Meeting of the Minds

It has been many years since I first heard Shimer alumni from the 1950s and 1960s sing the praises of John Hirschfield. Given my longstanding interest in Shimer history, I often wondered what it would be like to meet this remarkable professor and scholar. But, given the vagaries of life and the fact that Professor Hirschfield himself never visited Shimer, it appeared unlikely that such a meeting would ever take place.

Then, in the last issue of Symposium, I discovered that Professor Hirschfield had led Shimer’s first-ever study-abroad program, the Shimer Paris Project. I had known nothing about that program, and reading the article galvanized me into action.

I telephoned Professor Hirschfield at his home in Baltimore. The hearty voice on the other end of the line sounded like that of a man much younger than his 90 years. I asked if he would be willing to meet me in Baltimore, where I was planning to attend a weekend conference. He said he’d be delighted. So, at long last, we met late last fall. Professor Hirschfield greeted me at his condo, insisted I call him John, and escorted me to the University Club at nearby Johns Hopkins University for lunch. He was recognized and welcomed by many of those present, which was hardly surprising given his garrulous and friendly nature.

John started teaching at Shimer in 1957, shortly after earning his Ph.D. in the History of Medicine from the University of Chicago. He was hired by President Joe Mullin, the same man who commissioned him to head up the Shimer Paris Project four years later. “Professor Mullin asked me whether I thought it would be appropriate to send our students off to Paris to study on their own and earn Shimer credit for it,” John told me. “I told him I didn’t think that was a good idea, because the tutors would be likely to inflate the grades of our students without a faculty presence. So he asked me, “Then how about if you go with them?” I thought about that for a few seconds, then said, ‘Sure’.”

As it turns out, John’s account was typically modest. According to an article in a 1963 issue of Time Magazine (“Colleges: Unknown, Unsung, and Unusual”), the program in Paris was initiated when a group of Shimer students were weighing the pros and cons of a year of study abroad. They wanted to go, but they didn’t want to give up Professor Hirschfield's courses in humanities and history in the process. "They got to talking with me about it," President Mullin told the reporter from Time, "and I said, why not just send Hirschfield along?" So John led the program, and a tenth of Shimer's student body enjoyed a year of studying with their favorite teacher in the mornings in Paris bistros. "And you know," Mullin noted, "they all did better on their comps than the rest of their classmates."

John left Shimer during the Great Internecine Struggle in 1967.  It was a sad parting, but he still regards the college with nothing but affection. “Shimer was the most democratic school I’ve ever known,” John told me, meaning “democratic” in a demographic rather than a political sense. “Students came from all walks of life. Sons of corporate bigwigs sat in class discussing texts with the children of parents who barely had a dime.”  He told me that Shimer’s educational system was successful because classes were small, faculty were gifted and committed, and students sat around tables discussing important texts.  I assured him that that’s still the case at Shimer today.

Before we parted John took me on a tour of his condo, which was as replete with paintings and pottery from both East and West as a small museum. As I left, he handed me a small memento. It could have been the baton of generations, spanning half a century and reaching back to the days when John Hirschfield and his redoubtable colleagues roamed the Shimer campus.