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Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University
Alan Levy Interview
September 29, 2023
Interviewed and transcribed by Megan John
Proofread and edited by Sara Dickensheets, Rachel Hoarau, and Judy Silva
Reviewed and approved by Alan Levy
MJ: It is September 29th, 2023, in the Archives, and I am interviewing Alan Levy, Dr. Alan
Levy, for the Rock Voices [Oral History] Project. Hello, Dr. Levy.
AL: Hello.
MJ: All right, so first off, could I get some biographical information, like your name, where
you're from originally, your education, things like that.
AL: My name is Alan Levy. I was born in Mount Vernon, New York, which is a suburb of New
York City. I graduated from Washington and Jefferson College in the same area as this. Total
coincidence that I ended up back here. But I went to W &J [Washington and Jefferson College]
as an undergraduate. From there, I did my master’s and PhD at the University of Wisconsin, in
Madison. I taught for two years after my PhD at the University of Wisconsin. I taught for two
years thereafter at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, on a sabbatical replacement. And
then I taught for two years at a prep school in New England called Phillips Exeter Academy.
Then in 1985, I came to Slippery Rock.
MJ: All right, and how did you originally discover Slippery Rock [University]? What's your
affiliation with the place?
AL: It came at the time of my appointment. I learned of the job availability; I remember, it was
April of 1985. An individual named Robert Stackman chose to retire rather late in the year, so it
was a last-minute kind of application process. But I was flexible at that point, and so I sent my
application in and ended up with an interview on the campus in July of that same year, in 1985.
And it seemed to go reasonably well; I was hired and I took the job.
MJ: All right. So you started at the fall semester.
AL: August ‘85, yes.
MJ: Okay. And you were here, let's see, if you started in ‘85, it was already a university when
you got there, so you weren't really present for any of the transitions from college to university.
Or were you? If you remember anything about it.
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AL: No, it was already Slippery Rock University. It had just become that two years before. It
was at the point when I became a faculty member that the leadership of the university had
switched from a man named [Herb.] Reinhard to [Robert] Aebersold, which is a famous name
on the campus. He [Robert Aebersold] became the president in November of that very fall.
MJ: All right, and you were hired into the History Department, right?
AL: Correct.
MJ: So did the department you were hired into change while you were here, and if so, how?
AL: It changed, one hundred percent. I mean, all the people who were on faculty when I came
have long since retired, and sadly, some of them have passed away. The chair of the department
then is still alive at age ninety-two, bless him, and he lives in the area; his name is Donald
Kelly. You should interview him. He knows the history of the school, and the history of Butler
County, and the history of particularly Native Americans in western Pennsylvania as well as
anyone, anywhere.
MJ: All right, I will keep that in mind, because that’s a good idea. What buildings did you work
in during your time here?
AL: Spotts [World Culture Building].
MJ: The whole time?
AL: Whole time.
MJ: All right. And when you first got here, what were your first impressions of the university?
AL: When I first started to teach, or you mean the first time I arrived--I was on the campus, or
both?
MJ: Both.
AL: I remember--I knew of Slippery Rock, of course, at that point. It’s an amusing little story if
you want me to explain it.
MJ: Please do.
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AL: Slippery Rock’s name had been coming up at various times in the various little news items
in the country, particularly related to sports. I'll tell the story as briefly as I can. It was in the fall
of 1984. There's a famous story, of course that Slippery Rock’s football scores are announced at
halftime at the University of Michigan, at the University of Texas, at the Air Force Academy, at
the University of Colorado; Notre Dame versus Purdue or Iowa versus Wisconsin or whatever
big scores there are. And then everyone would cheer, and at the end of the litany of scores that
they announce at these big stadiums, “ . . .and Slippery Rock defeated Clarion,” et cetera, and
everybody cheers. That apparently had started as the tradition at Michigan.
Now, the fame of Slippery Rock carried forth because of that tradition. It goes back, I believe,
to 1937, when [pause] Michigan was named number one, but they had lost to Ohio State. And
Ohio State therefore should be number one, but they lost to Youngstown State. Therefore,
Youngstown State should--oh, but Youngstown State lost to Slippery Rock, and Slippery
Rock’s undefeated!
MJ: [Laughs].
AL: Therefore, Slippery Rock should be--that's where the tradition came from, I gather.
That same fall, I think it was 1984, Brigham Young [University] started out, the school
Brigham Young started out the year--getting back to Slippery Rock, it’ll take a few minutes-Slippery Rock was playing on their own, but Brigham Young started the season against
University of Pittsburgh. Pitt was highly touted before the season began, and Brigham Young
beat them. So they ended up, I guess, number eight in the country after the first few games. And
then from there, Brigham Young went into their usual fall schedule, playing some lackluster
teams like Montana, New Mexico. Because they beat a highly touted Pitt team in the first game,
they ended up in the top ten. They were like number eight or number nine. Then as they went
through their schedule undefeated, they began gradually to bump up in the schedule as anyone
above them lost a game. Turned out that year, everybody lost at least one game. So then
miraculously, after beating Pitt--who turned out to be a dud, they were like three and eight that
year, they didn’t even make the Bowl [National Collegiate Athletic Association Football Bowl
Games]. So then defeating Pitt at the beginning of the season really didn’t mean anything, but
they made the top ten list.
And then after the season was over, they were the only number one team, so they ended up
being ranked number one going into the Bowl Games. There were no playoffs in the Bowl
Games in those years; it was just invitations. The Big Ten would play the PAC [Presidents’
Athletic Conference] Ten and the Rose Bowl set up--and in the postseason, Brigham Young
was under scrutiny, because everybody was saying, “You gotta play somebody good in the
postseason.” They’d sent them an invitation to the Holiday Bowl, a very lackluster December
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24th, Christmas Eve game. And they played a very undistinguished University of Michigan that
year, who did not win the Big Ten conference, [and] was not going to the Rose Bowl. The
coach of Michigan, Bo Schembechler, said to the press, “These guys are not that good in
Brigham Young,” he said, “We play better teams.” Brigham Young beat them in the Holiday
Bowl twenty-four to seventeen, nothing major, and then on the January 1st, the Bowl Games
were played. The big teams squared off, and two--I believe it was number two and three of that
year--lost their Bowl Games. So it was even more murky.
So then the upshot of this comes. On January 2nd, after the Bowl Games were played on NBC’s
[National Broadcasting Company] The Today Show, Bryant Gumbel, himself a sports
announcer, who was the host of The Today Show, got word as he's reading the card, “We just
got news that indeed, Brigham Young has been named number one.” And they pause for a
commercial, and you know how sometimes you can hear somebody say something into a
microphone with the cameras going off? And so it gets broadcast over national television with
Bryant Gumbel saying, “So who’d they beat, Slippery Rock?”
MJ: [Laughs].
AL: That was on January 2nd, 1985.
MJ: And that got Slippery Rock into the headlines?
AL: It had already been there, not only because of the amusing nature of the name and all that,
so that it was that much more reinforced on me. I knew who Slippery Rock was because of my
time in western Pennsylvania earlier, but it reinforced the old stereotypes. And one of the
upshots of that--it just repeated itself this year, that the ‘85 season was already set, of course, by
that point in January of ‘85. But for the fall of 1986, Michigan's first game was away, and so
they agreed to let Slippery Rock come to the University of Michigan campus and play Wayne
State [University]. And something like 50,000 people from Michigan came to the University of
Michigan stadium, which is like 100,000-plus seating capacity, but 50,000 people showed up to
watch Slippery Rock beat Wayne State. So, the name held some affection in various parts of the
country. So that's one of the early memories. This coincided with beginnings of my time here.
MJ: I'm going to check the camera real quick, and also. . . .
AL: Sure. I hope I’m not shifting around too much.
MJ: Oh no, no, not at all. I just needed to make sure I pressed the right button. Now, what about
your first visit to the campus?
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AL: So my first visit occurred then, in the summer, late June or early July of 1985. I remember
it was curious, because I met with the [History] Department, of course, with the chairman, and
various faculty. And that all seemed to go fairly nicely. Everybody was away at this point,
because I went--again, Reinhard had left. The new president was to be Aebersold; he was not in
town. Aebersold had been what’s called the vice president of academic affairs at that point, and
he was promoted, determined to be president, but he was away. That vice president of academic
affairs post is now called the provost. The temporary provost had been the dean of Arts and
Sciences, his name was Charles Zuzak. So he was then the provost . . . was to become a
provost; he was away. And so the replacement dean’s name was Roy Stewart, and he was away.
