An Academic Friendship in an Age of Academic Decline
- Jul 1
- 1 min read
I have only once written a piece for the popular prints that had the dubious honor of going viral. It was called “Why I’m Leaving Harvard” and can be found here. I thought that readers of this Golden Thread Substack might find interesting a more intimate perspective on academe’s fall from grace, and particularly the malign effects of DEI on teaching. The following is a personal reminiscence given in 2016 at a memorial conference in honor of Mark A. Kishlansky, who was Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of History at Harvard University from 1991 to his death in 2015.
Mark was my friend for almost a quarter-century. At some imperceptible point in those 24 years, I think in the late ’90s, I realized he was my best friend – not only the person I saw the most and enjoyed being with the most, apart from my wife, but the person I knew who was best at being a friend.
We first met when Mark arrived at Harvard in the fall of ’91. I was eager to meet him because his field of history was adjacent to mine, which meant we would be working together, and I also wanted to meet the man Bud Bailyn had declared to be the most brilliant man in the field of Tudor-Stuart history…