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Transcription of remarks made at the OAH session, “Morning Coffee with Roy Rosenzweig: A Remembrance,” on March 29 by Barbara Ashbrook, National Endowment for the Humanities.
Good morning. I was invited to talk about Roy and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I suppose most of you know what we do? (laughter) We give grants, and we give grants with your money, and so we use great care when we give those grants. Within this framework, Roy enjoyed legendary success as a seeker of grant funds, and I think what is even more important, his projects were always the kind that grant makers could point to with great pride.
I consulted before I came here the old NEH database-- printed something out. I see that Roy first appears on the list (laughter) for a fellowship he won in 1982 to write a social history of Frederick Law Olmsted’s public parks. Then, in 1986, his knack for collaboration kicks in, I guess, and it gets a boost with a collaborative research grant for a project on the Central Park.
Now, I’m not going to march you through the rest of this list of Roy’s way to seven figures and beyond, shall we say, (laughter) from the NEH. And of course this list that I have doesn’t count the numerous grants where Roy was a key partner but not a director, often working in collaboration with his friends at the American Social History Project and their wonderful New Media Classroom workshops and seminars which have reached hundreds of teachers and changed lives.
However, that next project, the third one that shows up on my database list, means a lot to me because this was his first grant from the Education division – the first of a good many grants. And from this, I figure it must have been late 1994 or early in 1995 when two guys showed up in my office. Now, that would be Steve Brier and Roy Rosenzweig. And at the time I thought, “Oh boy, here comes trouble, (laughter) just the kind of trouble I love to have!” because what makes working at the Endowment so exciting is, of course, your scholarship, your energy, the experiences that you have as teachers that you share, and your sense of developments in the field. That’s what makes it wonderful. Well, these two guys were telling me something pretty interesting about what they were doing with technology, and it sounded like a good thing because some of what had been done before wasn’t really so great, but . . . I didn’t know it at the time, but Roy and Steve were opening the door to a whole new way of working in the humanities. We funded that CD-ROM – that Who Built America, question mark – and later, History Matters, and projects on the French Revolution, and projects in world history, all of these projects in which Roy’s leadership was so crucial to their success. I will also mention the Challenge Grant which Roy put together which would give the beginning of a permanent endowment for the Center for History and New Media, and I believe this is part of his lasting legacy, too.
When Roy began his career as a professional historian, I doubt that he imagined he would end up making history himself, and that he would be one of those builders of America -- the best parts of America – but, in fact, that is just what he did. And so, on behalf of the National Endowment for the Humanities, I want to say “thanks, Roy” for giving us the opportunity and the privilege of playing a supporting role in your life’s work (applause).
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Coffee with Roy, Roy and the National Endowment for the Humanities""
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I played comic second fiddle to Roy at George Mason for years. It was really obvious from the first time I met Roy that he was a really smart. You could see that right away. But a lot of academics are really smart—smart is sort of cheap in the way a beauty queen is beautiful—it’s look at me, and primping. And Roy wasn’t smart in that way; he was smart in a very unusual way. He was smart in the way he approached building community. George Mason was a wonderful place to work. Our Department was terrifically collegial and pleasant, and most of that was due to Roy. It was the way Roy worked. He had enormous respect for people in that department.
When I got there--George Mason is kind of a preposterous place in some ways. Well, all Universities are a little preposterous. But it reflected its origins as kind of a branch campus of UVA, and a lot of the faculty in that department had no pretensions to doing any research at all. They didn’t think of themselves as researchers, they were teachers primarily, and my training of course—I thought I was a hotshot academic—was to be contemptuous of that kind of thing. You now—that’s not what it’s about, it’s about the research. And Roy never reflected that attitude: although he himself was prodigious in his work he always treated all his colleagues at George Mason with enormous courtesy and respect he built a culture of mutual respect that was really striking. It wasn’t one of those two-tiered systems where one person gets all the influence…well actually it was: Roy got all the influence, but other than that it was pretty good!
But the way he got it is what’s interesting. I had come from a department where Jr. faculty were forced to enlist themselves in feuds that dated back to the Taft administration; their origins were lost in the mists of time: there was none of that at George Mason. None of that was enabled. And I think how did he do it?
We had department meetings about three times a semester and they were remarkably pleasant. They were usually funny they were usually short, but whenever things did get a little heated or a little tense, or there’d be a problem that’d be particularly knotty, everybody would start to look at Roy, who usually wasn’t saying much. My job was to make smart-ass comments; his job was to sit quietly, and then you’d see people start to look at Roy. “What’s Roy going to say?” “What’s Roy gonna say?” And then he would invariably say something that was extremely useful. Unlike most of us he didn’t take the opportunity to speak as a chance to lay waste to his opponents or settle old scores or denounce: he didn’t do any of that stuff; he would come up with some effective solution
But he would never say the solution: he would always say “well, you know, we could do this.” And people would say “hey, we could! That would be really good!” And pretty soon, that’s what we would be doing.
Now, I don’t want to make him sound like some kind of saint—he wasn’t some kind of some kind of namby pamby goody goody guy either: he had a scathing wit, as you all know. He was happy to settle grudges and lay waste to his opponents after the meeting was over, he was happy to do that sort of thing, and it was a lot of fun, actually, I loved those moments. But the thing that was most—as you now, he was a noodge, he never quit when he wanted to make something happen. He had no concept this thing you call the “weekend” or this thing you call “the holiday.” I once got a request from him to have a meeting—on Christmas day. And I said “Roy I’m gonna be in Philadelphia visiting my family on Christmas day” and he said, “well, could we do a phone conference?” No, we can’t do a phone conference.