So I met the temporary assistant provost, whose name was W.G. Sayres, who’d been a
Chemistry professor. And I met the assistant to the provost, who was there to take care of things
on the third floor of Old Main with both the provost and the president away. His name was
Louis Razzano. So I met kind-of the replacements’ replacements, up and down the line.
But Razzano was a very nice person and we got along fine in our interview. And Sayres and I
had a nice conversation. The department members and I had good conversations in the
interviews, and they seemed to enjoy the guest lecture that I gave. So, at the end of that day, the
head of the search committee of the department was John Nichols, who just retired about
twenty years ago. Dr. Nichols told me at the end of those interviews, he said, “The job, I think,
is yours if you want it. Do you want a few days to think about it? Let me know.” And it turned
out, indeed the offer came, so I had to think about it a little bit, but I took the job and that was
it.
MJ: Did you say you gave a guest lecture the first day you were there?
AL: A demonstration lecture.
MJ: Ah. What was it about?
AL: It was--since the course, then called History 202, in the middle of the three surveys that
they have still in the Department of History. They've just gone away from it this past year, I
should--have two semesters of [inaudible]--(excuse my physical movement here)--I gave a
lecture that was in effect to be an example of how I would have started this 202 course,
America 1815 to 1900. So I gave a demonstration lecture, I still have--I always keep my notes,
and I still got the notes from that day, but I jotted down some basic points to cover about where
America was politically, socially, and economically in 1815 and what we would then be
exploring in this supposed class, starting on its first day in History 202.
MJ: Okay. And next question on here: What changes have you witnessed at the university, and
were they for the better or worse?
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AL: Oh, all kinds of changes, of course, the curriculum has gone through many different
changes. There’s a new one that's been instituted under Rock Studies, as it’s called. Is it better,
is it worse? Different people's opinions. My opinion doesn't really count because I'm retired. I
always emphasized to my colleagues, “Who we hire in the next year or so,” I was in my last
couple of years here, “My opinion shouldn’t matter; it's your department.” Just like when I was
first here, my opinion about the future of the department was more--should have been
considered--I thought it was more important than the opinions of anybody who was older and
close to retirement. Because those who were going to be here to run things and affect students,
they’re the people who count, not old blankety-blanks like me. I’m stepping out. The same was
the case then 20 years ago, me versus Donald Kelly, or anybody else, so. . . . There was always
that dynamic of the new views of people about curriculum, about hiring, what should be
emphasized, and what should not be. And a lot of that is occurring.
I think a big trend that's, I think, manifesting itself right now concerns the way that with
funding, and the quantity of students coming to Slippery Rock seem to be a little bit lower now
than--I think it's going to be truncated. And now certain departments may be compelled to
merge with one another, and what kind of configurations this is going to lead to, when you have
no History or Political Science Department, but you have the Department of Social Sciences
involving History, Economics, Sociology and Political Science, these kinds of configurations.
The devil's in the details. What such things do we have in a Humanities Department that
involves History, Philosophy and English? Do you have a Social Science Department involving
History, Political Science, and Economics? You see how you can configure it one way or
another. These changes and the talks about them are going on very much and very, very much
in earnest, as they should be, because how it is to be structured makes a big difference as far as
hirings and ways that disciplines are going to be approached.
MJ: All right, and what campus activities were you involved in?
AL: I’d say the main thing I was involved in early on was that I took charge of a nominally
existing, but really not, in fact doing very much, Honors program. And I took it over and
revamped the structure completely, because it had been a series of separate courses unto
themselves called “Honors courses.” And what I did was restructure [it] so that you had College
Writing--required of all freshmen--and so I had a College Writing, Honors section. I had basic
History, basic Economics--basic courses that had to be taken by students, and had Honors
sections in those classes so that you could take those Honors classes and gain Honors credit.
But then if they chose to drop out or not pursue the program, the course would still count in
their general--impact on their requirements for graduation. So that you can try Honors and step
in. If you don't like it, step out and not have the work that you did in the Honors program count
for nothing. So I integrated it more fully with the curriculum of the university, and it seemed to
be fairly successful.
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I was in charge of Honors starting in the fall of 1986. By the fall of 1989, when I relinquished
that, I went off for about [a] two-year leave in Washington, D.C. to work for the National
Endowment for the Humanities, temporarily, I turned the program over to John Craig. And by
that point, we had--when I started, two students in the Honors program. In 1989, we had eightyfive students in the Honors program, so it had grown quite a bit. The Rocket lists it as two
students in 1989, they misprinted it, so people kept saying I didn't build up any students. Yes, I
did. The Rocket just put 1989 instead of 1986. So it was like I only had two students after three
years. No, I went from two to eighty-five.
MJ: And I read, also in The Rocket, because I went back through the old ones, that you were
grand marshal for a couple of years. What does that involve?
AL: It involved some pomp and circumstance. The fun part about it is you stand up in front of
the whole gathering of students and parents and everybody and say, “Welcome to Slippery
Rock graduation, congratulations to everybody.” And you lead the lines in, of all faculty, of all
students, you're the first one in, so that you get to be the leader of the whole ceremony, which is
fun.
One aspect of it that was not fun was that you had to stand there during the entire time they
were crossing the stage and shaking hands with the president, and behind the president, you
were the one that has to hand the president the diplomas as he or she hands them out and shakes
hands. So you're standing there passing things on and you feel like--you ever seen the movie
Modern Times, with Charlie Chaplin? Highly recommend it to you, but he’s . . .
MJ: Actually, I might’ve.
AL: . . . he’s doing this very mechanical work and he walks away from the assembly line still
full of nerves and anxiety, moving his body around like you used to do on the assembly line,
you feel a bit like that, doing that kind of work with the grand marshal's post.
MJ: Is that the one with the sequence where there's a dinner and then, something--like a napkin
going across his face after--like an automated thing feeding him dinner or something like that.
AL: I think that's elsewhere in the movie, yeah.
MJ: Okay. Now, what about your accomplishments during your time at Slippery Rock?
AL: Well, I published--I had published one book by the time I started at Slippery Rock. In the
ensuing years, particularly from 1997 to 2013, in that time period, I published . . . [begins
counting] I published eight books from 1997 to the end of 2013. So if you do the math, that's
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sixteen and a half years. March 1997 to December of 2013, that’s a little over eight years-sixteen years--and I published eight books. So that's, I think, a pretty good accomplishment.
And the reviews were generally quite good on each of them.
So that [pause] that was done in the context with me devoting virtually every, every winter
break and every summer, as well as a couple of sabbaticals, entirely, to Washington--put myself
in Washington, D.C. and going to the Library of Congress and the Archives on a daily basis,
going through old newspapers and archival material, and assembling the evidence, putting
together books on . . . one was called Government and the Arts, a history of the debates over the
subject of what government should or should not do in support of the arts. Biography of the
composer Edward MacDowell, the famous American composer of the late 19th century. Several
books on American sports: three on baseball, one on football, the Jackie Robinson story of
football’s segregation and desegregation--it was virtually at the same time as baseball, Jackie
Robinson [inaudible]. But the NFL was segregated and integrated a year before Robinson
integrated the Brooklyn Dodgers. That story hadn’t been fully told. And there was a television
program that was done about that as well, that was based on my book, the show on CBS
Television in 2010 called--Christmas 2010, February 2011--on CBS and on ESPN.
A book about the boxer Floyd Patterson, and a two-volume biography of the congresswoman
named Bella Abzug, who was a famous feminist leader in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. So I got a
fair amount written, which is, I always considered, central to what we as professors are
supposed to do. Of course we teach, and we serve on committees, and we serve the campus and
the community, but we also are supposed to be active in a scholarly capacity, and I took that in
earnest and went forth with it.
MJ: All right. And during your time teaching, what were your best and worst teaching
moments?
AL: That’s hard. [Pause] I cannot really think of a bad teaching moment per se, but there were
moments where, as I look back on it, where I could have reached out perhaps more fully to
students that were having--appeared to be having personal difficulties. It's always tricky
business because you have to respect privacy. Yet there are times when you do reach out, you
find the student very much appreciates the extra effort, but you’ve got to be careful because you
don't know what you're intruding unto, onto (whatever preposition is there that’s proper). It’s
part of the sensitivity of the issue; tread carefully. But, so there are ways in which I feel that I
could have--I'd like to believe that if I interceded more in what I perceived to be some personal
issues that someone may be having, could I have made more of a difference? I'd like to think
so, but at the same time, you can step into turf that causes people to become very defensive and
not very happy that you've done so.
