�ֲ���ý College’s distinctive Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance — in lieu of classes, a day of workshops and discussions with expert guests, all highlighted by a college gathering and keynote — owes much of its character to cataclysmic, yet coincident, world events 25 years ago.

That would be the beginning of the Persian Gulf War on Jan. 16, 1991, the U.S.’s first major armed conflict in a generation. Occurring in the world’s most volatile region, the outbreak of war rocked the �ֲ���ý community in the days leading up to MLK Day, Jan. 21.

Students, particularly, were a mess.

Writing in The �ֲ���ý Student, Steve Hochstadt, then a �ֲ���ý history professor and, since 2006, professor of history at Illinois College, described a “depressed and disoriented” student body with an intense “hunger for information” (this was pre-Internet, remember).

Following the start of the Persian Gulf War in January 1991, a sheet hangs, likely in Chase Hall, offering community members the chance to write the names of people they know in the Middle East. (�ֲ���ý Communications)

The �ֲ���ý faculty moved quickly to help students make sense of the chaos, a desire springing from their core mission as educators. “We felt we had the pulse of the student body,” Hochstadt wrote.

“As educators, we have a fundamental responsibility to continue educating,” said then-Dean of the College James Carignan ’61, who died in 2011.

Two key figures in the development of the college’s MLK Day tradition, Marcus Bruce ’77 (left) and James Reese, listen to the 2015 MLK Day keynote address. Bruce is the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies, and Reese is an associate dean of students. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In a special meeting on Jan. 18, the faculty voted to cancel classes on MLK Day, Monday, Jan. 21, “in honor of and to reflect upon Dr. King’s contributions to world peace, and to reflect upon the issues of peace and justice in the Middle East,” in the words of religion professor Marcus Bruce ’77.

Carl Benton Straub, then dean of the faculty, proposed an all-college convocation to begin the day’s programming. An ad-hoc faculty committee planned a series of events, discussions, and workshops, many of which would use Martin Luther King’s life and legacy as a means to understand the myriad issues at play.

Among the topics were “Is This a Just War?” “The Science and Technology of War,” and “The Mideast War and Jews in America.”

Flyers and messages during the Persian Gulf War hang, likely outside Ladd library, including one about the movie “Parenthood” being shown at Frye Street Union, noting that “if people prefer to watch the news, that’ll be fine too.” (�ֲ���ý Communications)

Bruce is now the college’s Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies. As educators, he says today, “we are always engaging our students” in both the “practice and cultivation of freedom and conscience.”

Twenty-five years ago, he adds, the coincident timing of the Gulf War and MLK Day created the ultimate teachable moment, giving the �ֲ���ý community the chance to reflect on “what it meant to practice freedom and conscience in that specific moment, to pause and allow students to breathe and consider their response to events.”

During the Persian Gulf War, the slogan “support the troops” emerged alongside anti-war messages, like these, likely in Chase Hall Gallery. (�ֲ���ý Communications)

Donald Harward was in his second year as �ֲ���ý president. In his first year, 1990, he had led �ֲ���ý in elevating its MLK Day observance with a weeklong program called “Raise Every Voice.”

That program built on an already long tradition of MLK Day observances at �ֲ���ý created in large part by Carignan and James Reese, then, as today, a dean in Student Affairs and an active member of the college’s MLK Day Planning Committee.

Recalling the events of 1991, Reese talks about the “ominous” feeling on campus in the days leading up to the war, and how the more politically minded students had asked their professors whether cancelling classes would be possible. “Their suggestions and the momentous momentum shown by the faculty were striking and memorable,” he says.

A peace protest passes by Chase Hall in the days following the start of the Persian Gulf War in January 1991. (�ֲ���ý Communications)

In 1991, against the backdrop of the faculty’s nearly unprecedented vote to cancel classes, Harward opened the all-college convocation and set the tone both for that day and for many future observances of King’s birthday at �ֲ���ý.

Extraordinary events affecting moral and political life, Harward said, demand equally exceptional responses.

“Not to pause and to assist student understanding of these events, their causes, and their implications, would, in the judgment of the faculty, be a failure to meet an extraordinary student need,” he said.

He added:

Seventy-five years ago, Benjamin E. Mays ’20 sat where you sit, his intellectual and moral resources shaped by his teachers and his colleagues here at �ֲ���ý. His commitment to the cathedral of ideas, and the primacy of respect for human worth, were carried to his student, Martin Luther King Jr., whose own life and commitment we honor as a nation today.

