Iris will live in Paris from May to August of each year while her husband, Irv, a journalist, works for the International Herald Tribune. She will spend September in Tuscany and return in October to Washington, where she will serve as a consultant on various projects. The statements that follow express the sentiments of those who have worked closely with Iris over the years.
Iris was my link to the national office. She staffed two of the committees I chaired and was an unfailing source of support, providing information, suggestions, and insights concerning issues (and their history), people, and the internal politics of the AAUP while neither overstepping her role as a staff member nor forgetting AAUP ideals and policies. As liaison to the Illinois AAUP conference, Iris worked with and for us. Her ability to quickly grasp and articulate the nub of the issues confronting chapters and to communicate her sympathetic understanding of the difficulties they faced while stimulating them to greater efforts in wiser directions was inestimable. Whatever the need, Iris was responsive. She was there.
Iris is a rich, whole person. She found time to nurse her husband, Irv, through a difficult illness. She has time to be part of the lives of her family, especially those of her children and grandchildren. She has time for efforts to improve her Washington, D.C., neighborhood. She puts on her walking shoes to trek to and from the office. She enjoys opera—we shared a memorable Peter Grimes when her responsibilities brought her to Chicago. She finds good, inexpensive restaurants, but my best meal with her was one in her own home. She is concerned with the lives of others; politics—local, state, national, and international—matter. She is a person with whom you can have great conversations.
She leaves our AAUP richer for her service and commitment. Time in Paris, more time to enjoy her special places in Italy, and time in her Washington home is due her. We will miss her, but she has not left us. As is the case with good teachers, her impact will live on through having touched so many of us. Truly, she is a woman for all seasons.
—Ken Andersen
(Speech Communication)
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Iris Molotsky has been a constant force in the AAUP office for as long as I’ve been going to national meetings. Iris was the first staff member who knew my name. Later, she provided gentle guidance and occasional subtle prodding to a naïve new state conference president. As we have worked together over the years, I have appreciated and benefited from her steady presence, her constant good humor, her counsel, her ability to find a good restaurant in any city in the nation, her ready store of information about people in the AAUP, her friendship, and her absolute joy in living. She has the wonderful ability to see the best in every individual. Her dedication to the principles of the AAUP and her belief in the Association have inspired many. I’m saddened to think that I won’t be able to continue to work with her in the AAUP, but I know my life will remain better because of her continuing friendship.
—Jeffrey A. Butts (Biology)
Appalachian State University
Sending Iris Molotsky to France must surely be one of the most foolish and wasteful instances of American expatriation on record. Are we to believe the French need another wine authority? Of course, those of us abandoned in our habitual ignorance can console ourselves by anticipating that there will be a representative on the ground to recommend a proper bottle when we are abroad. Meanwhile, we are all moved and impressed that Irv and Iris have offered a free weekend in their Paris apartment’s Lafayette Room to all AAUP members in good standing who switch to automatic electronic renewal.
Kidding aside (the AAUP’s legal staff requires that all jokes be registered and duly noted), many of us feel that we are losing not just a friend to France but also a large part of the AAUP’s human identity. As I try to reconstruct part of what Iris has meant to me organizationally over many years, I’ve decided the key is her special way of combining realism with optimism. I could rely on Iris at once for a cool assessment of political realities and a willingness to hope for change. Never fooled by expressions of self-interest, she nonetheless always looks to people for their best. Generosity, insight, warmth, clarity, directness, intelligence, and a willingness to persevere; all this and more the AAUP has had from Iris throughout her tenure.
—Cary Nelson (English)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
I have been asked to write about Iris Molotsky’s contribution to the AAUP. Instead of directly addressing that question, I would like to indulge myself with a single reminiscence.
Iris was my "first." Some eleven years ago, she was the first person I had contact with at the AAUP, outside my own campus. I was the membership development officer for the University of San Diego’s spanking new chapter. The job was mine by default—no one else wanted it—and my senior colleague and chapter president, Dennis Clausen, had given me her name and telephone number saying, "Talk to her and everything will be all right." I didn’t believe him for a second. But to my surprise and delight, he was right. There was something in her voice, an almost musical quality, and an optimism that gave me confidence. (Those who have interacted with Iris will have noticed a certain pattern to the way she gives advice: "Oh, I think if you do that, everything will be fine. . . . And if it isn’t, you’ll do something else.")
What I discovered in my conversations with her was someone who is wise in Aristotle’s sense of the term—a person who is able to apply general principles to specific situations. Above all, I delighted in the conspiratorial tone of our conversations back then: how do we get and keep new members. I’d have those legendary bright ideas that are a dime a dozen, and we would chatter figuring out how to get people to part with their money and join the AAUP. It was immense fun, and rarely has a chapter gone from being brand new to receiving the Konheim Award in so short a time as ours. Much of the credit goes to Iris’s continuous, willing, and enthusiastic advice.
There are a dozen more stories I could tell. And I am certain there are many, many others who could tell such stories. Regardless of the "things" she has accomplished for the Association, her abiding contribution—little different from that of many other staff in D.C.—has been her wise, gracious, funny, sometimes harried support of the Association’s members, day by day. Thank you, Iris.