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The best experiences, I think, up to the way that students have written me, and stayed in touch
with me, sent me, as I got--when I retired--statements in writing saying, “I really appreciated
your course because I enjoyed this, this, and this.” One student, whose mother had been married
to Dr. Kelly, the chair of the [History] Department, and she is now the daughter of him . . .
knew me when I was first here, and she was then about ten years old. It wasn’t exactly a
teaching moment, but they had me over for dinner, the Kellys did, and I brought a bottle of
wine. And as we were just serving dinner, I said to this young girl, “Let me show you precisely
how to pour wine.” The key point is, when you pour it, you turn the bottle just slightly when
you’re done so that you don’t spill any drops. And when I retired, she wrote me a little note
saying, “I’ll always remember the lesson you taught me on how to pour wine and not spill it.”
MJ: Huh.
AL: So little, little lessons like that, you don't think about it; it’s so trivial at the time, but yet
there, that one little statement to a ten-year-old. Now she's well into her forties and she
remembered it.
MJ: And she can still pour wine.
AL: She can still pour wine without spilling a drop, yes. That’s important.
MJ: Next question: who are the--you’ve mentioned them already, but who were the leaders
when you first came to campus, you know, the people who've been there forever, the people
who were really making changes, the phrase is “movers and shakers” and what were your
impressions of them?
AL: I always try to separate the personal from the professional. Personally, I don't think I had a
problem on a personal level with terribly many people in all my time here. There were a few
who may have had some personal problems with me, I will freely admit that. But I always
believed that one should be open and frank and clear about one's beliefs, in the pursuit of
professional standards in regard to curriculum or scholarship or teaching or anything else. And
there were some people on this campus who were intent on, it seemed to me, on showing how
important they were by how much influence they had over such matters as curriculum. And in
some cases, I detected very little in the way of academic substance that lent any kind of
legitimacy or support to their apparent influence that they wielded over such important issues as
curriculum.
And so what I often did was simply ask--what proved to be some somewhat uncomfortable
questions--as to what such and such a person was doing in regard to scholarship. As I say, I
wrote seven books, and some of these people had never wrote a book review, much less an
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article, much less a book. And so challenging the standing, not on a personal level--I mean I
don't care what background, or whether they’re local, whether they’re geographically from
California or anywhere else, certainly what race, what religion, what gender, anything else.
None of that matters to me and should not matter to anybody. Do you have something to say
that's valid? And in challenging some people in certain respects, I think I ruffled more than a
few feathers and stuck to my guns and had to take on others who wanted to try to diminish the
impact that my words were having. And I think people were disturbed about that. But I really, I
couldn't let it bother me, because I always knew in my own heart that I was never being
personal.
If I discovered that somebody was claiming to have published an article (other people did this
as well) or publish a book, and the book didn't exist. . . . It was fairly obvious, you know, when
somebody lists a book, and the publisher is given, and you can try to look up the publisher, and
the publisher, publishing house doesn't exist--how can they claim they’ve got a book out? So in
challenging things like that, I definitely ruffled some feathers and got some people in a little hot
water, including some administrators whose positions then with the state, as a role of a leader
on campus, can be put in jeopardy. Because if they approve of such people getting ahead, who
have this demonstrably unjust levels of attainment, and such obvious levels of dishonesty in
what they’re posturing about themselves, it's not just that individual who can get in trouble, but
it is the administrator that can get in trouble with the powers that be in this chancellor's office or
in the attorney general's office, even. And some of that did happen as a result of my insisting
that such standards be maintained.
There was a certain level, I would describe it--in counterpoint--going back to your question,
what was my impression of these people? My impression was that old Slippery Rock as they
called it, the old guard, names that are long gone. And again, it’s nothing personal, but these
were people who felt that they were sort of the “king of the hill.” But it was such a, you know,
the Jonathan Swift word, the “Lilliputian” aspect of it. I mean, to be a big shot at Slippery
Rock, it’s neither good nor bad, but it’s a pretty tiny universe. And if it was based on standards
that were really being corrupted, like claiming to have published books that didn't exist, it was
valid to challenge it, in my judgment. And that ruffled feathers internally. I really, again, I
wasn't happy to do it, but I wasn’t sad to do it either. And if it got certain individuals in trouble
for indulging that, I don't think it was a bad thing. And if it made some people have to step
away from Slippery Rock University, I think the school was worse for it.
MJ: On the other hand, who did you work best with, would you say?
AL: Various colleagues would have said, I tend to work best--“Levy tends to work best alone.”
And I was happy in that way, too. I did not coauthor many pieces. I did not engage in collective
research. I wasn’t avoiding people, but that was [me] believing that the work of scholarship was
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intended to be an individual pursuit. So I worked with people in hiring committees and
curriculum committees and departmental work of various sorts, sure. And I think I got along
best with those who shared the view that the standards of what represents good academics
should be based on standards that are common to the profession across the country, rather than
just more sui generis based on friendship, connections, and relationships within the community.
The two should be in harmony with each other, but when they are out of harmony, then the
local [community] should yield to the more widely held definitions of common sense that apply
across the board.
MJ: All right. And other people who influenced you or were significant during your time here-could be students, could be faculty, it could be administration.
AL: I think the students that impressed me most, and for whom I held the deepest respect, were
the veterans of the military, the nontraditional students who, while they're raising children or
holding down jobs, would also be pursuing their degrees and doing remarkably well in that
context. To that end, I very much enjoyed teaching, and made a habit of teaching at least one
class per semester in the evening part of the schedule. So that Monday night from 5 to 7:30, or
from 5:30 to 8, I would have a class. And in the early years particularly, up until somewhere in
the 2000-teens, at least a third of the class would be people who worked full-time, or were
raising children, or were coming out of the military or whatever, but were older and were taking
on many different other aspects of normal life for a twenty-nine-year-old, a thirty-three-yearold. And yet, [they were] going through all of this while they’re coming to campus and
pursuing the work involved in an undergraduate curriculum.
So when undergraduates were coming to me, saying, “I really don’t have time to go, I got this
social event on Tuesday, so can we have a makeup test?” While these older people out of the
military, or pursuing professional life and raising children, could always come up with excuses
of things they’d have to do--taking the kids to the Little League or doing this aspect of a job, et
cetera--they made it very easy for me--not to be harsh, but just to turn to these undergraduates
of the normal age, eighteen to twenty-two, and say to them, “I’m not being harsh with you, but
I’m just saying, if you've got these other social obligations, do what you have to do to pursue
those, because that's part of your life, too, but don't let those get in the way of your real
education.” And the example I could always point to was, “look at what your colleagues are
doing.”
Just recounting some of these examples, one student certainly sticks out in this regard because
he was blind and took an evening class with me. He had to make certain arrangements, but it
was also easy, because he had children and they would come to class on the night of tests and I
would give his son a copy of the test; they would go off to the library. I said, “If you need a
little extra time, go forth with it.” But on test night in a 5 to 7:30 class, the test would run from
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5 to 6:15, they had the tests back to me by then, fifteen minutes of. Then, we’d meet for the last
hour of that two-and-a-half-hour meeting, introducing some new material in the new unit, so he
always got his test handed in. The method by which he took it was that there was a multiple
choice and an essay section, and the son would read the multiple-choice questions to him, and
he would choose A, B, C, or D and his son would write them down. And then his son would
read the essay question, and he would sit at the computer and clack out an answer. And so I'd
get the answers and essay from him. It was just as valid as any content I got from others. What I
particularly remember, in addition to the fact that he--despite an obvious, huge disability--you
don’t have to call it a handicap anymore--he actually never minded the use of the word--but
despite his disability, [he] went forth with the material, finished it, and did very well.
And what was particularly moving was once a semester, I had each of the students in the class
of about fifty [students]---in three units. In the first unit, second unit, and third unit, class would
be divided into four groups, and on report night . . . I would say in a class of fifty, so about ten
to fifteen students per group, a third of each unit would report in the first unit, the second unit,
the third unit. Everybody gives one oral report, and hands in a written report on a subject
pertaining to the first third of the chronology, the second or third of the chronology of the class.
