A semester of teaching and a lifetime of advice

By Karen Abravanel

Joseph Hamburger is missing from the fall course supplement, replaced by a professor with an underlined name. Looking back, I probably knew this would happen, but I still recommended Professor Hamburger to a future Directed Studies student. "You don't have much choice in your section leaders, but try to get Hamburger for History and Politics," I said. "People may complain about his traditional style, but you won't even realize how good he is, until you look back."

Professor Hamburger retired in 1992, but continued to teach one section of Directed Studies each semester. This placed my DS class at the end of a long career, but he still treated us as he must have treated his first students. After many years of teaching, he still respected his students enough to question his own beliefs, urging us to critique his ideas. In his radical interpretation of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, he accused Mill of atheism and political conservatism. "But this is just my view," he insisted. "You are welcome to disagree."

He also wanted us to disagree with each other. Summarizing student comments in class, he would often include calculated misrepresentations of our ideas, planting subtle seeds of argument. We would protest in frustration.

"I'm just trying to create some controversy," he admitted once, with an impish smile. The discussion would grow enmeshed in irresolvable tangents, but somehow he would tie it all together at the end.

But he also seemed to grow increasingly fragile, despite his towering physical presence. Even before I began my spring section, I knew he was not well. He missed a few meetings of his fall section, and we heard rumors that he had undergone one of several heart surgeries.

I was not shocked to read his obituary in the Yale Bulletin. Joseph Hamburger died in New Haven on August 14 at the age of 75. Based on the circumstances, his death is easy to believe but hard to accept.

I saw him for the last time at the beginning of last semester. My roommate and I were walking by HGS when we saw Professor Hamburger putting some letters in the mailbox.

After cordial greetings, we turned away. But then he spoke again, and we turned around. "I have something to tell you, because I may never see you again," Professor Hamburger said.

"You only have two-and-a-half years left here, and I want you to make sure you get the most out of them. If there's something you really want to do, do it. I've seen too many students crying on the steps of Sterling at graduation."

"Okay," we said, smiling despite the awkwardness of his comment. It seemed an odd, almost fatalistic thing to say, for it emphasized two things we did not want to admit: the brevity of our time at Yale and the inevitability of human mortality.

Looking back, he probably knew. Nearing the end of his own life, he injected a sense of urgency into mine: my Yale experience will only last four years.

Separated from the real world and its demands, college life provides a unique chance for experimentation. I often long for more hours in the day, balancing coursework and activities into many late nights. I complain that I just don't have enough time for everything. But once out of college, I will never again have so much time. I have to plan accordingly--not to fear regret, but to welcome opportunity.

Two years from now, in my final farewell to Yale, I will reach the steps of Sterling and think of Joseph Hamburger. And I will have one more reason to cry.

Karen Abravanel is a junior in Davenport College.

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