In his articulation of the principles of nonviolence, Dr. King called for the development of the technologies of peace; he asked that its roots and causes be studied; he challenged us to work at making peace. Nonviolence, he argued, was the application of ethics to worldly politics….

“The easy, empty rhetoric of slogans and jingoism will not help.”

We are connected — teachers, students, Dr. Mays, Dr. King — and the realities that we must confront are connected — peace and war, justice and inequalities, human worth and human suffering.

Restructuring the educational events of this particular day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in the context of the realities of the Middle East is, in the judgment of the faculty, an educational opportunity which can make clear such connectedness….

[The topics discussed today] are consistent with the insistence that the context, the attitude, and the justification of our efforts be that the nature of this community is to be an arena for the examination and the conflict of ideas and values. The easy, empty rhetoric of slogans and jingoism will not help.

If there is a metaphor of healing and comfort within a community, the balm for that healing is that our connectedness is strengthened by attention to our individual, moral, and intellectual independence, and by the encouragement provided here.

Educator, author, champion of equal opportunity for women, and a human-rights advocate whose passion was forged by her experiences in the Holocaust and by surviving the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Hessisch-Lichtenau concentration camps, Judith Magyar Isaacson ’65, LL.D. ’94, died on Nov. 10 at age 90.

In 2006, Judith Magyar Isaacson ’65 signs her memoir “Seed of Sarah” after a class about the Holocaust taught by former �ֲ���ý professor Steve Hochstadt. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

She earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at �ֲ���ý in 1965 and a master’s in mathematics at Bowdoin two years later. She taught math at Lewiston High School and then at �ֲ���ý, where she became the dean of women in 1969 and dean of students in 1975. She retired in August 1978.

As dean, she was instrumental in ending the college’s unequal and antiquated codes of social conduct for men and women and in increasing extracurricular and athletic opportunities for female students.

In 1976, after discussing her Holocaust experiences with a group of students, Isaacson was moved to record those memories. Published in 1990, her memoir Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor is an enduring inspiration of courage and resilience for young women and men.

‘Inextinguishable force of human worth’

Isaacson received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at Commencement 1994, and the degree citation read, in part:

To remember vividly, so that none can forget — to say the unspeakable, so that all can hear — takes a voice of courage, power, and eloquence. Your strengths, Judith Isaacson, touch the lives of not only your family and your colleagues but those countless others who read in your personal and professional life the inextinguishable force of human worth.

For preserving, for giving testimony, for helping us to understand, and for the encouragement of conviction, we stand in admiration and resolve.

Judith Isaacson receives the honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1994. (�ֲ���ý Communications)

‘I fought pretty hard for women’

In 2004, Kirsten Terry Murphy ’07 wrote a story for The �ֲ���ý Student about Isaacson’s induction into the Maine Women’s Hall of Fame.

Murphy wrote about Isaacson’s work as dean to dismantle the college’s notoriously unequal social rules that literally ran many pages for  women and a few pages for men:

Isaacson could see that many of the codes of conduct at �ֲ���ý were outdated, and quickly became an advocate for women’s rights at the school. She had children of her own in college at that point, and from their experiences she found that, comparatively, the policies at �ֲ���ý were very different. “Young, 18-year-old women had far more freedoms at home than at �ֲ���ý,” explained Isaacson….

Isaacson resolved other important complaints from students. One concerned the issue of parietals. Previously, men and women did not have permission to enter dorms of the opposite sex, but she changed campus-housing rules to allow visitations. Another problem surrounded sports. “I fought pretty hard for women to have athletic privileges,” she said.

Judith Isaacson talks with members of the Women’s Council in 1970, the start of changes that would make �ֲ���ý social life more equal for women. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

‘How many times have I started anew?’

Isaacson retired from �ֲ���ý in 1978. Shortly afterward, she wrote an essay about that final Commencement as dean of students and about her uncertain, but growing, idea of writing her memoirs, which would become Seed of Sarah.

The essay recalls the academic procession, led by President Hedley Reynolds, who

….carries his presidential paraphernalia with great dignity, his head held high, his steps springy. I am proud to be following just behind him, but still incredulous of my position. What right have I, the ultimate outsider, to be playing this venerable role?

My mind, that relentless time machine, projects a different image. Instead of stepping along the carpeted aisle in my academic gown, cap and hood, I see myself marching in a mile-long procession, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, stark naked….

