A Backward Glance:
My 25 Years of Nocturnal Harvard

by Dean Michael Shinagel, 25-Year Honorand

Dean Michael Shinagel, 25-year honorand, addresses alumni(ae) at this year’s Alumni Banquet.

As I look back on my years of teaching in the Harvard Extension School, I realize that my early years date from 1959, when, as a doctoral candidate in the department of English and as a junior administrator in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, I was invited by the dean of Harvard College, John Usher Monro, to teach a section of his large course in Expository English. I taught with him four years, every Thursday evening, fall and spring semester, from 7:30 to 9 pm in Harvard Hall. After class Dean Monro and his section men would go to the Wursthaus in Harvard Square for conversation, a couple of beers, and a grilled knockwurst. (As an aside, I might observe that in those halcyon days Harvard Square was still a quaint and colorful square with all night eateries, like Albianis, and secondhand bookshops, like Pangloss, before it became commercialized into the trendy suburban mall we have today, with the Wursthaus and the Tasty displaced by Abercrombie and Fitch! Sic transit gloria mundi.)

My four years of Expository English sections provided me with many wonderful memories. I recall fondly one of my most articulate and motivated students that first year was a middle-aged Newton businessman with a wife and three children who was active in the Democratic party and was also pursuing a bachelor's degree part-time in the evening. When John F. Kennedy was elected president, he was invited to Washington for the Inauguration in 1960, and when he returned to class he presented me with a 331⁄3 rpm recording of Kennedy's "Inaugural Address," a memento that I still have. As you may have surmised, this dynamic Extension student was Edgar Grossman, who went on to receive his bachelor's degree in 1966 and two years later was instrumental in the founding of the Harvard Extension Alumni Association and became its first president.

Another student from those early years was an engineer who worked at Raytheon. One of the writing assignments set by Dean Monro was to describe, in the manner of the Reader's Digest, the most memorable character in your life. This engineer wrote a charming essay titled "Miss Eva" and recounted how he grew up in Iowa and, as a boy, loved to tinker with his bicycle. He received much encouragement with his tinkering from his school teacher, who was affectionately known as Miss Eva. He attributed her encouragement to his decision to become an engineer, and he noted that Miss Eva had influenced others in their academic careers, including her own son, Nathan Marsh Pusey, who was then president of Harvard University. I sent a copy of this student's essay to the president's office in Massachusetts Hall and a couple of days later received a warm letter from President Pusey thanking me for my thoughtfulness in sharing the essay and instructing me to tell the author how touched he was to read about his mother and how much he valued what the student wrote.

One final anecdote from those early days. In 1962 Dean Monro assembled all the section people in the Expository English course for the taping of a literary discussion of John Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row, which was to be used for the Navy PACE program, a collaborative educational initiative in 1961 between the Harvard Extension School and the US Navy, for college-level courses on ships and submarines around the world. The auditory taping was to be done in the living room of my rented row house on Mason Street in Cambridge late one evening, and, to lubricate the literary exchanges, I served extra-dry martinis on the rocks to all the discussants. The discussion was informed and spirited, especially as the evening wore on and the martinis were kept refreshed. When we replayed the tape, we were amused to hear the constant clinking of ice in our glasses while we talked. I often wondered how the Navy personnel responded to our liquescent lucubrations on Steinbeck's novel as they listened to the Harvard team in action. (I might mention, in passing, that one of the drinkers and discussants that evening was Shaun O'Connell, who for some 30 years now has taught courses on American fiction at the Harvard Extension School. I like to think that martini-memorable evening helped launch him on his distinguished career!)

After returning to Harvard in 1975 as dean and resuming my Extension School teaching in 1976, I have over the years had the honor of teaching hundreds of remarkable women and men. Recently I received a long distance telephone call from an Extension alumna on the West Coast who took my humanities seminar in 1976 on Sex, Literature, and Censorship. She congratulated me on my 25 years of teaching and reported that she still remembers my working definition of a pornographic book: a work that is read with one hand. Isn't it strange what nuggets of knowledge our students retain from our courses. Perhaps it's the subject matter.

