To the editor:

My first class at Harvard, in the fall of 1985, was Modern Political Ideologies, co-taught by Stanley Hoffmann and Judith Shklar ("Stanley Hoffmann, Iconic Professor and Scholar, Dies at 86"). Hoffmann was tall, poised, seemingly imperturbable—though when he stood on the dais and tucked one leg underneath himself, I couldn’t help feeling I was being lectured on Marx and John Stuart Mill by the world’s most brilliant stork.

All semester long Hoffmann and Shklar laid out facts cogently, unfolded compelling theories. On the last day, they invited questions on any topic. I’d been shy and hidden all semester, but I screwed up my courage and raised my hand. Had they ever found communism, well, personally appealing?

Shklar stayed silent, but Hoffmann nodded. “You must understand that for a young man, say a young man from a Jewish family growing up in a France that had been torn apart by Nazism, and seemingly rescued by forces loyal to the ideals of communism, the appeal might be strong, even well-nigh irresistible.”

He paused, rocked gently in his stork pose for a while, then started up again. “But, in retrospect…" This time, he trailed off for good. After a semester of perfectly formed and complete sentences, it’s this fragment that hangs in my head, 30 years later.

John Plotz '89