This is my next-to-last official function at the College. After tomorrow’s Commencement, I’ll be embarking on a new venture, just like the seniors.

How many times have I started anew? I muse, as my eyes follow the members of the Class of 1977 making their solemn way to the front pews. How many different identities have I had?

Judit Magyar — a family name meaning Hungarian.
Jewish teenager under the Nazi regime.
Number 561.20578 in concentration camps.
Frau Hauptman, American captain’s wife in Germany.
Mrs. Irving Isaacson, lawyer’s wife in Lewiston, Maine.
Mom, to my children.
Judy, to my classmates.
Mrs. Isaacson, to my math students.
Dean Isaacson for the past eight years.
Will Grammi be next? Here is hoping.

Irving Isaacson ’36 and Judith Isaacson met after her liberation by American troops in 1945. Married on Dec. 24, 1945, they were photographed in 2000 by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

‘A warm and humorous optimist’

Historian Steve Hochstadt, a Holocaust scholar who taught at �ֲ���ý from 1979 to 2006, had a long friendship with Isaacson that included a classroom relationship.

Each year that he taught his course on the Holocaust, she would visit.

“It’s very important for Holocaust students to meet a survivor,” said Hochstadt in 2006.  “And �ֲ���ý students get to see what kind of survivor Judith is: a warm and humorous optimist.”

Hochstadt tells the that Isaacson “was an extraordinarily joyous person who could tell you about very sad things that happened to her, her relatives and her friends, but who was able to retain joy in life.”

Hochstadt that Isaacson and Seed of Sarah expanded the narrative of the Holocaust to include women.

Speaking to 125 students in the Filene lecture hall, Hochstadt tells the Sun Journal, “she was so relaxed, so happy to be there, so confident.”

(Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

‘All who live, rejoice, rejoice’

Katalin Vecsey, a senior lecturer in the �ֲ���ý theater department, was born in Hungary, as was Isaacson.

Isaacson, she said, became her “Hungarian mother in the United States.”

Seed of Sarah begins with this quote by a Hungarian poet, Endre Ady: “All who live, rejoice, rejoice.”

“I think that totally sums up her life,” Vecsey tells the Press Herald. “She really was so grateful to be alive and she shared that joy with everybody.”

Kati Vecsey and Judith Isaacson, photographed in 2009 by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

The �ֲ���ý community is invited to the Frye Street Union lounge 8:45 p.m. Tuesday to watch President George W. Bush deliver his State of the Union Address and follow it with an informal discussion led by Professor of History Steve Hochstadt.

According to the College Republicans, “if you love the President or loathe him, this address is going to be an essential event for any informed citizen interested in America’s place in the world amidst the rebuilding effort in Iraq, economic growth, immigration reform, gay rights and change in national security.”

To encourage the journey to Frye Street in the brisk night air, the Republicans are offering free Papa John’s pizza and soft drinks.

“So whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, Green, Independent, Socialist, Libertarian, Marxist, or Nihilist, come join us in viewing this national event at the Frye Street Union lounge at 8:45,” says the campus-wide invitation. “You won’t regret it.”

Panelists include Michael Peisner, chair of the International Committee of the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine; Rebecca Neuwirth, coordinator of special projects for the American Jewish Committee (AJC); and Steve Hochstadt, professor of history at �ֲ���ý College.

“This timely discussion is an opportunity to hear experts in the field and learn more about the conflict,” says �ֲ���ý senior Matt Scherzer of Simsbury, Conn., vice president of �ֲ���ý Hillel.

President of the International Committee of the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine from 1998 to 2000, Peisner is a member of the Portland law firm Curtis Thaxter Stevens Broder & Micoleau. He received his undergraduate degree in economics with high distinction from the University of Michigan and worked as a management auditor for the U.S. General Accounting Office for two years. A cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, he served as articles editor of Michigan’s Journal of Law Review.

As AJC special projects coordinator, Neuwirth works in close cooperation with the organization’s executive director on international and domestic policy. With 115,000 members worldwide, AJC is devoted to eradicating anti-Semitism and advancing understanding between peoples. Neuwirth also serves as executive director of Thanks to Scandinavia, an AJC institute founded in 1963 by Danish humorist and pianist Victor Borge and New York attorney Richard Netter. The organization has awarded thousands of scholarships to Scandinavian students and educators in gratitude for efforts to rescue Jews from the Nazis during World War II.

