An Exemplary Professor Retires

I met Ken DeBevoise more than thirty years ago, and right away, like everyone else, I knew he would do great things--but not in the conventional way.

Ken came to the University of Oregon as a refugee from practicing law.  He was, I believe, the first student at the University of Oregon to win a Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, which he used to research and write a dissertation that eventually became a book: Agents of Apocalypse: Epidemic Disease in the Colonial Philippines (Princeton University Press, 1995).  His splendid scholarship got him a job at Northwestern University, where he turned to teaching with a vengeance.  Both his topics (such as Texas high school football) and his method (taking the class to Texas) were unorthodox, as was his commitment to teaching, which peers less dedicated to undergraduates (which included just about everyone) commonly passed off as a lack of commitment to scholarship.

So Ken landed back at the U of O, where he taught courses for years in History and Political Science, drawing people willing to work hard outside (the reading list commonly required the equivalent of two books a week per class) and inside (intensive class discussions) of class.  Some administrators tried to ease him out a few years ago, before he was ready, an effort that prompted a spirited defense from students present and past, and Ken kept teaching into his early seventies.  His graduates include people prominent in law, development, and other fields, people whom, once challenged to think, have kept right on thinking--and acting.

I remember a professor years ago who referred to undergraduate teaching as "making mud pies" who wished that someone would just pay him a very large salary to research and write.  We need many more professors like Ken, scholars capable of writing great books who instead focus on challenging themselves and their students to learn broadly and deeply about the complexities of the human prospect.