- Prof Kelly introduced me to anthropology. As a math major (‘79 thesis w/ John Leadley), the two anthro. classes I took were eye opening.

- She ran a really good conference, one of the best I had at Reed.

- I saw at Reed, and heard later, that she cut people down. I’m sorry that her great teaching skills had that downside.

- It may have been hard to be a female academic during Prof Kelly’s era. I know that many excellent female Profs at Reed seemed to err on the side of being “TOUGH.” This is in the same way that a female US President would have to do so, today or in the forseeable future.

An anecdote: in the mid 90’s I heard that she was the last professor at Reed who refused to go online. Steve Koblik (Pres at the time) stated this with approval. I, as a longtime technology worker, completely agree.

I first met Kelly at my freshman orientation. Somehow I found myself in individual conversation with her about my future plans on campus. Hoping for approval, I, nevertheless, ventured to ask her if a combined major in history and anthropology was thinkable, saying that I thought it would be fun to apply ethnological methods to historical research. Her sarcasm convinced me that it was in fact *not* thinkable. Over a decade after my graduation my favorite professor as an upperclassman told me that what she really wanted from me was an intellectual defense and that if she had received it she would have been delighted. I only half believed Michael MacDonald, so the reference to her interest in the Annales School is of considerable interest. (Kierstadt came after I graduate.) Still it seems like a lot to ask of someone just leaving the home. And I knew nothing about her opinion of freshmen in general.

Finding her linked to John Leadley is also evocative. Leadley was the only person on campus who could share with me a first hand acquantaince of the Lake Wobegon-like town in which he had been an undergraduate and I a faculty brat. More importantly, I owe to Leadley the recognition that mathematics can indeed be an attractive field to one seeking to lead an intellectual life. Though it did not change my direction, the Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning and his Paidaeia class were eye-opening. Having mostly reverted to math phobia I have still to remind myself of how those classes felt.

I met Kelly again as an upperclassman. The first time in a class in philosophy of the social sciences, which she co-taught with Bill Peck. They appeared to share the load unequally, though, and I dealt mostly with Peck. Both of the classes I took from Peck challenged me to think, and they continue to assert an influence on me to stop and ponder my assumptions. The second time was in her Peoples of the Pacific class, which I took to fulfill my distribution requirements. I always thought it was a mistake to take it, but allowed myself to be cajoled into it. I still think I might have done better to take Vaucher’s offering. Kelly’s sarcasm–rather than any amount of work–seemed to add another irritant to the lot of a senior struggling with his thesis.

Yet for all that our interactions were marginal I have found the writings about her life’s work fascinating from the first. I do not agree with the suggestion that our affection for her is a case of Stockholm’s syndrome. Quite the contrary. The easiest emotion for me to feel is resentment for her. It was a surprise, then, to discover another opposing emotion. I’d like to suggest that Kelly was a really a sort of Pandora’s box and that once all the horrors have past something in her life is left that emits a warm and surprisingly gentle glow.

I can’t and wouldn’t quarrel with those above who credit Kelly with helping them in their careers. But I wonder about all those other students — the majority, I would think — who were also paying customers at Reed. Did they get their money’s worth from a teacher who was so pathologically rude and aggressive? (Not something that could be said about the courses taught by Sam Danon — to pick a name out of the hat — or Owen Ulph, John Tomsich, Price Zimmerman, Bill Peck, the great Ed Garlan, or even crazy old Seth Ulman.) I can’t remember — did Gail Kelly have her own Hum 101 sections? She must not have, or the trees in front of Eliot would have been festooned with dangling 18-year-olds every other week.

Looking back, I remember all too many Reed professors who blatantly exploited their teenage students — some by seducing them, others by “tormenting” them, and at least a couple who could manage both feats at once. I realize that most of you feel those “torments” were all for the good — are you now closet Benthamites? — but how many of you really think that Kelly did it to help *you* rather to gratify something broken in herself? If we are summing up a life, don’t motives still matter?

P.S. Who was someone named “Kelly” to slur the Scots?

I don’t exactly recall this event (or did it happen many times?) though I do remember I sometimes would bring a bag of clementines or tangerines to class and pass them around.

Glares and warning cringes aside, I got good grades from her, especially in Weberian Themes in Social Anthropology, which is one of the two or three best classes I ever took in 18 years of education (another was 17th century French drama by Sam Danon and the other was a class in religious symbolism by Robert Segal who was denied tenure at Reed but later got it at Stanford).

Most of the remarks about Gail are correct. Though an Anthropology major (with Gail as my faculty but not my thesis advisor), I never shared in the total fascination – obsession? – with her that many others in the department had. I also never felt the intense fear that other seem to have felt and in fact I don’t recall that any of her criticisms – of me at any rate – were all that harsh.

What redeemed her withering criticism was that she applied the same high standards to herself as she did to others. Back in those days before self-esteem became the major goal of human endeavor she dared to demand and expect excellence and to criticize those who failed to achieve it. Plus, she had style, so her insults were worth hearing, even if directed at oneself.

As for pleasing her, once she knew that I shared her appreciation of the music of the great avant-garde jazz pianist Cecil Taylor she perhaps decided I was not completely beyond redemption. She did encourage me not to apply to graduate school in anthropology, for which advice I am forever in her debt.