Neuwirth edits the AJC Journal, a bimonthly newsletter, and directs the AJC Fellows Program, an international student internship opportunity. She has helped to raise and distribute funds for Kosovar refugees, Turkish earthquake victims and U.S. families affected by the Sept. 11 attack.

A historian of modern European history, Hochstadt has chaired the history department chair at �ֲ���ý since 1995. A member of the board of directors of the Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine and of the Sino-Judaic Institute of Menlo Park, Calif., Hochstadt teaches a biennial lecture course, “The Holocaust in History: The Genocide of European Jews,” one of �ֲ���ý’ most popular offerings. In 1994, Hochstadt wrote the script for an Emmy-nominated video, Maine Survivors Remember the Holocaust. Awarded the 2001 Pizzagalli Construction Company Celebration of Excellence Award given to those who “set examples for others by their commitment to excellence,” Hochstadt received the 2000 Allan Sharlin Memorial Prize for Mobility and Modernity: Migration in Germany, 1820-1989 (The University of Michigan, 1999), given by the Social Science History Association for best book in social science history.

Hochstadt has a forthcoming collection of Holocaust documents for students in courses like his own. His long-term research project concerns European Jewish refugees in Shanghai. Hochstadt’s grandparents were among those who fled Vienna for Shanghai.

Hochstadt will receive $1,000 to be presented at an April luncheon in Burlington, Vt. The award was created by the Vermont-based Pizzagalli company, one of the country’s largest privately held general contractors, to support and encourage college faculty members who have demonstrated a commitment to be the very best at their chosen endeavors, whether in pursuit of their academic careers or personal goals.

In nominating Hochstadt for the award, Jill Reich, vice president of academic affairs and dean of the faculty at �ֲ���ý, described Hochstadt as “a devoted teacher and adviser, an intrepid scholar and a conscientious citizen of �ֲ���ý and Maine.” A professor at �ֲ���ý since 1979 and presently chair of the history department, Hochstadt is actively involved in statewide education initiatives about the Holocaust and human rights issues. He has served on the board of directors for the Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine since 1993 and has received many awards for his work on Jewish community issues and the Holocaust. Hochstadt, who teaches “The Holocaust: The Genocide of European Jews,” one of �ֲ���ý’ most popular offerings, turns his biennial lecture course into an intense personal experience.

Maine Remembers the Shoah will examine the Holocaust as an historical crisis and as a continuing influence in contemporary life. “The program is designed to present new material, to stimulate discussion, and to prepare teachers and students to teach and learn about the Holocaust,” said conference organizer Steve Hochstadt, associate professor of history at �ֲ���ý. Hochstadt teaches a Holocaust course at �ֲ���ý.

The conference includes presentations of new research, personal memories of survivors, readings of prose, poetry, film and slide showings, and displays of teaching materials.

The conference will feature the world premiere on of the video You Ask about the Family, an interpretation of the Holocaust by Maine artist Robert Katz and Maine composer Mark Polishook, at 7 p.m. March 1 in Room 204 of the Carnegie Science Center. The video is based on Katz and Polishook’s trip to Poland to research the fate of their families.

Initially inspired by a letter Katz received from a distant relative who survived the Holocaust, You Asked about the Family fuses visual imagery, sound and narrative to address on one hand, the social climate in which the brutalities of the Holocaust occurred, and, on the other, cultural continuity, rebirth, and survival in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

The conference will also feature Judith Magyar Isaacson, �ֲ���ý class of ’65 and author of the acclaimed autobiographical Holocaust memoir Seed of Sarah, reading from a work-in-progress about the Holocaust at 8:30 p.m Feb. 28, in Chase Hall Lounge.

Other sessions of interest include Steven R. Cerf, the Skolfield Professor of German at Bowdoin College discussing Anne Frank’s Short Stories: Imaginative Writing as a Mirror of Interiority, at 9 a.m., March 1, and Marcus C. Bruce, associate professor of religion at �ֲ���ý College, talking about My People: Steven Spielberg, ‘Schindler’s List,’ and the Holocaust, at 11:15 a.m., March 1. Both presentations will be in Room 204 of Carnegie Science Hall.

Maine Remembers the Shoah is jointly sponsored by the departments of history, philosophy and religion at �ֲ���ý, as well as the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine, the Dimmer-Bergstrom Fund and the Maine Humanities Council.