He [the blind student] chose his topic and prepared a report. And so he gives a little fifteenminute presentation to the class on that night. And normally after a student gives a report,
everybody in class [claps] very politely . . . and when this student who was blind gave his
report, and when he was done, you could just feel the heart that was there among the students. It
brings out a level of emotion in me right now, just to think about it. They really did applaud and
connect with a tonality that was quite unusual, because they all appreciated where he was as
well. It didn't take a genius to figure out why, but that was a very special time.
Other memories are not quite so gut-felt, but nonetheless important. There were a couple of
times where I had parents--one in particular, but there were others--who brought their children
to class, or had their kids sitting in the hallway, or I'd given them a place to relax, that they
would be sitting there in the hallway with their computers, clacking away at things while mom
was sitting in class; I thought that was good for them. A couple of students, I always enjoyed
the fact that they wanted to bring their dog to class. So we had a couple of class puppies during
evening classes, that was always fun too. All those little variations were there throughout. They
kind of dot the landscape as I think back on it. Thirty-eight years, there’s been a lot of detail
I’ve had that stick in my mind.
MJ: Next question on the paper here is major events and activities while you were here, like
building projects, cultural things, national events with local impact. . . .
AL: One that pops into my mind, extraordinarily of course, was 9-11. [Pause] it was a Monday.
I remember several things about it. It was a day much like today in September of 2001, I
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Levy, Alan 13
suppose, not 2024. It was a day with an absolutely glorious, clear blue sky, and I remember I
went to the gym early in the morning, went out jogging, and came back. The rec center [Robert
N. Aebersold Student Recreation Center] had just opened, I think, the previous year. I came in
from my jog outside and saw a bunch of people gathered around the TV and I said, “What's
going on?” At that point, only one of the two towers of the World Trade Center had been hit,
and everybody was talking, “What's going on here?” And while I came in and was watching,
that was when the second plane hit the tower. All through that day, people were gathering in the
classrooms where the professor would tune the news in to the computer to be able to show what
was going on. And so we had, we nominally had class, but at the same time, our attention was
elsewhere. It was--not disturbing, but a little bit--what caused a little bit of lament in my mind
was the fact that the campus officials seemed to be a little bit slow in reacting. Some students,
in fact, they got busy putting messages up through chalks, through sidewalk chalking, which
was then as now a method of disseminating information. We had a gathering in front of the
library. We didn't have one until Friday night of that same week. I thought the campus was a
little slow, officially, to react. A gentleman named G. Warren Smith, whom I liked very much,
was at that point the president, and he tended to be a little bit less dynamic, a little more slow to
react to things, than I think was called for at that point. But certainly, the turnout in front of the
library was still pretty good. People were anxious to somehow show involvement and concern.
That was certainly a major event. That would be a major one that pops into my mind, certainly.
MJ: What about building projects specifically? Because if you've been here since the 80s, you
would have seen a lot of, like, the campus around us sort of pop up.
AL: Yeah, because when I was first here, Swope Music Hall was--that was the end of the
campus aside from the football field. There was nothing beyond there. There was a kind of a
high-rise dormitory called Founders [Hall], that was in that new dormitory area where Watson
Hall and everything down there would have been built later. Aside from that tall, older student
dormitory, there was nothing east of Swope. There was no Aebersold Recreation Center. None
of those new dormitories; there was no baseball field; there was no soccer field, it was just [an]
open grass area.
The old timers of the day, of course, talked about how, going back into the 1950s and ‘60s it
was even more starkly contrasting because the campus basically stopped at the [Morrow] Field
House. There was no Vincent [Science Center], there was no Swope, there was no Eisenberg
[Classroom Building]. So I kind of came at the point of the second phase of an expansion. So
all those new dorms, the baseball field, maturing, and the use as athletic facilities, rather than
just open fields, all the sports areas that were up on top of the hill where Branchton Road and
Harmony Road crisscross, and all those baseball fields. It was just open space back then. We
used to go up there and treat it as a driving range, hit golf balls, and there were some softball
and baseball fields and rugby fields all over the place. But it used to be so much more than just
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Levy, Alan 14
wide-open space. We always advertised that we had more acreage than any other campus,
which we do in the [Pennsylvania] State System [of Higher Education], but particularly in the
1980s and before, much of that acreage was just wide-open, grassy areas. So much of that has
been developed now. That's a big change, and for the good, I think.
MJ: All right, and any other big, memorable events you can think of?
AL: Hm. Well, 9-11 certainly--it always keeps popping into my head, because it was--it’s a day
when so much came crashing home. We've had events like the ones that stick in my mind that
have happened on other campuses. In 2006, when you had the shooting at Virginia--what we
used to call VPI, Virginia Polytechnic Institute. The Virginia Tech shootings of 2006 kind of
reinforced to me--fortunately, they haven’t come true--that such possibilities can be present in
regard to a campus like Slippery Rock, as they can be anywhere. If it can happen at Virginia
Tech, it can happen at SRU was the lesson I drew from it. I tried to say that to various
administrators over the years. We have to be, not on our guard, and scour the dormitories for
any incident, a weapon, or any kind of blunt instrument. Don't ever think that we're immune
from it, because again, it happened at Blacksburg, Virginia, in the middle of the . . . eastern
slope of the Allegheny Mountains. It can happen in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, on the
western slope of the Allegheny Mountains--the same longitude. It’s not downtown Philadelphia
or downtown New York, but it’s the countryside. But neither it happening there at VPI and it
can happen here, too. So it’s not a positive memory, but it's a very real one, and I think it's
something we have to maintain.
MJ: Sounds like you've been retired for a couple of years now. What, if anything, do you miss
about. . . .
AL: I just retired in May.
MJ: Oh, okay. Good to know. What, if anything, do you miss about being here?
AL: Whatever I could articulate as far as what I miss would translate back into me saying,
“Gee, I wish I was thirty-nine years old again and had the strength and energy of a thirty-nine
year-old.” I used to live in a very--I still try to be athletic every day and do something, as my
sloppy clothes indicate. I try to do some kind of workout all the time to maintain health. Back
then, I did it vastly more, and did it in connection with the work I was doing. What do I mean
by that? When I would go to the Library of Congress, et cetera, I would get there early in the
morning when the library would open at 7:45, I would work all day, take maybe 20 minutes for
lunch, and then work until about 3:30, and then pack up with my note cards that are in a side,
fanny packs, we used to call them. From there, I lived in Dupont Circle, and most of my time in
Washington [D.C.], I would jog from the Library of Congress down the length of the [National]
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Levy, Alan 15
Mall from the Capitol Building, past the Washington Monument to Lincoln [Memorial], and up
Rock Creek Park, past Connecticut Avenue, and come back out near Dupont Circle, just north
of Evans Morgan and jog down to the Hilton Hotel, where I had a membership, and I’d do
some swimming. So, I would pile athletics on top of research. I’d do the same thing while I
would teach; I’d go jogging before or after a day of teaching. The point is, I miss doing that, but
I don’t have the strength to do that anymore. I'm seventy-one years old. So when I say “What
do I miss”: having that kind of energy. Well, that’s another way of saying I wish I was thirtyfive and not seventy-one. Who doesn’t wish that? Nobody likes to be seventy-one as opposed to
thirty-five, but that's life.
MJ: How would you like to be remembered by the community here? [Pause]. Or do you have
an opinion on that?
AL: Yeah, I do. I’d like to be remembered as someone who was what he genuinely presented
himself to be: an active scholar and a genuinely concerned teacher, who tried to approach
material that he taught and wrote it up with a level of integrity. And who let the record speak
for itself as far as how the students and colleagues reacted to what he wrote and what he taught,
and how he served.
MJ: All right. And last question for you: do you have any words of wisdom for current and
future Rock community members?
AL: Be yourself. [Pause]. When I taught at Phillips Exeter Academy, living in a dormitory,
coaching sports, and being a local parent in effect for students, as well as teaching, I always
said to people, “Whatever you try to hide that you don’t want anyone to know about, they’ll
somehow detect--the members of the community will detect that sense of hiding something,
and whatever you put up as a front that isn’t you, they’ll see through it.” And this precious
thing we have called life doesn't really last that long; make the most of it. So be who you are,
find out what it is you want to do and pursue that, so--if it’s, teaching, great. If it's not, that’s
okay too, but be yourself and pursue that to the nth degree. There's not a lot of time to do it.
Seventy years sounds like a long time to you, but I wish I had seventy more. I don't. Nobody
does.
MJ: That's all I have for questions. Thank you so much.
AL: I hope it went well.
Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
Alan Levy Interview
September 29, 2023
Interviewed and transcribed by Megan John
Proofread and edited by Sara Dickensheets, Rachel Hoarau, and Judy Silva
Reviewed and approved by Alan Levy
MJ: It is September 29th, 2023, in the Archives, and I am interviewing Alan Levy, Dr. Alan
Levy, for the Rock Voices [Oral History] Project. Hello, Dr. Levy.
AL: Hello.
MJ: All right, so first off, could I get some biographical information, like your name, where
you're from originally, your education, things like that.
AL: My name is Alan Levy. I was born in Mount Vernon, New York, which is a suburb of New
York City. I graduated from Washington and Jefferson College in the same area as this. Total
coincidence that I ended up back here. But I went to W &J [Washington and Jefferson College]
as an undergraduate. From there, I did my master’s and PhD at the University of Wisconsin, in
Madison. I taught for two years after my PhD at the University of Wisconsin. I taught for two
years thereafter at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, on a sabbatical replacement. And
then I taught for two years at a prep school in New England called Phillips Exeter Academy.
Then in 1985, I came to Slippery Rock.
MJ: All right, and how did you originally discover Slippery Rock [University]? What's your
affiliation with the place?
AL: It came at the time of my appointment. I learned of the job availability; I remember, it was
April of 1985. An individual named Robert Stackman chose to retire rather late in the year, so it
was a last-minute kind of application process. But I was flexible at that point, and so I sent my
application in and ended up with an interview on the campus in July of that same year, in 1985.
And it seemed to go reasonably well; I was hired and I took the job.
MJ: All right. So you started at the fall semester.
AL: August ‘85, yes.
MJ: Okay. And you were here, let's see, if you started in ‘85, it was already a university when
you got there, so you weren't really present for any of the transitions from college to university.
Or were you? If you remember anything about it.
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AL: No, it was already Slippery Rock University. It had just become that two years before. It
was at the point when I became a faculty member that the leadership of the university had
switched from a man named [Herb.] Reinhard to [Robert] Aebersold, which is a famous name
on the campus. He [Robert Aebersold] became the president in November of that very fall.
MJ: All right, and you were hired into the History Department, right?
AL: Correct.
MJ: So did the department you were hired into change while you were here, and if so, how?
AL: It changed, one hundred percent. I mean, all the people who were on faculty when I came
have long since retired, and sadly, some of them have passed away. The chair of the department
then is still alive at age ninety-two, bless him, and he lives in the area; his name is Donald
Kelly. You should interview him. He knows the history of the school, and the history of Butler
County, and the history of particularly Native Americans in western Pennsylvania as well as
anyone, anywhere.
MJ: All right, I will keep that in mind, because that’s a good idea. What buildings did you work
in during your time here?
AL: Spotts [World Culture Building].
MJ: The whole time?
AL: Whole time.
MJ: All right. And when you first got here, what were your first impressions of the university?
AL: When I first started to teach, or you mean the first time I arrived--I was on the campus, or
both?
MJ: Both.
AL: I remember--I knew of Slippery Rock, of course, at that point. It’s an amusing little story if
you want me to explain it.
MJ: Please do.
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AL: Slippery Rock’s name had been coming up at various times in the various little news items
in the country, particularly related to sports. I'll tell the story as briefly as I can. It was in the fall
of 1984. There's a famous story, of course that Slippery Rock’s football scores are announced at
halftime at the University of Michigan, at the University of Texas, at the Air Force Academy, at
the University of Colorado; Notre Dame versus Purdue or Iowa versus Wisconsin or whatever
big scores there are. And then everyone would cheer, and at the end of the litany of scores that
they announce at these big stadiums, “ . . .and Slippery Rock defeated Clarion,” et cetera, and
everybody cheers. That apparently had started as the tradition at Michigan.
Now, the fame of Slippery Rock carried forth because of that tradition. It goes back, I believe,
to 1937, when [pause] Michigan was named number one, but they had lost to Ohio State. And
Ohio State therefore should be number one, but they lost to Youngstown State. Therefore,
Youngstown State should--oh, but Youngstown State lost to Slippery Rock, and Slippery
Rock’s undefeated!
MJ: [Laughs].
AL: Therefore, Slippery Rock should be--that's where the tradition came from, I gather.
That same fall, I think it was 1984, Brigham Young [University] started out, the school
Brigham Young started out the year--getting back to Slippery Rock, it’ll take a few minutes-Slippery Rock was playing on their own, but Brigham Young started the season against
University of Pittsburgh. Pitt was highly touted before the season began, and Brigham Young
beat them. So they ended up, I guess, number eight in the country after the first few games. And
then from there, Brigham Young went into their usual fall schedule, playing some lackluster
teams like Montana, New Mexico. Because they beat a highly touted Pitt team in the first game,
they ended up in the top ten. They were like number eight or number nine. Then as they went
through their schedule undefeated, they began gradually to bump up in the schedule as anyone
above them lost a game. Turned out that year, everybody lost at least one game. So then
miraculously, after beating Pitt--who turned out to be a dud, they were like three and eight that
year, they didn’t even make the Bowl [National Collegiate Athletic Association Football Bowl
Games]. So then defeating Pitt at the beginning of the season really didn’t mean anything, but
they made the top ten list.
And then after the season was over, they were the only number one team, so they ended up
being ranked number one going into the Bowl Games. There were no playoffs in the Bowl
Games in those years; it was just invitations. The Big Ten would play the PAC [Presidents’
Athletic Conference] Ten and the Rose Bowl set up--and in the postseason, Brigham Young
was under scrutiny, because everybody was saying, “You gotta play somebody good in the
postseason.” They’d sent them an invitation to the Holiday Bowl, a very lackluster December
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Levy, Alan 4
24th, Christmas Eve game. And they played a very undistinguished University of Michigan that
year, who did not win the Big Ten conference, [and] was not going to the Rose Bowl. The
coach of Michigan, Bo Schembechler, said to the press, “These guys are not that good in
Brigham Young,” he said, “We play better teams.” Brigham Young beat them in the Holiday
Bowl twenty-four to seventeen, nothing major, and then on the January 1st, the Bowl Games
were played. The big teams squared off, and two--I believe it was number two and three of that
year--lost their Bowl Games. So it was even more murky.
So then the upshot of this comes. On January 2nd, after the Bowl Games were played on NBC’s
[National Broadcasting Company] The Today Show, Bryant Gumbel, himself a sports
announcer, who was the host of The Today Show, got word as he's reading the card, “We just
got news that indeed, Brigham Young has been named number one.” And they pause for a
commercial, and you know how sometimes you can hear somebody say something into a
microphone with the cameras going off? And so it gets broadcast over national television with
Bryant Gumbel saying, “So who’d they beat, Slippery Rock?”
MJ: [Laughs].
AL: That was on January 2nd, 1985.
MJ: And that got Slippery Rock into the headlines?
AL: It had already been there, not only because of the amusing nature of the name and all that,
so that it was that much more reinforced on me. I knew who Slippery Rock was because of my
time in western Pennsylvania earlier, but it reinforced the old stereotypes. And one of the
upshots of that--it just repeated itself this year, that the ‘85 season was already set, of course, by
that point in January of ‘85. But for the fall of 1986, Michigan's first game was away, and so
they agreed to let Slippery Rock come to the University of Michigan campus and play Wayne
State [University]. And something like 50,000 people from Michigan came to the University of
Michigan stadium, which is like 100,000-plus seating capacity, but 50,000 people showed up to
watch Slippery Rock beat Wayne State. So, the name held some affection in various parts of the
country. So that's one of the early memories. This coincided with beginnings of my time here.
MJ: I'm going to check the camera real quick, and also. . . .
AL: Sure. I hope I’m not shifting around too much.
MJ: Oh no, no, not at all. I just needed to make sure I pressed the right button. Now, what about
your first visit to the campus?
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AL: So my first visit occurred then, in the summer, late June or early July of 1985. I remember
it was curious, because I met with the [History] Department, of course, with the chairman, and
various faculty. And that all seemed to go fairly nicely. Everybody was away at this point,
because I went--again, Reinhard had left. The new president was to be Aebersold; he was not in
town. Aebersold had been what’s called the vice president of academic affairs at that point, and
he was promoted, determined to be president, but he was away. That vice president of academic
affairs post is now called the provost. The temporary provost had been the dean of Arts and
Sciences, his name was Charles Zuzak. So he was then the provost . . . was to become a
provost; he was away. And so the replacement dean’s name was Roy Stewart, and he was away.
