Robert Fogarty to Retire
By Katherine Kabza ’05

Robert Fogarty, Professor of History and Editor of the Antioch Review, will retire on January 1, 2004 after 35 years of teaching at Antioch College.

“I think it’s a good time to leave when you still have a lot of things to do,” said Fogarty.

Fogarty’s initial involvement with teaching at Antioch was accidental.

“I was living in Greece,” said Fogarty. “I’d been fired [from Michigan State], very publicly, and I left the country.” He was looking for a teaching position and came across Antioch.

Though his contract was only for a year, Fogarty was so popular that when word got out in early 1969 that his contract was not going to be renewed, groups of students sat in the President’s Office and studied in shifts for four days in protest. Fogarty was eventually given a position in the Political Science department for a year before becoming a permanent faculty member in the History department.

When asked what has kept him at Antioch for so long, Fogarty replied without hesitation, “The students. They were remarkable. They were vital and quite serious about their own education, and they were willing to take risks.

“I also had very good colleagues. That made it easy.”

He describes teaching as “an adventure” and thinks of it as a very active thing.

“I’m still in touch with a number of my students,” he said. “A student in a class I first taught – I literally still see her, in New York.”

Though Fogarty considered most of his teaching experience a very positive thing, he is quick to point out that all professors will have a problematic class or two.

“I think the strike of ’73 was the worst,” he said.

In 1973, students at Antioch went on strike, demanding that the college guarantee their financial aid packages.

“It was a lock-out,” said Fogarty. “Literally. They took Main Building and put a padlock on it so we couldn’t use the classrooms.”

Like many other instructors at the time, he taught classes from his home for weeks until the strike was resolved.

During his time at Antioch, Fogarty received several fellowships and grants, which presented him with opportunities to work and research everywhere from China to Chicago.

“I’ve always been very much committed to scholarship,” said Fogarty. “I think it’s an important piece to being a professor.”

Fogarty has certainly shown his commitment. Over the years he has published and edited books, contributed to journals and magazines, and given many lectures. He is currently working on three projects: a documentary about the Oneida community, a piece about a 1930s California group called Mankind United, and a book about the history of Anglo-American faith healing from 1870 to 1930.

“I always work on several projects at once,” said Fogarty.

In addition to this work, he has also been heavily involved with the Antioch Review – one of the oldest, continuously published literary magazines in America. He began as a member of the editorial board in 1970 and became editor in 1977. The Review currently publishes fiction, essays, and poetry from emerging as well as established authors.

“It’s a very eclectic little magazine. It’s had a mixed history; at first [the Review] was a very political and social journal, and that combination of elements attracted me,” said Fogarty.

He looks forward to spending more time and effort on the Antioch Review after his official retirement from teaching. After a short sabbatical, Fogarty will become John Dewey Professor of Humanities – a title last held by George Geiger, a founding editor of the Review. He hopes to increase the magazine’s endowment and to develop a core constituency of people that could help achieve this goal.

This year Fogarty received the prestigious PEN/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing, one of the professional high points of his career.

“It’s terrific,” he said. “It couldn’t have been planned better. It’s like a gift.”

Fogarty said that this accomplishment was on par with getting elected as a visiting fellow at All Soul’s College in Oxford, a college devoted entirely to research.

Aside from a definite interest in continuing his work at the Review, Fogarty is not planning too far ahead. He said that when a project needs to come to him, he’s sure it will.

Considering Fogarty’s record so far, and in spite of his retirement from teaching, the world has certainly not seen the last of him.

A reception in celebration of Fogarty’s retirement is being organized for May 2004 by two of his former students – Susan Guerrero ’72, New York Times, and Lester Lee ’72, Northeastern University. The reception will take place in New York.

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