Robert Koblitz (1921–2016)
A Message from Leon Botstein
I am writing to inform the community of the death, on February 17, of Professor Emeritus of Political Studies Robert Koblitz. He died at his home in Eastham, Massachusetts, at the age of 94.
Bob taught at Bard from 1951 until his retirement in 1986. He taught a range of subjects, from constitutional law to the principles of democracy. He was named Honorary Hungarian College Dean by the 323 Hungarian refugee students who studied at Bard from December 22, 1956 until February 25, 1957. The Robert Koblitz Human Rights Award was established in 1987 by Bard alumni/ae who are his former students; it is presented annually to a member of the Bard community—student, faculty, administration, or staff—whose work demonstrates an understanding of and a commitment to democracy. Bob’s dedication to and engagement with his students and teaching influenced many generations of Bard alumni/ae.
His wife of 62 years, Minnie “Min” Koblitz, died in 2007 at the age of 83. Bob is survived by their three children, Neal Koblitz, a professor of mathematics in Seattle; Ellen Koblitz, an appellate judge in New Jersey; and Donald, a diplomat in Germany and then corporate legal counsel in Beijing; and five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
A memorial service will take place on Sunday, July 3, 2016 at 2:00 p.m. at the Chapel in the Pines in Eastham, Massachusetts.
Photo (L to R): Judge William Benson Bryant (then Chief Judge of the US District Court for DC, and recipient of a Doctorate of Laws from Bard in 1984), Min Koblitz, TBD, and Robert Koblitz)
OBITUARY
Robert Koblitz passed away on February 17, 2016 at his Eastham, Massachusetts home at the age of 94. After getting his PhD summa cum laude at Harvard on the GI bill, Bob became a professor of political science and eventually chairman of the department at Bard College. There he taught generations of inquiring minds to ask tough questions. Bob also pioneered the foreign student program at Bard, which hosted them long before it became popular. He received two Fulbright Fellowships in his career, to teach in Baroda, India (1955-56) and Nagoya, Japan (1968-69).Bob taught everything from constitutional law to the principles of democracy and was politically active both in Scarsdale, New York, where he lived for many years, and for the Democratic Party on Cape Cod. Before departing for Japan in 1968 he ran in the first contested election to the Scarsdale village government. He lost just in time to board the plane.
Bob was married for 62 years to a wonderful elementary school teacher and leader in the National Education Association, Min Koblitz, who was also involved for many years in children's services on the Cape. They had three children: Neal, a professor of mathematics in Seattle; Ellen, an appellate judge in New Jersey; and Donald, a diplomat in Germany and then corporate legal counsel in Beijing. They also had five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren who brought them unending pleasure.
REMEMBRANCES
Don KoblitzI was at Bard from age 0 to 6. Bard was literally my first window on the world. We lived on Faculty Circle and I got one Bard student after another as baby sitters, none of whom seemingly inclined to alienate the professor's youngest (or perhaps Bard only admitted sweet girls?). The faculty daughter, Franny Asip, was my favorite though.
When I braved President Case's dog, Zabriskie, who would charge down to yap at me from the big white house on the hill, I could go on my own to the coffee shop in the first ivy-covered building. They accepted my Monopoly money and I don't know to this day whether my Dad ever paid my tab. One of the special days was when my Dad took me up the side steps to the old library stacks. He held my hand tight because I barely made the steep steps that led to endless rows of books. I can still smell the musty treasures even though I had only the fussiest sense of what they were used for. Dad would stand before a world map and let me stay for as long as I could identify the countries.
Going to nursery school at the Zabriskie Estate was magical. I never understood all the tears and separation angst of my classmates, but maybe Mom being the sole teacher accounted for some of my sovereignty. There was a long grassy hill sloping down to the Hudson River and I remember idyllic weather, chasing each other until we ran out of breath. Bard was huge then. When I came back and saw all the modern buildings it was as if someone had shrunk the old campus. My father's office up the creeky steps. Three houses around a little circle, where Mrs. Frauenfelder would speak in heavily accented English and give me sweets when I knocked on the door, that is if I told her, not always strictly in conformity with the facts, that my mother said I could have a cookie.
My Bard was truly a heile Welt, a perfect world. Forests that never ended, which even had a little stage (which doubled as a gate to the cemetery), just the right size for a group of kids to put on a show. And all those older kids! Kids like David Frauenfelder, who would put me on his lap and tell me stories. He later became a sea captain, so maybe the practice came in handy. And hovering in the center of my vision were Min and Bob Koblitz, aged mid-30's, just back from a year in India, who had brought me to a place, maybe a rare place, where giving a small child freedom was an astute investment in the future.