The thing that was most annoying about Roy, which was, I think was the key to how he worked was he would never tell you what he wanted. I was happy—I realized early n that Roy was usually right. I had extravagant schemes, and elaborate interpretations that were beautiful castle sin the air, Roy had practical solutions, and he was almost always right and I figured that out fairly early and I’d want to say “Roy, look, just tell me what you want to do, and I‘ll go along; I’m happy to go along with you; just tell me what you want to do. And he never would, because he loved the idea of consensus, and he would move mountains to create the illusion that everybody agreed happily and spontaneously. This is sort of what he did; he would do everything to make that happen, He really believed in it.
It must have been very difficult in some way to be Roy: to know the right thing to do, and be surrounded by lunatics who had no idea what the right thing—imagine the burden that must be! But he would work patiently to bring about this consensus, and the way he did it was not, in the community of George Mason, making his own agenda or his own personal grievance the first order of business. And that’s why he would never tell me where he wanted to end up. Partly he didn’t always know, but partly he didn’t want to make his agenda the first order of business; he didn’t want to make denouncing his opponents the first order of business, he didn’t want to make posturing what it was all about.,
So he built this culture that was extraordinarily collegiate, extraordinarily pleasant, extraordinarily comfortable. He did the scut work that people of his stature typically didn’t do. You now, we had a picnic every year; Roy would stay after to clean up. He was humble in that way—he didn’t put on the airs that someone of his stature was entitled to. In that way too he didn’t put himself forward: he didn’t put his own agenda and his own opinions forward.
It was an extraordinary experience to be in a department with him: it was for e a completely new way of looking t how academics can conduct themselves, and how the life of a department can be conducted. It was extraordinary—I thought you had to be sort of bitter and infighting—I thought it was a requirement for the job! And it was a revelation to see otherwise. Every day at George Mason, every day, people walk around and say: “What would Roy do? What are we going to do with this problem? What would Roy do? How would Roy get to the answer?” It’s extremely difficult to do, but it’s a question we’ll never stop asking ourselves.
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Coffee with Roy, Roy and George Mason University""
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Coffee with Roy
March 29, 2008
In thinking about what to say this morning, in thinking about Roy and the Center for History and New Media, I looked through the hundreds of entries on the Thanks, Roy website, many from former and current CHNMers, and was once again struck by the eloquence, the humor, the passion for social justice, and the incredible work ethic that comes through—all things that Roy both embodied and fostered in others.
I also looked at the tags and the themes that had emerged. Some were to be expected—coffee, history and digital history, the ever-present red (or maroon) shirt and jeans. Many others were also no surprise to those who knew and worked with Roy—decency, kindness, generosity, humility.
One tag that drew my attention was “driving.” It reminded me of a drive I took with Roy shortly after I started working at CHNM. We were flying to New York City to meet with Josh, Ellen, and Pennee about History Matters. Roy and Deborah lived close to National Airport, so I drove from my home in Maryland, parked at their house, and Roy drove us to the airport. On the way, Roy started telling a complicated, engaging story about the “ins and outs” of publishing Who Built America—the curious twists and turns, the quirky individuals and intrigues along the way. Somewhere in there, we exited the GW Parkway and entered the airport, the circular drive that takes you past the various parking garages, the passenger drop off, the rental cars. And as Roy talked and drove, we passed the rental cars, the departures and arrivals, and the parking terminals A, B, and C. And we drove right back out of the airport and onto the parkway.
Roy was a devoted storyteller and deeply engaged in many interesting, intellectual ideas at any given moment. In this case, Roy’s passion for making history public, making it available and accessible, for telling the stories of ordinary people, and his fascination with the sometimes convoluted path that it took to do so led to a new way of reaching the airport, but one that worked in the end nonetheless. We found our way back to the airport and made the plane in plenty of time.
Working with Roy for more than 7 years at CHNM, I came to appreciate and cherish that some days were like this. That getting from point A to point B might take an unexpected path. But whatever the path, Roy had the remarkable ability to stay focused on the important things in life—people, history, and open access to the past—through untold histories as well as through technology. In day-to-day work, sometimes get distracted by annoyances or minor setbacks, but Roy always had the truly admirable ability to keep things in perspective, to focus on the larger meaning of the work.
In a discipline known for the work of individuals, Roy was dedicated to collaboration (another popular tag on Thanks, Roy) and to breaking down traditional boundaries. Roy remained committed to the process of collaboration, even when it was slower and messier than working alone, as it usually is.
In part, I think it is because Roy knew the advantages of bringing together a range of minds and ideas, of sharing and discussing. But he also truly enjoyed working with people—talking, listening, developing ideas collaboratively. As CHNM grew from one full time employee, Elena, and a few graduate assistants to a staff of more than 40, this got harder to do. Roy’s days were filled, truly packed from beginning to end, with email, meetings, problems to be resolved, grants to be written, and ideas to be grappled with. But he always made time to get to know each person who was hired, to help them make connections and plan their futures; to make sure that they felt welcome and a part of the larger purpose of CHNM and its work.
Roy signed his emails “Take Care, Roy” and this he always did—of the past and of the present, of the stories and the people.
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Coffee with Roy, Roy and CHNM""
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By submitting material to Thanks, Roy you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless Thanks, Roy and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the Thanks, Roy's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation.
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