where earned his MA in 1969 and PhD in 1976. He was one of the first faculty at Bard to use a computational language for the organization and evaluation of data in the social sciences. His most significant academic research and publications were on eating disorders. Professor Gordon pioneered the understanding of those conditions as related to, if not contingent on, the structure and character of a society. His book, Anorexia and Bulimia: Anatomy of a Social Epidemic (Blackwell 1990), a classic on the subject, went into a second revised edition, Eating Disorders: Anatomy of a Social Epidemic (Blackwell 2000), and was translated into many languages.

Trained as a clinical psychologist, Professor Gordon taught classes in both theory and practice. He maintained a flourishing private practice in the Hudson Valley during his time at the College. Professor Gordon also consulted for the Military Academy at West Point and was made an Honorary Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

There was, however, more to Professor Gordon; he was a remarkable intellect, teacher, and advisor, with whom conversation was always a pleasure. He possessed genuine curiosity in others. He was naturally a person of gentleness who nonetheless had an acute sense of humor, a resilient curiosity, and a striking absence of arrogance. 

But what made Richard Gordon truly stand out was that, throughout his life, he balanced two extraordinary accomplishments. Apart from his standing and achievements as a teacher, psychologist, and scholar, he was an outstanding jazz pianist, with an uncanny ear for harmony and the expressive gesture. He performed frequently on campus during his tenure at Bard, and continued to perform in public elsewhere, often with others. He never retired from music. His musicianship was exquisite. Through this parallel career in music, Professor Gordon enriched the cultural life of the College, its students, faculty, staff, and the surrounding Hudson Valley communities.

His wife and life partner, the artist Patti Hill Gordon, died in 2015. Professor Gordon is survived by their two daughters, Corinne Gordon and our colleague Alexa Murphy, associate director for the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library, and four grandchildren. Corinne and Alexa grew up on the Bard campus and attended Simon's Rock. 

Richard Gordon’s originality, civility, kindness, and artistry will be missed. A memorial service and burial in the Bard Cemetery are being planned by the family and will be announced when all the arrangements are made.

Leon Botstein
President

Post Date: 09-25-2024