—Joseph A. Colombo (Theology and Religious Studies)
University of San Diego
"In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove." When Tennyson wrote these words, he may have seen ahead to this spring when Iris will indeed "change." This is the spring when Iris Molotsky will alter her profession and her address, and we will be the lesser for her decision.
Iris has always brought to the AAUP an optimism and enthusiasm, which served to encourage those who called for advice from campuses across the country. In her presentations at various conferences, she gladly shared ideas for increasing membership and publicizing campus events. At AAUP Summer Institutes, all of this expertise fit neatly into a schedule with time for tennis or networking with colleagues over a glass of wine.
Annual meetings were an exciting time for Iris, as she chose sites for special events, including a fun reception hosted by her daughter Michele at City Hall in Oakland, California. Iris so enjoyed presenting the Excellence in Coverage of Higher Education Award, which has now been renamed the Iris Molotsky Award in her honor. Eileen Burchell and I looked forward to our traditional dinner with Iris before each annual meeting. We treasure the memories of a gourmet meal in a Sonoma Valley vineyard when the meeting was held in Berkeley.
Iris’s home in Washington has often been the site for celebrations for colleagues facing some life event or retiring from the AAUP. She and Irv are perfect hosts, and we fondly hope that this tradition will continue at their new address in Paris!
The years she spent staffing the Association’s membership committee stand as proof of her resiliency. She was ever hopeful that the organization could adopt a more simplified dues structure. Perhaps that one piece of "unfinished business" will keep us in her thoughts as she wanders the markets in Paris or drives through the countryside of Tuscany later in the year. And then, one day, she’ll send us the ever-sought-after solution . . . in French or Italian, of course!
Bon voyage, Iris. Yours is indeed the best retirement plan we have ever envisioned. And since you worked so many extra hours for the Association, we can’t even call this an "early retirement." Congratulations!
—Jane Dineen Panek (Education)
Molloy College
The AAUP carries the double charge of being the guardian of the academy’s standards and of being a user-friendly membership organization that offers services ranging from labor representation to low-cost life insurance. Iris has always functioned so as to keep her attention focused on both of the Association’s roles—and she made each role or function seem as but a natural one for the AAUP to be concerned with.
Two notes on a more personal level. Iris and I always felt that persuading an investigative journalist (aka Irv Molotsky) of the special privileges and status of the academy was a difficult challenge, but one that we had to meet—over coffee, beer, or spaghetti and wine—before we could put the AAUP’s case before a press conference or a university administration.
My other comment is one of personal thanks. When I chaired the Committee on College and University Teaching, Research, and Publication and we were writing The Work of Faculty: Expectations, Priorities, and Rewards, Iris was the liaison between a far-flung committee and the Washington office. She was our secretary, research assistant, hostess, participant, editor, and champion; we could never have cobbled a final report together without her devotion. A great deal of what merit and clarification the new statement carries, over the much older one it superseded, is thanks to Iris’s personal interest, her ability to focus on critical issues and resolve tension among committee members, and her writing and editorial skills.
We all cope with change, but the AAUP without Iris will certainly be an AAUP that will miss her years of service, dedication, and ability.
—Joel Rosenthal (History)
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Iris’s retirement promises to be joyous. Spending almost half a year in Paris for the next number of years would entice most of us to retire. The AAUP, however, will sorely miss her. I vividly remember first meeting Iris, almost twenty years ago. At that time, it was rare to find a woman staff member in the AAUP offices. She did not flaunt the gender card, yet she never stopped being vigilant on behalf of women, insisting on equity and fairness. She was brimming with good ideas—for Academe, for the membership drive, for communications and public relations. She was warm, funny, intelligent, and unflappable—winning traits for one whose fortunes are tied to a stable staff but an ever-shifting leadership.
When she became an associate editor of Academe, she moved rapidly to reconstitute its advisory board, oversee a search for a new editor, and bring in first-rate people from the field of journalism to give the magazine a more contemporary look. She also advocated publication in Academe of more topical stories on issues of importance to a changing professoriate. During the same time, Iris launched Footnotes, a newsletter that puts in the limelight the people whose activities make the Association work. It was an inspired idea that paid off.
The Association went through good and bad times in the years that Iris was on the staff, but her generosity of spirit never failed. I can remember some rather dreadful moments for higher education, when many were feeling dispirited. But Iris could always find a bright side, and she could be funny, even when things were dark. In recent years, both as AAUP president and as chair of the committee on teaching, research, and publication, I have relied on Iris and worked closely with her. She is invaluable, and I am very pleased to report that she will continue staffing the committee through the end of this year.
Iris has always been there for people. Whenever I referred colleagues or chapter officers to her for assistance, she never failed to jump right in, giving them the information they needed, showing them how to develop a chapter, or giving them the praise and encouragement that is the key to keeping people involved in the Association’s work. She has greatly enriched the Association. I will miss her and Irv, but I know that they will thrive.
—Carol Simpson Stern (Performance Studies)
Northwestern University