Professor Marjorie Wechsler (right) introducing honorary degree recipient Sydney Chaffee '07 at Lesley's Commencement in 2017.
Professor Emerita Marjorie Wechsler, who died in 2019, has left a generous gift to Lesley University supporting student travel abroad and study in the humanities.
Wechsler, who taught at Lesley for 53 years, was a formidable but beloved instructor, famed for her tough grading, her sense of humor, and her broad range of academic interests. Her areas of specialization included ancient political theory; European intellectual history; and modern European and American history. Never one to limit her pursuits, Wechsler spent years studying piano at the Longy School of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music, and studied Latin, French, German and Italian.
Wechsler’s friend and colleague Dr. Christine Evans, former chair of the Humanities Department at Lesley’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, recalls Wechsler’s impassioned and wide-ranging scholarship, her devotion to Lesley, and the value she placed on travel and study abroad, especially for students of limited means.
“She was a real Lesley-ite in that way,” Evans says. “That’s where her sense of justice directed itself.”
A 1982 portrait of Professor Wechsler
Wechsler’s gift will go to fund two different initiatives. One will cover travel expenses for students enrolled in Humanities-sponsored travel study courses, allowing students to visit England and France as part of their studies.
For many students, the week-long course trips, led by Lesley instructors, serve as their first introduction to international travel, and the gift will help expand the horizons of students whose travel experiences have been limited by the pandemic. While the cost of the courses themselves are covered by tuition fees, the travel expenses can be prohibitive for many students. The rest of Wechsler’s gift will endow scholarship funds for students who are majoring in the Humanities.
“Marjorie’s greatest affiliation was with her Humanities students and colleagues, so the scholarship funds are very much befitting where her loyalties and interests lay,” Evans says. The travel funds will be open to students from Lesley’s College of Art and Design and Center for the Adult Learner, while the scholarship funds will be available to students majoring in English, History and Creative Writing.
Evans reflects with admiration that despite a life devoted to academic pursuits rather than high finance, Wechsler was able to support a number of organizations in her will that reflect her wide range of passionate interests, including Amnesty International, the American Red Cross, Oxfam America, the Sierra Club, her alma mater, Barnard, Lesley and the MSPCA.
“It’s wonderful that someone who was never very invested in making money was able to leave this very generous legacy,” Evans says. “I think that's miraculous.”
Wechsler was well aware from her own experience, Evans notes, of how travel can expand horizons for young students of modest means. She recalls a story that Wechsler told her about her first trip to Europe when she was 21.
Just before the trip, Wechsler went to dinner at the home of a wealthy aunt and uncle. The aunt, who had grown up in comfortable circumstances, sniffed and said that only those who could “afford it” should travel, since travel was, after all, a luxury. As Wechsler was leaving that evening, her uncle slipped her a couple of hundred dollars for the trip.
“The moral of Marjorie’s story,” Evans says, “is always be the uncle, never the aunt.”