So I met the temporary assistant provost, whose name was W.G. Sayres, who’d been a
Chemistry professor. And I met the assistant to the provost, who was there to take care of things
on the third floor of Old Main with both the provost and the president away. His name was
Louis Razzano. So I met kind-of the replacements’ replacements, up and down the line.
But Razzano was a very nice person and we got along fine in our interview. And Sayres and I
had a nice conversation. The department members and I had good conversations in the
interviews, and they seemed to enjoy the guest lecture that I gave. So, at the end of that day, the
head of the search committee of the department was John Nichols, who just retired about
twenty years ago. Dr. Nichols told me at the end of those interviews, he said, “The job, I think,
is yours if you want it. Do you want a few days to think about it? Let me know.” And it turned
out, indeed the offer came, so I had to think about it a little bit, but I took the job and that was
it.
MJ: Did you say you gave a guest lecture the first day you were there?
AL: A demonstration lecture.
MJ: Ah. What was it about?
AL: It was--since the course, then called History 202, in the middle of the three surveys that
they have still in the Department of History. They've just gone away from it this past year, I
should--have two semesters of [inaudible]--(excuse my physical movement here)--I gave a
lecture that was in effect to be an example of how I would have started this 202 course,
America 1815 to 1900. So I gave a demonstration lecture, I still have--I always keep my notes,
and I still got the notes from that day, but I jotted down some basic points to cover about where
America was politically, socially, and economically in 1815 and what we would then be
exploring in this supposed class, starting on its first day in History 202.
MJ: Okay. And next question on here: What changes have you witnessed at the university, and
were they for the better or worse?
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Levy, Alan 6
AL: Oh, all kinds of changes, of course, the curriculum has gone through many different
changes. There’s a new one that's been instituted under Rock Studies, as it’s called. Is it better,
is it worse? Different people's opinions. My opinion doesn't really count because I'm retired. I
always emphasized to my colleagues, “Who we hire in the next year or so,” I was in my last
couple of years here, “My opinion shouldn’t matter; it's your department.” Just like when I was
first here, my opinion about the future of the department was more--should have been
considered--I thought it was more important than the opinions of anybody who was older and
close to retirement. Because those who were going to be here to run things and affect students,
they’re the people who count, not old blankety-blanks like me. I’m stepping out. The same was
the case then 20 years ago, me versus Donald Kelly, or anybody else, so. . . . There was always
that dynamic of the new views of people about curriculum, about hiring, what should be
emphasized, and what should not be. And a lot of that is occurring.
I think a big trend that's, I think, manifesting itself right now concerns the way that with
funding, and the quantity of students coming to Slippery Rock seem to be a little bit lower now
than--I think it's going to be truncated. And now certain departments may be compelled to
merge with one another, and what kind of configurations this is going to lead to, when you have
no History or Political Science Department, but you have the Department of Social Sciences
involving History, Economics, Sociology and Political Science, these kinds of configurations.
The devil's in the details. What such things do we have in a Humanities Department that
involves History, Philosophy and English? Do you have a Social Science Department involving
History, Political Science, and Economics? You see how you can configure it one way or
another. These changes and the talks about them are going on very much and very, very much
in earnest, as they should be, because how it is to be structured makes a big difference as far as
hirings and ways that disciplines are going to be approached.
MJ: All right, and what campus activities were you involved in?
AL: I’d say the main thing I was involved in early on was that I took charge of a nominally
existing, but really not, in fact doing very much, Honors program. And I took it over and
revamped the structure completely, because it had been a series of separate courses unto
themselves called “Honors courses.” And what I did was restructure [it] so that you had College
Writing--required of all freshmen--and so I had a College Writing, Honors section. I had basic
History, basic Economics--basic courses that had to be taken by students, and had Honors
sections in those classes so that you could take those Honors classes and gain Honors credit.
But then if they chose to drop out or not pursue the program, the course would still count in
their general--impact on their requirements for graduation. So that you can try Honors and step
in. If you don't like it, step out and not have the work that you did in the Honors program count
for nothing. So I integrated it more fully with the curriculum of the university, and it seemed to
be fairly successful.
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I was in charge of Honors starting in the fall of 1986. By the fall of 1989, when I relinquished
that, I went off for about [a] two-year leave in Washington, D.C. to work for the National
Endowment for the Humanities, temporarily, I turned the program over to John Craig. And by
that point, we had--when I started, two students in the Honors program. In 1989, we had eightyfive students in the Honors program, so it had grown quite a bit. The Rocket lists it as two
students in 1989, they misprinted it, so people kept saying I didn't build up any students. Yes, I
did. The Rocket just put 1989 instead of 1986. So it was like I only had two students after three
years. No, I went from two to eighty-five.
MJ: And I read, also in The Rocket, because I went back through the old ones, that you were
grand marshal for a couple of years. What does that involve?
AL: It involved some pomp and circumstance. The fun part about it is you stand up in front of
the whole gathering of students and parents and everybody and say, “Welcome to Slippery
Rock graduation, congratulations to everybody.” And you lead the lines in, of all faculty, of all
students, you're the first one in, so that you get to be the leader of the whole ceremony, which is
fun.
One aspect of it that was not fun was that you had to stand there during the entire time they
were crossing the stage and shaking hands with the president, and behind the president, you
were the one that has to hand the president the diplomas as he or she hands them out and shakes
hands. So you're standing there passing things on and you feel like--you ever seen the movie
Modern Times, with Charlie Chaplin? Highly recommend it to you, but he’s . . .
MJ: Actually, I might’ve.
AL: . . . he’s doing this very mechanical work and he walks away from the assembly line still
full of nerves and anxiety, moving his body around like you used to do on the assembly line,
you feel a bit like that, doing that kind of work with the grand marshal's post.
MJ: Is that the one with the sequence where there's a dinner and then, something--like a napkin
going across his face after--like an automated thing feeding him dinner or something like that.
AL: I think that's elsewhere in the movie, yeah.
MJ: Okay. Now, what about your accomplishments during your time at Slippery Rock?
AL: Well, I published--I had published one book by the time I started at Slippery Rock. In the
ensuing years, particularly from 1997 to 2013, in that time period, I published . . . [begins
counting] I published eight books from 1997 to the end of 2013. So if you do the math, that's
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Levy, Alan 8
sixteen and a half years. March 1997 to December of 2013, that’s a little over eight years-sixteen years--and I published eight books. So that's, I think, a pretty good accomplishment.
And the reviews were generally quite good on each of them.
So that [pause] that was done in the context with me devoting virtually every, every winter
break and every summer, as well as a couple of sabbaticals, entirely, to Washington--put myself
in Washington, D.C. and going to the Library of Congress and the Archives on a daily basis,
going through old newspapers and archival material, and assembling the evidence, putting
together books on . . . one was called Government and the Arts, a history of the debates over the
subject of what government should or should not do in support of the arts. Biography of the
composer Edward MacDowell, the famous American composer of the late 19th century. Several
books on American sports: three on baseball, one on football, the Jackie Robinson story of
football’s segregation and desegregation--it was virtually at the same time as baseball, Jackie
Robinson [inaudible]. But the NFL was segregated and integrated a year before Robinson
integrated the Brooklyn Dodgers. That story hadn’t been fully told. And there was a television
program that was done about that as well, that was based on my book, the show on CBS
Television in 2010 called--Christmas 2010, February 2011--on CBS and on ESPN.
A book about the boxer Floyd Patterson, and a two-volume biography of the congresswoman
named Bella Abzug, who was a famous feminist leader in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. So I got a
fair amount written, which is, I always considered, central to what we as professors are
supposed to do. Of course we teach, and we serve on committees, and we serve the campus and
the community, but we also are supposed to be active in a scholarly capacity, and I took that in
earnest and went forth with it.
MJ: All right. And during your time teaching, what were your best and worst teaching
moments?
AL: That’s hard. [Pause] I cannot really think of a bad teaching moment per se, but there were
moments where, as I look back on it, where I could have reached out perhaps more fully to
students that were having--appeared to be having personal difficulties. It's always tricky
business because you have to respect privacy. Yet there are times when you do reach out, you
find the student very much appreciates the extra effort, but you’ve got to be careful because you
don't know what you're intruding unto, onto (whatever preposition is there that’s proper). It’s
part of the sensitivity of the issue; tread carefully. But, so there are ways in which I feel that I
could have--I'd like to believe that if I interceded more in what I perceived to be some personal
issues that someone may be having, could I have made more of a difference? I'd like to think
so, but at the same time, you can step into turf that causes people to become very defensive and
not very happy that you've done so.