Tom Dengler '61
What a different place Bard was in 1956 when I was accepted as a student. There were only about 200 students and ten faculty. Most of the Hungarians had passed on. Several Korean war vets and their girl friends were living it up. I chose political science as my major. Koblitz's class on political philosophers was my meat. He always let the students say what they thought. He had his style just like Bluecher had his style.
One day we were walking with the professor in a group after a contentious meeting with some kind of student protesters. He expressed himself succinctly and in anger: This democracy business is all bull shit." I never forgot those winged words.
Guy Ducornet '60
When I took my first class at Bard College, in the Fall of 1959, my first class was taught by Professor Koblitz; listed as "Sociology" seminar, it dealt essentially with international politics. On registration day, I had also enlisted as a French Fulbright student in Ralph Ellison's "American Literature" class and in Louis Schanker's painting studio (as I have recalled in my book Annandale Blues in 2012.) When Professor Koblitz heard that I had just visited the Soviet Pavilion at the 1958 WORLD 'S FAIR in Brussels where the SPUTNIK was exhibited, he asked me if I would give the class an oral report of my perception of such an event from the point of view of a French student at the Paris Sorbonne.
I was petrified at the idea of having to perform in English but he reassured me most cordially and was most helpful in helping me with my stage fright when he prodded the students to ask me"relevant" questions, which made the exercise most pleasant and encouraging. And very soon, class after class, I experienced what a true American seminar was like and how teaching at Bard was radically different from the formal lectures in the Paris Sorbonne's amphitheaters I had just left behind. And a flood of fond memories is coming back from the years after I became an instructor in French at Bard (after marrying Erica Degré, daughter of Professor Gérard DeGré and Muriel Degré, I had the immense joy of becoming a colleague of Bob Koblitz on the Bard campus. He was a very sharp analyst of the news of the day then, and his very open-minded judgements and opinions were always passionately listened to and appreciated. I loved the fact that such an accomplished scholar and a great mind had also been able to ENGAGE HIMSELF politically... I remember his immense culture and his open mind and dedication to the well-being of the Bard students——and the WORLD in general as a possible "better place" FOR ALL.
The sixties were troubled times, but cultivated minds such as Robert Koblitz and Gérard DeGré gave Bard College the immense advantage of having "engagé intellectuals" who could show the Bard students what supreme intelligence could achieve in world politics... as part of their "liberal education" in Annandale.
I respectfully salute Professor Robert Koblitz's intellectual & and eternal LEGACY.
And I send his family my deepest condolences.
Naomi Bellinson Feldman '53
Bob was my Senior Project advisor during the 1952-53 year. He guided my thesis (on the work of a New Deal Committee, The Temporary National Economic Committee and its investigation of corporate inequality in the years preceding WWII ). What I remember most about him was his respect for my work and for me as a young scholar. He didn't condescend, he guided clearly and encouragingly. He gave me more respect than I deserved. His mentoring gave me the confidence I needed to pursue my research at the FDR Library in Hyde Park, and to obtain interviews with the director of the TNEC, Leon Henderson. (It's ironic to realize how little has changed since then; we are all aware of how economic inequality is in the forefront of today's headlines.). That encouragement helped me find my to my pursuit of a graduate degree years later, and Bob unhesitatingly wrote me a recommendation to graduate school almost 20 years after my Bard graduation. My career as a history and humanities teacher at Evanston Township High School owes much to his warm and understated support.
I remember many student gatherings at his and Minnie's, his own kids always around, Minnie being her warm and maternal self, and Bob, quiet, dark, slight but always there, willing to be engaged and to take us seriously. He was the essence of what a good teacher should be, an exemplar of what a Bard education could offer.
Megan Hastie '80
I began my student days at Bard in the mid 1970s as a double major: Political Studies and Music. Bob Koblitz was my freshmen advisor in Political Studies. I enrolled in and audited several of his classes over the next few years. His mentoring and the reading he assigned had a profound and transformative influence on me, which persists to this day. He guided his students to analyze root, systemic causes, and effects; to detect and question underlying premises, assumptions, and predilections; and to think and research dynamically. His lively seminar talks were in a sense models of the critical, dynamic thinking, and inquiries he hoped we would engage in--an almost musical (polyphonic) approach to analysis. His basic decency and sense of fairness were intrinsic. A brilliant scholar and wonderful teacher, Bob Koblitz had a good (if at times appropriately acerbic) sense of humor---and was personally affable, accessible, welcoming, and willing to be helpful where he could.
