News from New Haven - 3

Donald Kagan (Yale Daily News photo)

The jet-black hair is now white and thinning, and age has softened his angular features. But Donald Kagan's gaze is as clear and appraising as ever. At 81, he's still at the top of his game.

Professor Kagan, the Sterling Professor of Classics and History, is retiring after 44 years at Yale.

“There’s no potent reason,” he says. “It’s just time. I think I’ve done it about enough, and even I’m tired of hearing myself lecture.”

In addition to being the leading expert on the Peloponnesian War, he was named the Jefferson Lecturer ("the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities") in 2005 and was awarded the National Humanities Medal. He served as the Dean of Yale College and published numerous works on Ancient Greece.

He has been credited with revitalizing Directed Studies, "an interdisciplinary study of Western civilization," which accommodates 10 percent of the freshman class and is oversubscribed. In Directed Studies the curriculum is coordinated so that, for example, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Plato are studied at the same time in History, Literature, and Philosophy, respectively (at least that's how I remember it).

(By the way, STEM and social-science majors would do well to take a year off from their chosen path and immerse themselves in the liberal arts; they probably will never get another opportunity to do so, and they just may find that a lesson in humanities will stick a lot longer than any math proof.)

Donald Kagan refused to bow to "relevance" or any of the fashionable "-isms" that pop up in the Academy from time to time. For your steadfastness and example we thank you, sir. © 2013 Stephen Yuen
[Update, April 27 - The WSJ covers Donald Kagan's farewell address:

In 1990, as dean of Yale College, Mr. Kagan argued for the centrality of the study of Western civilization in an "infamous" (his phrase) address to incoming freshmen. A storm followed. He was called a racist—or as the campus daily more politely editorialized, a peddler of "European cultural arrogance."

Not so now. Mr. Kagan received a long standing ovation from students and alumni in the packed auditorium. Heading into retirement, he has been feted as a beloved and popular teacher and Yale icon.]