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Levy, Alan 9
The best experiences, I think, up to the way that students have written me, and stayed in touch
with me, sent me, as I got--when I retired--statements in writing saying, “I really appreciated
your course because I enjoyed this, this, and this.” One student, whose mother had been married
to Dr. Kelly, the chair of the [History] Department, and she is now the daughter of him . . .
knew me when I was first here, and she was then about ten years old. It wasn’t exactly a
teaching moment, but they had me over for dinner, the Kellys did, and I brought a bottle of
wine. And as we were just serving dinner, I said to this young girl, “Let me show you precisely
how to pour wine.” The key point is, when you pour it, you turn the bottle just slightly when
you’re done so that you don’t spill any drops. And when I retired, she wrote me a little note
saying, “I’ll always remember the lesson you taught me on how to pour wine and not spill it.”
MJ: Huh.
AL: So little, little lessons like that, you don't think about it; it’s so trivial at the time, but yet
there, that one little statement to a ten-year-old. Now she's well into her forties and she
remembered it.
MJ: And she can still pour wine.
AL: She can still pour wine without spilling a drop, yes. That’s important.
MJ: Next question: who are the--you’ve mentioned them already, but who were the leaders
when you first came to campus, you know, the people who've been there forever, the people
who were really making changes, the phrase is “movers and shakers” and what were your
impressions of them?
AL: I always try to separate the personal from the professional. Personally, I don't think I had a
problem on a personal level with terribly many people in all my time here. There were a few
who may have had some personal problems with me, I will freely admit that. But I always
believed that one should be open and frank and clear about one's beliefs, in the pursuit of
professional standards in regard to curriculum or scholarship or teaching or anything else. And
there were some people on this campus who were intent on, it seemed to me, on showing how
important they were by how much influence they had over such matters as curriculum. And in
some cases, I detected very little in the way of academic substance that lent any kind of
legitimacy or support to their apparent influence that they wielded over such important issues as
curriculum.
And so what I often did was simply ask--what proved to be some somewhat uncomfortable
questions--as to what such and such a person was doing in regard to scholarship. As I say, I
wrote seven books, and some of these people had never wrote a book review, much less an
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article, much less a book. And so challenging the standing, not on a personal level--I mean I
don't care what background, or whether they’re local, whether they’re geographically from
California or anywhere else, certainly what race, what religion, what gender, anything else.
None of that matters to me and should not matter to anybody. Do you have something to say
that's valid? And in challenging some people in certain respects, I think I ruffled more than a
few feathers and stuck to my guns and had to take on others who wanted to try to diminish the
impact that my words were having. And I think people were disturbed about that. But I really, I
couldn't let it bother me, because I always knew in my own heart that I was never being
personal.
If I discovered that somebody was claiming to have published an article (other people did this
as well) or publish a book, and the book didn't exist. . . . It was fairly obvious, you know, when
somebody lists a book, and the publisher is given, and you can try to look up the publisher, and
the publisher, publishing house doesn't exist--how can they claim they’ve got a book out? So in
challenging things like that, I definitely ruffled some feathers and got some people in a little hot
water, including some administrators whose positions then with the state, as a role of a leader
on campus, can be put in jeopardy. Because if they approve of such people getting ahead, who
have this demonstrably unjust levels of attainment, and such obvious levels of dishonesty in
what they’re posturing about themselves, it's not just that individual who can get in trouble, but
it is the administrator that can get in trouble with the powers that be in this chancellor's office or
in the attorney general's office, even. And some of that did happen as a result of my insisting
that such standards be maintained.
There was a certain level, I would describe it--in counterpoint--going back to your question,
what was my impression of these people? My impression was that old Slippery Rock as they
called it, the old guard, names that are long gone. And again, it’s nothing personal, but these
were people who felt that they were sort of the “king of the hill.” But it was such a, you know,
the Jonathan Swift word, the “Lilliputian” aspect of it. I mean, to be a big shot at Slippery
Rock, it’s neither good nor bad, but it’s a pretty tiny universe. And if it was based on standards
that were really being corrupted, like claiming to have published books that didn't exist, it was
valid to challenge it, in my judgment. And that ruffled feathers internally. I really, again, I
wasn't happy to do it, but I wasn’t sad to do it either. And if it got certain individuals in trouble
for indulging that, I don't think it was a bad thing. And if it made some people have to step
away from Slippery Rock University, I think the school was worse for it.
MJ: On the other hand, who did you work best with, would you say?
AL: Various colleagues would have said, I tend to work best--“Levy tends to work best alone.”
And I was happy in that way, too. I did not coauthor many pieces. I did not engage in collective
research. I wasn’t avoiding people, but that was [me] believing that the work of scholarship was
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Levy, Alan 11
intended to be an individual pursuit. So I worked with people in hiring committees and
curriculum committees and departmental work of various sorts, sure. And I think I got along
best with those who shared the view that the standards of what represents good academics
should be based on standards that are common to the profession across the country, rather than
just more sui generis based on friendship, connections, and relationships within the community.
The two should be in harmony with each other, but when they are out of harmony, then the
local [community] should yield to the more widely held definitions of common sense that apply
across the board.
MJ: All right. And other people who influenced you or were significant during your time here-could be students, could be faculty, it could be administration.
AL: I think the students that impressed me most, and for whom I held the deepest respect, were
the veterans of the military, the nontraditional students who, while they're raising children or
holding down jobs, would also be pursuing their degrees and doing remarkably well in that
context. To that end, I very much enjoyed teaching, and made a habit of teaching at least one
class per semester in the evening part of the schedule. So that Monday night from 5 to 7:30, or
from 5:30 to 8, I would have a class. And in the early years particularly, up until somewhere in
the 2000-teens, at least a third of the class would be people who worked full-time, or were
raising children, or were coming out of the military or whatever, but were older and were taking
on many different other aspects of normal life for a twenty-nine-year-old, a thirty-three-yearold. And yet, [they were] going through all of this while they’re coming to campus and
pursuing the work involved in an undergraduate curriculum.
So when undergraduates were coming to me, saying, “I really don’t have time to go, I got this
social event on Tuesday, so can we have a makeup test?” While these older people out of the
military, or pursuing professional life and raising children, could always come up with excuses
of things they’d have to do--taking the kids to the Little League or doing this aspect of a job, et
cetera--they made it very easy for me--not to be harsh, but just to turn to these undergraduates
of the normal age, eighteen to twenty-two, and say to them, “I’m not being harsh with you, but
I’m just saying, if you've got these other social obligations, do what you have to do to pursue
those, because that's part of your life, too, but don't let those get in the way of your real
education.” And the example I could always point to was, “look at what your colleagues are
doing.”
Just recounting some of these examples, one student certainly sticks out in this regard because
he was blind and took an evening class with me. He had to make certain arrangements, but it
was also easy, because he had children and they would come to class on the night of tests and I
would give his son a copy of the test; they would go off to the library. I said, “If you need a
little extra time, go forth with it.” But on test night in a 5 to 7:30 class, the test would run from
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Levy, Alan 12
5 to 6:15, they had the tests back to me by then, fifteen minutes of. Then, we’d meet for the last
hour of that two-and-a-half-hour meeting, introducing some new material in the new unit, so he
always got his test handed in. The method by which he took it was that there was a multiple
choice and an essay section, and the son would read the multiple-choice questions to him, and
he would choose A, B, C, or D and his son would write them down. And then his son would
read the essay question, and he would sit at the computer and clack out an answer. And so I'd
get the answers and essay from him. It was just as valid as any content I got from others. What I
particularly remember, in addition to the fact that he--despite an obvious, huge disability--you
don’t have to call it a handicap anymore--he actually never minded the use of the word--but
despite his disability, [he] went forth with the material, finished it, and did very well.
And what was particularly moving was once a semester, I had each of the students in the class
of about fifty [students]---in three units. In the first unit, second unit, and third unit, class would
be divided into four groups, and on report night . . . I would say in a class of fifty, so about ten
to fifteen students per group, a third of each unit would report in the first unit, the second unit,
the third unit. Everybody gives one oral report, and hands in a written report on a subject
pertaining to the first third of the chronology, the second or third of the chronology of the class.
