Because the School of Arts and Sciences’ Robin Kelsey prepares to complete his time period as dean of arts and humanities and return to full-time educating because the Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Pictures within the fall, an appreciation for the final eight years had come sharply into focus.
“I’ve beloved this job,” Kelsey mentioned. “Currently, I’ve realized much more profoundly what this job has meant to me. I’ve beloved this job due to the folks I’ve had an opportunity to work with, and the desires that we’ve been in a position to dream collectively and, generally, deliver to fruition.”
Kelsey, who took the function in July 2016, leaves behind a legacy of championing the humanities whereas striving to deliver the humanities into the guts of the undergraduate curriculum. Kelsey’s colleagues gathered at Loeb Corridor earlier this month to honor his tenure, with a celebration that included a efficiency of Beethoven and Debussy by the Parker Quartet.
“Robin has devoted himself to interested by the humanities and humanities and their place inside increased schooling in new and revolutionary methods,” mentioned Hopi Hoekstra, Edgerley Household Dean of the FAS. “We are able to look nearly anyplace on campus and see the affect of Robin’s imaginative and prescient and affect. Robin has helped create new areas, new frameworks, new mechanisms for placing the humanities in intentional dialogue with tutorial group. He has been instrumental in blazing new trails to amplify the methods during which the humanities contribute to public discourse.”
As dean, Kelsey is understood for his positivity even within the face of adversity, his collaborative nature, and his infectious snigger.
“Now we have beloved Robin’s optimism and his skill to search out the constructive in nearly each scenario,” mentioned Gretchen Brodnicki, administrative dean for arts and humanities. “We love his can-do strategy to fixing issues and the way he commonly asks every of us for our recommendation and assist in discovering inventive options. We love his sincerity, his honesty, his integrity, his persistence, his humility, his innate goodness, and tireless dedication for our group and to our workforce.”
In his years as dean, Kelsey has been instrumental in recruiting excellent students to the college and in establishing six new endowed professorships. He has spearheaded the creation of recent initiatives resembling The Intergenerational Humanities (I-HUM) Venture, the School Fellows program in Media Observe, the Transcript Venture and its Taliesin Prize, and the Surroundings Discussion board on the Mahindra Humanities Middle.
He chaired the School Advisory Committee for the College’s Presidential search in 2017, and the FAS Job Drive on Visible Tradition & Signage in 2020. With then-Govt Vice President Katie Lapp, he oversaw the creation of the ArtLab on the Allston campus and helped oversee renovations to 485 Broadway, which homes the Historical past of Artwork & Structure Division.
Lately, Kelsey led the division in a radical and in depth strategic planning course of, a multitiered, multiyear initiative to evaluate the construction of the Division of Arts & Humanities and to verify its group is supplied to assist the mental pursuits and administrative wants of its future group.
Suzannah Clark, director of the Mahindra Middle and Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music, referred to as Kelsey an inspiring mannequin of management. Clark co-taught HUM90 with him in 2020, and mentioned the scholars from that cohort nonetheless flip to Kelsey for recommendation, each private {and professional}.
“You could have labored behind the scenes to essentially change the concept that Harvard had about what it meant for arts to be totally integrated into an establishment like ours, and that could be a actual legacy,” Clark mentioned.
As curiosity within the humanities declined, Kelsey has labored tirelessly to reconfigure the boundaries of educational disciplines and give you revolutionary methods to deliver humanities schooling to college students.
His love for arts and humanities extends past his function. Chair of the Division of English Glenda Carpio, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature, shared an anecdote about how she checked in on Kelsey throughout a very difficult time and located him studying about America’s Reconstruction interval whereas listening to Erroll Garner’s full album “Live performance by the Sea.”
“He doubles down on reality and wonder exactly on the moments of most disaster,” Carpio mentioned.
When he leaves his put up June 30, he’ll go the divisional baton to Sean Kelly, the Teresa G. and Ferdinand F. Martignetti Professor of Philosophy, and return to the classroom and to his analysis.
Drew Gilpin Faust, president emerita of Harvard and the Arthur Kingsley Porter Analysis Professor, mentioned in an announcement learn by Hoekstra that Kelsey, with whom she labored to implement the younger Theater, Dance & Media focus, has modified the “place and the that means” of the humanities at Harvard.
“You could have made this place completely different and higher in methods that may endure,” Faust mentioned. “Your deanship itself has been a murals, I might enterprise to say, a masterpiece.”
