In Memoriam

Published Dec. 21, 2021

Photo: Denise Applewhite, Princeton University/Office of Communications

GILBERT HARMAN, who made wide-ranging contributions to philosophy during more than five decades on the Princeton faculty, died Nov. 13 at age 83. Harman’s work displayed a diversity of interests, including epistemology, linguistics, cognitive science, and moral philosophy. He also was a valued teacher and enthusiastic adviser. In a University obituary, Professor Adam Elga ’96 recalled a moment in his senior year when he asked Harman what it was like being a philosophy professor: “He replied with a twinkle in his eye: ‘It is great — almost as great as being a philosophy student!’ ”

Photo: Molly Sharlach

ERIC F. WOOD, a distinguished hydrologist in the civil and environmental engineering department, died Nov. 3. He was 74. Wood joined the Princeton faculty in 1976 and four years later became director of the University’s Water Resources Program. In a biography prepared in 2019, the year he became emeritus, colleagues described Wood’s extensive research collaborations, including work with NASA to employ satellite remote sensing in gathering hydrology data. The American Geophysical Union honored Wood’s contributions to his field with the Robert E. Horton Medal in 2017.

Photo: Denise Applewhite, Princeton University/Office of Communications

RONALD E. SURTZ, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese whose research and writing explored pre-modern and early modern religious texts, died Nov. 14 at age 75. Surtz, who taught at Princeton from 1973 to 2016, was a master of languages and could “liberally impart aphorisms in Spanish, Italian, and French,” according to a department biography — a skill that added levity to faculty meetings and advising sessions. In 2016, Surtz’s students and colleagues published a book of essays in his honor, focusing on topics from medieval and Golden Age Spain.

Photo: Roundtable on Ethnic Relations

ALLEN H. KASSOF, a sociology professor who supervised Princeton’s Critical Languages Program, which brought the first female undergraduates to campus in the 1960s, died Nov. 22 at age 90. Kassof told PAW in 2019 that the program, which offered instruction in Chinese, Russian, Arabic, and other languages, produced several successful scholars and specialists. According to a family obituary, he joked that his role also made him Princeton’s “first dean of women.” After leaving the University, Kassof was founding director of an organization that arranged scholar-exchange programs between the U.S. and the Soviet-bloc countries.

Published in the January 2022 Issue

In Memoriam

1 Response

G. Wayne Glass ’68

3 Years Ago

Kassof: ‘A Genuine Peacemaker’

I was deeply saddened to read of the passing of Professor Allen Kassof in the January edition of PAW (On the Campus). As a Russian-studies specialist during my undergraduate years in the 1960s, I was hungry to get behind the Cold War headlines of the day and learn more about the Russian people and their society. In his groundbreaking course on Russian sociology, Professor Kassof peeled back the layers and gave me my first look inside a world to which few Americans had any exposure. When the Soviet Union dissolved in the early 1990s, Professor Kassof’s insights into Russian society quickly became reality. By that time, I was closely involved as a Senate policy adviser in matters regarding U.S.-Russian nuclear-security cooperative efforts, and Dr. Kassof’s course opened many doors and facilitated important joint actions to keep the nuclear genie at bay.

As PAW indicated, Allen Kassof was dedicated to crossing great divides in global societies. He directed the student-scholar exchange program known as IREX during the height of the Cold War. He directed and participated in negotiations on ethnic conflict in Eastern Europe from the Baltics to the Balkans. As for Old Nassau, he crossed the “gender Rubicon” by leading the first platoon of female Critical Languages students onto the still all-male Princeton campus of that day. I owe much of my careers in Washington and college classrooms to Allen Kassof — he was truly an inspiration and a genuine peacemaker.

Editor’s note: The author is a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California’s School of International Relations.