He [the blind student] chose his topic and prepared a report. And so he gives a little fifteenminute presentation to the class on that night. And normally after a student gives a report,
everybody in class [claps] very politely . . . and when this student who was blind gave his
report, and when he was done, you could just feel the heart that was there among the students. It
brings out a level of emotion in me right now, just to think about it. They really did applaud and
connect with a tonality that was quite unusual, because they all appreciated where he was as
well. It didn't take a genius to figure out why, but that was a very special time.
Other memories are not quite so gut-felt, but nonetheless important. There were a couple of
times where I had parents--one in particular, but there were others--who brought their children
to class, or had their kids sitting in the hallway, or I'd given them a place to relax, that they
would be sitting there in the hallway with their computers, clacking away at things while mom
was sitting in class; I thought that was good for them. A couple of students, I always enjoyed
the fact that they wanted to bring their dog to class. So we had a couple of class puppies during
evening classes, that was always fun too. All those little variations were there throughout. They
kind of dot the landscape as I think back on it. Thirty-eight years, there’s been a lot of detail
I’ve had that stick in my mind.
MJ: Next question on the paper here is major events and activities while you were here, like
building projects, cultural things, national events with local impact. . . .
AL: One that pops into my mind, extraordinarily of course, was 9-11. [Pause] it was a Monday.
I remember several things about it. It was a day much like today in September of 2001, I
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Levy, Alan 13
suppose, not 2024. It was a day with an absolutely glorious, clear blue sky, and I remember I
went to the gym early in the morning, went out jogging, and came back. The rec center [Robert
N. Aebersold Student Recreation Center] had just opened, I think, the previous year. I came in
from my jog outside and saw a bunch of people gathered around the TV and I said, “What's
going on?” At that point, only one of the two towers of the World Trade Center had been hit,
and everybody was talking, “What's going on here?” And while I came in and was watching,
that was when the second plane hit the tower. All through that day, people were gathering in the
classrooms where the professor would tune the news in to the computer to be able to show what
was going on. And so we had, we nominally had class, but at the same time, our attention was
elsewhere. It was--not disturbing, but a little bit--what caused a little bit of lament in my mind
was the fact that the campus officials seemed to be a little bit slow in reacting. Some students,
in fact, they got busy putting messages up through chalks, through sidewalk chalking, which
was then as now a method of disseminating information. We had a gathering in front of the
library. We didn't have one until Friday night of that same week. I thought the campus was a
little slow, officially, to react. A gentleman named G. Warren Smith, whom I liked very much,
was at that point the president, and he tended to be a little bit less dynamic, a little more slow to
react to things, than I think was called for at that point. But certainly, the turnout in front of the
library was still pretty good. People were anxious to somehow show involvement and concern.
That was certainly a major event. That would be a major one that pops into my mind, certainly.
MJ: What about building projects specifically? Because if you've been here since the 80s, you
would have seen a lot of, like, the campus around us sort of pop up.
AL: Yeah, because when I was first here, Swope Music Hall was--that was the end of the
campus aside from the football field. There was nothing beyond there. There was a kind of a
high-rise dormitory called Founders [Hall], that was in that new dormitory area where Watson
Hall and everything down there would have been built later. Aside from that tall, older student
dormitory, there was nothing east of Swope. There was no Aebersold Recreation Center. None
of those new dormitories; there was no baseball field; there was no soccer field, it was just [an]
open grass area.
The old timers of the day, of course, talked about how, going back into the 1950s and ‘60s it
was even more starkly contrasting because the campus basically stopped at the [Morrow] Field
House. There was no Vincent [Science Center], there was no Swope, there was no Eisenberg
[Classroom Building]. So I kind of came at the point of the second phase of an expansion. So
all those new dorms, the baseball field, maturing, and the use as athletic facilities, rather than
just open fields, all the sports areas that were up on top of the hill where Branchton Road and
Harmony Road crisscross, and all those baseball fields. It was just open space back then. We
used to go up there and treat it as a driving range, hit golf balls, and there were some softball
and baseball fields and rugby fields all over the place. But it used to be so much more than just
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Levy, Alan 14
wide-open space. We always advertised that we had more acreage than any other campus,
which we do in the [Pennsylvania] State System [of Higher Education], but particularly in the
1980s and before, much of that acreage was just wide-open, grassy areas. So much of that has
been developed now. That's a big change, and for the good, I think.
MJ: All right, and any other big, memorable events you can think of?
AL: Hm. Well, 9-11 certainly--it always keeps popping into my head, because it was--it’s a day
when so much came crashing home. We've had events like the ones that stick in my mind that
have happened on other campuses. In 2006, when you had the shooting at Virginia--what we
used to call VPI, Virginia Polytechnic Institute. The Virginia Tech shootings of 2006 kind of
reinforced to me--fortunately, they haven’t come true--that such possibilities can be present in
regard to a campus like Slippery Rock, as they can be anywhere. If it can happen at Virginia
Tech, it can happen at SRU was the lesson I drew from it. I tried to say that to various
administrators over the years. We have to be, not on our guard, and scour the dormitories for
any incident, a weapon, or any kind of blunt instrument. Don't ever think that we're immune
from it, because again, it happened at Blacksburg, Virginia, in the middle of the . . . eastern
slope of the Allegheny Mountains. It can happen in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, on the
western slope of the Allegheny Mountains--the same longitude. It’s not downtown Philadelphia
or downtown New York, but it’s the countryside. But neither it happening there at VPI and it
can happen here, too. So it’s not a positive memory, but it's a very real one, and I think it's
something we have to maintain.
MJ: Sounds like you've been retired for a couple of years now. What, if anything, do you miss
about. . . .
AL: I just retired in May.
MJ: Oh, okay. Good to know. What, if anything, do you miss about being here?
AL: Whatever I could articulate as far as what I miss would translate back into me saying,
“Gee, I wish I was thirty-nine years old again and had the strength and energy of a thirty-nine
year-old.” I used to live in a very--I still try to be athletic every day and do something, as my
sloppy clothes indicate. I try to do some kind of workout all the time to maintain health. Back
then, I did it vastly more, and did it in connection with the work I was doing. What do I mean
by that? When I would go to the Library of Congress, et cetera, I would get there early in the
morning when the library would open at 7:45, I would work all day, take maybe 20 minutes for
lunch, and then work until about 3:30, and then pack up with my note cards that are in a side,
fanny packs, we used to call them. From there, I lived in Dupont Circle, and most of my time in
Washington [D.C.], I would jog from the Library of Congress down the length of the [National]
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Levy, Alan 15
Mall from the Capitol Building, past the Washington Monument to Lincoln [Memorial], and up
Rock Creek Park, past Connecticut Avenue, and come back out near Dupont Circle, just north
of Evans Morgan and jog down to the Hilton Hotel, where I had a membership, and I’d do
some swimming. So, I would pile athletics on top of research. I’d do the same thing while I
would teach; I’d go jogging before or after a day of teaching. The point is, I miss doing that, but
I don’t have the strength to do that anymore. I'm seventy-one years old. So when I say “What
do I miss”: having that kind of energy. Well, that’s another way of saying I wish I was thirtyfive and not seventy-one. Who doesn’t wish that? Nobody likes to be seventy-one as opposed to
thirty-five, but that's life.
MJ: How would you like to be remembered by the community here? [Pause]. Or do you have
an opinion on that?
AL: Yeah, I do. I’d like to be remembered as someone who was what he genuinely presented
himself to be: an active scholar and a genuinely concerned teacher, who tried to approach
material that he taught and wrote it up with a level of integrity. And who let the record speak
for itself as far as how the students and colleagues reacted to what he wrote and what he taught,
and how he served.
MJ: All right. And last question for you: do you have any words of wisdom for current and
future Rock community members?
AL: Be yourself. [Pause]. When I taught at Phillips Exeter Academy, living in a dormitory,
coaching sports, and being a local parent in effect for students, as well as teaching, I always
said to people, “Whatever you try to hide that you don’t want anyone to know about, they’ll
somehow detect--the members of the community will detect that sense of hiding something,
and whatever you put up as a front that isn’t you, they’ll see through it.” And this precious
thing we have called life doesn't really last that long; make the most of it. So be who you are,
find out what it is you want to do and pursue that, so--if it’s, teaching, great. If it's not, that’s
okay too, but be yourself and pursue that to the nth degree. There's not a lot of time to do it.
Seventy years sounds like a long time to you, but I wish I had seventy more. I don't. Nobody
does.
MJ: That's all I have for questions. Thank you so much.
AL: I hope it went well.
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