Robert G. McCloskey 1916-1969

HOLLYWOOD, Time magazine, and other institutions that regard higher education as a branch of the entertainment industry would have difficulty understanding why Robert G. McCloskey was regarded as one of the most gifted teachers of his time. His lectures were not flamboyant, his writings not "popular"; he cultivated no eccentricities, and struck no poses. Though he loved the theater he detested the theatrical.

The gift he had was that of lucid speech, clear prose, and serious reflection. In an age that has made "communication" its shibboleth if not its romantic illusion, Robert McCloskey quietly expressed the best of the scholarly tradition, both in his clarity of thought and in his commitment to serious learning.

He was both teacher and father to hundreds of college men, first experiencing the delights of learning, to scores of graduate students undergoing the painful transition from general to professional education, and to dozens of assistant professors anguished by the difficulty of resolving through intelligence alone their uncertain prospects and half-formed interests. He was a steady source of strength and insight to his peers, and all who shared his love of learning, no matter their age, were Robert McCloskey's peers.

He was deeply troubled by the Harvard crisis, even more by those of his colleagues who did not share his sense of crisis, and perhaps most of all by his fear that he had not done all he could to stem that crisis and to save the university he loved so fully. Though he detested faculty politics, he organized and led a faculty caucus, despairing equally of having done too much and not enough. Though partisan, he was in a sense not political; he commanded the respect of colleagues of all persuasions whatever their opposition to his views. In no small measure the Harvard crisis was moderated and the search for solutions made easier by the special trust even his opponents--many of them close to him personally--respond in him and his integrity.

Many will remember him most for the calm manliness in which was revealed a rare joining of openness and strength. To those who were drawn to him or drew strength from him, he seemed invulnerable. He was all too vulnerable.