In subsequent years I returned to less controversial topics: namely, the English novel and satire. One student who stands out was an octogenarian graduate student named Thomas Small. He enrolled in my graduate seminar on satire and impressed everyone in the class with his incisive mind and readiness to learn. When it came time for Thomas Small to write his ALM thesis, I agreed to serve as his thesis director and we decided on the subject of autobiography, so that he could understand this literary genre by reading some classic texts (St. Augustine, Rousseau), studying some critical and theoretical works, and finally writing his own autobiography of nearly four score and ten years, beginning with his birth as Tevye Smalninski in Lithuania in the nineteenth century and proceeding to the present. I convinced him that his autobiography was a legacy he should pass on to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He wrote an A thesis, one that President Derek Bok and Sissela Bok both read. At Commencement President Bok stopped the ceremony to acknowledge before the 25,000 spectators in Tercentenary Theatre that Thomas Small was now the oldest earned degree recipient in the history of the University.

Closer to home, although they were not students in my classes, both my children, Mark and Victoria, attended the Harvard Extension School. Victoria spent a semester in Extension before attending the University of Vermont, from which she was able to graduate in only three years. And my son Mark, after sampling various colleges, finally completed his ALB cum laude in 1986 and I had the parental pleasure of conferring upon him his degree.

For most of my 25 years I went alone to Harvard Yard in the evenings to teach, but in recent years I have enjoyed the companionship of my wife Marjorie. Each fall semester on Monday evening we walk from Quincy House to Sever Hall for our 7:30 pm classes. She teaches Public Speaking in Sever 304; I teach Satire or The Novel in Sever 211. After our classes we walk home together and discuss how our teaching went that evening. I am proud to report that my wife in her course evaluations regularly receives a perfect 5.0, whereas I am rated a mere 4.7 or 4.8. Clearly, like Avis to my wife's Hertz, I will have to "try harder."

The Harvard Extension School has been very special to me in many ways. Teaching in it for 25 years has been a gratifying and energizing experience. Many senior Harvard faculty have confided to me that they prefer teaching evening Extension students to their Harvard College day students. I remember recruiting one of my doctoral dissertation directors and the first master of Quincy House, Professor of English John M. Bullitt, to teach a course on Five Creators of the English Novel in Extension. A couple of months into the fall term, I met Professor Bullitt and asked how he was enjoying his Extension course. His face lit up and he reported, "It's the damnedest thing, but after my first lecture this elderly gentleman comes up to me in front of class, shakes my hand vigorously, and says, 'Nice going, Professor Bullitt. I really enjoyed your lecture.' Mike," he said, "I've been teaching at Harvard more than 30 years and no one ever thanked me like that!" I know just what Professor Bullitt experienced and so do most of my faculty colleagues, and so do most of the more than 400,000 women and men who have taken classes at the Harvard Extension School.

In closing, I would like to suggest, at least in part, what makes the Harvard Extension School such a special and magical place to teach and to learn. In his novel Howard's End, E. M. Forster succinctly summarized what human relationships attempt to achieve when he wrote the phrase: "only connect." That is what we attempt in our studies, in our teaching, in our lives. We seek to connect ourselves with others. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what the Harvard Extension School provides us, the opportunity to connect. I have connected over the years with many memorable and worthy people.

The Harvard Extension School is very much a part of Harvard University, but it is special because at night we take it over; we are nocturnal Harvard, and we represent to the multitudes beyond Harvard Yard a hallowed haven of teaching and learning. As our Nobel Laureate poet Seamus Heaney so eloquently phrased it in his concluding stanza of "Villanelle for an Anniversary" on the occasion of Harvard's 350th anniversary:

Begin again where frosts and tests were hard.
      Find yourself or founder. Here. Imagine
A spirit moves, John Harvard walks the yard,
      The books stand open and the gates unbarred.

Harvard Extension School presents to all who come at night a very human Harvard face and a great big Harvard heart. Long may it serve as a beacon to those who come to teach and to learn when the sun goes down. Nocturnal Harvard where "the books stand open and the gates unbarred."