With the death of Tom Habinek on Jan. 19, 2019, the Class and the world of classical scholarship lost a friend and a source of light and inspiration to many. Tom came to Princeton from St. Edward High School in Lakewood, Ohio. He majored in classics and was active in the Aquinas Center and in forensics. After graduation, he proceeded to Harvard for a degree in classical philology. He then headed westward for stints teaching at the University of California–Los Angeles and UC–Berkeley before he settled at the University of Southern California. He was chair of the Classics Department there for fifteen years, despite having been diagnosed in 2006 with Stage Four liver cancer. Fortunately, its going into remission gave him another decade of teaching, research, and friendship.

From his undergraduate days Tom achieved distinction in the study of a classical world whose relevance has been in need of defense. As Andrew Feldherr, current chair of Princeton’s Department of Classics and a student of Tom’s at USC, has remarked, he started with a technical study of Latin literature but proceeded to broader questions of cultural history. His books The Politics of Latin Literature and The World of Roman Song connected literature and politics in a way that remains important. He even used neuroscience to get a new perspective on the development of poetry, as Ellen Finkelpearl ’75 observed. The excitement of his scholarship went hand in hand with his capacity to inspire students. He blew dust off the field of classical studies and relished that role. 

Shortly after graduation from Princeton, Tom married Shulamith Philosoph ’75, who shared his interest in classics even while majoring in mathematics. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1997. Tom is survived by their twin children, Jacob and Nadja, and by his domestic partner Hector Reyes, a colleague at USC. As an echo of Cicero, Tom had written, “Death is nothing to fear and may even be a positive thing.”  The Class’s sympathy and good wishes attend his family. 

Class Year: 
Undergraduate Class of 1975