Bob conducted seminars--he didn't give lectures-- and students participated fully, just as we did in the life of the Political Studies Dept. He taught at a time when Bard embraced progressive educational principles wherein students and faculty participated jointly in departmental decision-making. Attracted to Bard in part because of its progressive reputation, students expected and demanded a voice within the department and the school, and Bob Koblitz supported and encouraged us. This extended to the efforts some of us made to unionize B&G workers, seeking to bring our classroom lessons to bear on the reality of our immediate community.
During my students days, Bob commuted weekly to Bard from Westchester. When on campus (Tuesday-Friday), his first-floor Aspinwall office door was usually open unless he was in a conference or tutorial with a student. Drop by and you might find him debating vigorously with a student or two, welcoming you to join in; or if he was teaching a class, you might find a student sitting in a comfortable chair reading one of the thousands of books that filled the shelves that lined his office walls; or you might explore those books yourself, as I did many times. If you wished to speak with Bob, this is where you looked for him. I don't ever recall seeing him at the coffee shop, the faculty dining room, or after hours at Adolph's.
Students often described Bob as a Marxist or sometimes (either as a tease or jab) as an armchair Marxist. Bob didn't seem terribly interested in such labels. I recall him commenting that Marx himself would have thought the notion of someone being a Marxist silly. The question was whether serious engagement with his writing, or that of any other analyst, was useful to one's gaining an understanding of something and taking effective action, not whether one had assumed an identity by finding it so.
Through the grapevine, I had heard that some administrators or faculty around Bard had issues with the Political Studies Dept having two "Marxists"---as if there was only one perspective influencing students. Quite apart from the fact that both Bob Koblitz and Steve Andors assigned reading that reflected diverse opinions, it was very clear from their lively, almost heated, exchange at my moderation that there was anything but uniformity of opinion and perspective. I think what Bob Koblitz and Steve Andors did share was a recognition that political democracy---and especially mere electoral democracy---could be of only limited effectiveness for the majority of people where economic power was concentrated in very few hands and where democracy did not extend into the workplace.
Bob Koblitz reserved disdain for those who abused or misused power. He once mentioned that he had been at Harvard when Kissinger was there. I have always inferred this meant they were in the same PhD program, though I never confirmed it to have been the case. Regarding Kissinger's subsequent role in US foreign policy, Bob no doubt considered him a war criminal---disdain enough---but I also recall a personal dig. He said Kissinger had no accent when he was a student. He had reacquired it later for effect. In other words, he was a phony on top of everything else.
Although I have not seen him in over three decades, I grieve Bob Koblitz's death. I had taken a certain comfort in knowing he was still among us---often wondering what he thought about some question or another---and that is gone. However, his insights and instruction have proved ever more relevant in the intervening decades---one might say tragically so. I know he has many other former students who feel as I do; many who took the word praxis to heart and see that Another World Is Possible.
I offer my deepest condolences to Bob's family.
RIP, Mr. Koblitz.
Barbara (Ward) Manui '84
Bob Koblitz encouraged my interest in Japanese history and, as it was an interest of his as well, he agreed to teach a tutorial for myself and a fellow student. We both enjoyed his course, and it gave me enough grounding in the subject that in recent years I've startled Japanese friends with a familiarity with their own history. God bless Koblitz-sensei, and speed him on his way. We're lighting the candle now.
Tom Noonan '68
Before failing me, not once but twice, at Moderation, I will always remember the comment Professor Koblitz made to me. He simply said "you seem to think it is a virtue not to make excuses, I think it is a virtue not to have to". I thank him for that observation, and it is what motivated me to come back to Bard ten years later, pass Moderation, and then write my Senior Project. Not all of his students were left wing liberals, but a few gained a well grounded education from his course work and the need to use the library. At 94, Professor Koblitz gave much to a succession of Bard students. He will be remembered.
Stuart Stritzler-Levine, Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Dean of the College
As persons from our past pass from among us and of course most remain I am reminded that I have had the good fortune to have known many from long ago. One recalls the past and takes note of the mix in such recall of all that one has attempted to learn and hopes to continue to do.
The calm and erudite stance of Fritz Shafer---the campus presence and occupation and ubiquity of Fred Crane---the office and great advising presence of Heinz Bertelsmann. One recalls and hears the unhurried words and thoughts of William Lensing and ceaseless hours and presence of Frank Oja.
