Photographed: Professor Wechlser introducing Commencement speaker Sydney Chaffee '07 (left) in 2017.
Professor Emerita Marjorie E. Wechsler, who worked at Lesley for 53 years, died Dec. 9. Her colleagues remember her for her personal authenticity, her passion for history and her devotion to Lesley University.
According to Dr. Christine Evans, Humanities division chair in our College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Professor Wechsler came to Lesley directly from Harvard University, where she earned master’s degrees in History and English. In 1960, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College.
Evans added that, at Wechsler’s last birthday celebration, the longtime professor spoke about how, inadvertently almost, she had fallen into the right profession for her.
“Marjorie took great delight in it,” Evans says. “She would haunt bookstores in Cambridge looking for that one book that would serve as a linchpin for one of her American history classes.
“She was absolutely convinced of the importance of teaching history — a history class represented her single chance, perhaps, to shape a better-informed citizen, a less gullible ‘political consumer,’ with a firmer grasp of those historical realities that have formed the moment and them.”
Evans added that Wechsler loved interactions with her colleagues and drew pleasure from that “ancient and honorable community of scholars.”
Dr. Lisa Fiore, who was dean of faculty from 2011 to 2015, remembers Wechsler’s robust sense of humor and her estimable command of her subject matter. In her role as dean of faculty, Fiore on some occasions had the opportunity to sit in on a class.
“She was brilliant,” Fiore recalls, adding that she was “transfixed” by the information Wechsler conveyed, and imagined that diligent and attentive students hearing her lectures “emerged richer for the experience.”
Wechsler’s fields of specialization included: ancient political theory; European intellectual history from 1600 to 1800; European and American intellectual history from 1800 to the present; and modern European and American history.
But that only scratches the surface of her academic and cultural accomplishments. Wechsler had more than a quarter-century of formal instruction in piano, studied chamber music at the Longy School of Music, and studied Latin, French, German and Italian.
"Not everyone may know that she was an accomplished musician, both a pianist and a singer," says Dr. Mary Dockray-Miller, a professor in the Humanities Division. "She always spoke eloquently about the ways that her exploration and love of music dovetailed with her exploration and love of history."
Dockray-Miller added, "Marjorie was an institutional knowledge base for me and the rest of the university; she brought that wisdom into her classes, her committee work, and her interactions with her fellow faculty."
Professor Wechsler's career at Lesley began in 1966, though she began teaching — working as a private tutor of English and mathematics for primary and secondary school students — at the beginning of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second term in office.
Dr. Paul Fideler, professor emeritus of history and humanities, recalled his first encounter with Wechsler, and their subsequent friendship.
He says it is impossible to summarize his late colleague and friend in one or two quotes, or a simple anecdote. But he offered the remarks he delivered at Wechsler’s retirement.
“When I arrived as a job candidate here in 1969, Marjorie grilled me carefully, and I assessed her as a potential colleague,” Fideler said at the time. “I was offered the job, and subsequently we bonded and became career-long allies on the important stuff: advocacy for challenging humanities offerings for all undergraduates.”
With evident admiration, Evans at the same event recalled Wechsler as a hard grader, saying at Wechsler’s retirement, “She has single-handedly stemmed the tide of grade inflation at Lesley.”
“Marjorie is absolutely incapable of dissemblance, inauthenticity, what Holden Caulfield hated the most: ‘phoniness,’” Evans said. “She (couldn’t) pretend to a student they’ve performed well if they have not, in her view. But there is also that other part of her character — her kind and tender heart toward those same students.”
Evans added that a gathering in the spring will be planned to allow Wechsler’s friends and colleagues to share remembrances.
However, some encomiums can’t wait.
“Having to face Marjorie’s passing, it is well worth remembering or learning, as the case may be, that the accumulation of her gifts long since earned for her the informal moniker: Custodian of Lesley’s Academic Conscience and Historical Memory,” Fideler says.
“Yes, the ‘Lesley Project’ has suffered a terrible loss, but in equal measure, Marjorie’s inspiration will continue to urge us forward.”