We lived and studied in Boston at a remarkable time. In the immortal words of Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” It was the best of times in that new voices and movements were emerging and echoing across the country. As a reporter and then news editor...
Category: Transformations
I Never Discovered Who They Were
I never found out their names, although I did try years later — the names of the admission committee that decided to admit me to Northeastern. That was in the days before applications were simply scanned and reviewed by an algorithm for qualifications. As Elton John would sing, I was a farm boy, I was...
9/11 Still Resonates for Uncle Joel’s Nephew … and for All of Us
Joel Miller died Sept. 11, 2001, a week shy of his 56th birthday. So much has happened to this country and to our world in the past half-century that it is impossible to fairly summarize it. So I will focus only on the event that affected all of us and its singular effect on me. On...
You Can’t Print That! Then there Was Fallout
Students did not meet the president of Northeastern University. Unless you had committed an exceptionally laudable deed, or one of exceptional blackness, you did not encounter Asa Knowles until your last day at college. After more than a decade running Northeastern, Dr. Knowles knew that cultivating a serene alumni and calming the parents of future...
Into the Fray (and Surviving) as Northeastern News Media Adviser
In the spring of 1967, I received a call from then-Executive Vice President Ken Ryder. At the time I had just become an assistant professor in the English Department. We met, and he asked me if I would consider leaving the English Department and joining the administration as an assistant dean of students. He wanted me to...
Racing the Clock at Curfew? Learning to Wear a Miniskirt? Welcome to the Class of 1971
My five years at Northeastern as a member of the class of 1971 were a time of seemingly faster-than-typical shifts in the political and cultural landscape, dominated by reaction to the Vietnam War, but with other changes developing along parallel and/or intersecting tracks. Much has already been written about those times, and explaining them properly...