And now we learn of the passing of Robert Koblirz at 94 years. This some 30 years beyond his retirement. And not surprisingly one can so easily and so vividly recall that which he included in his mentoring and education of young colleagues. Such was never about the trivial and yet it was presented for the taking or not in a very everyday manner---never as all knowing---never as command. The guidance was never heavy---just an example of how to make one's way with our very particular students. How to encourage and lead and reward the commitments among his current and your current group. And they were not acolytes but more the student colleagues with whom to address the turn of an idea. I recall Bob so clearly and what I remember is not the flamboyant but that of never entering his large office (which I constantly threatened to divide in half when I became the dean and somehow believed that I could) and there not to my surprise was one or more of those who likely wished to cause some trouble---they just hanging out seemingly for no reason at all. Another Koblitz student group sharing his place and his bite and spirit. All this seems like a long time ago and at the same time not so long ago. I recalled almost immediately when I heard of Bob's passing the names and the persons with whom he shared his time. I recalled the old "divisional" Moderation schedule and the sessions I would share with him. At the time one member of the board had to come from a discipline not the student's major. How many Lensing boards would I join?---How many with Koblitz? I had better do some thinking and have something interesting to say when a case came around. I think what Bob taught me, and I believe many of us junior beings, and in the mid-60s our faculty was growing, was that the education of a sophomore was an Important matter because the senior two years hence would sustain us. I saw at the time and still see now that Bob was never a lesser actor in the life of his students---indeed he seemed to be what the phrase "his students" was all about. Some of the names have appeared on my current screen these past few days were from many years ago. But I somehow felt as if they were here just a semester or two ago. All this brings the vivid life of Robert Koblitz and his collective to my present. And that which he led me to know about our very much present place and spirit in Annandale.
Noel Sturgeon '79, Dean, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University
I am pretty sure it was one of my first classes at Bard, but I am not sure what it was called: American Politics, or Constitutional Law? At any rate, I nervously entered the seminar room and sat down to listen to the slight, dark-complexioned professor with the neat mustache, expecting to hear about congress, legislation, and elections. Prof. Koblitz held up a sheaf of papers: "You know what this is? It's the US Constitution." And then he ripped the papers in half, threw them on the floor, and stomped on them. We all gasped, and I knew then I was in for an education like none other I had encountered before.
It was 1975. I was a wild child from Woodstock, usually barefoot the entire summer, wearing my hair in a white girl afro and clothes that left little to the imagination, finding myself in college almost by accident. It was Leon’s first year as President (Leon and I were frosh together, but unlike me, he has yet to graduate). I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, because I knew I wanted to fight injustice, and at that time, lawyers, especially civil rights lawyers, were heroes. Besides, everyone told me that since I was so argumentative, being a lawyer was my destiny.
So, as a pre-law and dance major, Koblitz was my guide to political theory and radical action. I think I took every class he offered in the four years I was at Bard. He taught me Marxist theory, political theory, constitutional law, US politics. He took our class to NYC to the courts there. Through him I learned what it meant to be a paralegal and how to use a law library, a skill that served me for years as a legal secretary in between undergrad and grad. He cheered me on when I organized, with others, a sit-down in the administration building over the issue of having pets on campus, a pretty funny cause in hindsight. He was my thesis advisor, for my Senior Project on Revolutionary Black Nationalism. I spent hours in his office, where any student could walk in, have some tea, and talk for hours about John Marshall and Eldridge Cleaver, John Locke and Peter Kropotkin, Vladimir Lenin and Thomas Jefferson. There were always one or two of us there, arguing. If you were having a tutorial with him, you could count on being interrupted by someone else who wanted to argue about the lumpen-proletariat or the puerile leftism of the counterculture. His office was also a safe space for the few black students on campus at the time, and a rare place to talk about systemic racism and what one could do about it.
By the time I took my LSATs in my senior year, I was a confirmed Marxist, and I knew I didn’t want to be a lawyer, but an activist. I think Koplitz, however much he would say the legal system was bullshit, was disappointed. He was very proud of his daughter, who became a lawyer and a judge. Though gender didn’t exist as a topic or feminism as a critical analysis at the time, Koplitz was a strong believer in women’s equality, and the only time he ever showed frustration with me was when he thought I was downplaying my intellectual abilities in favor of flirting with other students. His high expectations of me served as a guide for the rest of my life. I am sorry I lost touch with him, and didn’t get to tell him that I remained a political theorist and activist, organizing anti-militarist and anti-nuclear civil disobedience actions while getting a PhD, chairing a Women’s and Gender Studies Department, and becoming a Dean of Environmental Studies. He was a gentleman, a radical, a champion of the underprivileged. His activism was his teaching; his students were his hope for the revolution. I am still following his footsteps; like him, my notion of what it means to make social change has become nuanced while I still enjoy the passion of young radical students. My deepest condolences to his family; I am so sorry he is gone, but I like to think of his spirit, still ripping up the hallowed truisms of power wherever he may be.
Post Date: 02-17-2016