"Some critics complained that we were teaching people to be ethical, which they assumed is impossible, especially at Harvard. Other critics complained that we were not teaching people to be ethical, which they assumed is irresponsible, especially at Harvard."
"He could hold both objections in view, find humor in each, and build an institution that outlasted them both."
"In seminar, Thompson used a chess timer so that every student received equal time; when the bell rang, one stopped, even mid-sentence. But he was at his best at a seminar's close, gathering an afternoon's worth of remarks that had pulled in different directions and weaving them into a Hegelian synthesis - one that made"
Dennis Frank Thompson was born May 12, 1940, in Hamilton, Ohio, and died March 30, 2025. He described the early days of the Harvard program he founded as the work of a peripatetic director on a quixotic undertaking. He noted critics who assumed teaching ethics was impossible and others who assumed it was irresponsible, and he treated both objections with humor while building an institution that outlasted them. He was the first in his family to attend college, graduated summa cum laude from William and Mary in 1962, earned a First at Balliol College, Oxford, as a Fulbright Scholar, and completed a Ph.D. in Government at Harvard in 1968. He taught at Princeton for 18 years, emphasizing how philosophy fits institutional and political life, using a chess timer to ensure equal seminar time, and synthesizing seminar remarks into a Hegelian whole.
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