SAN DIEGO (SDJW) — SDSU History Prof Lawrence Baron, who was the longtime director of the Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies and is considered an expert on how Jews have been portrayed in the movies, has announced tht he will retire from the university faculty at the end of the current Spring semester.
In a note to friends, he wrote: “Rumors of my retirement at the end of this semester are not exaggerated. After 24 years at San Diego State and another 13 at a small liberal arts college in upstate New York, I have no reservations about taking this step. Much of my decision is purely personal: I want to spend more time with my wife, son, friends, and pets (in that order) and concentrate on doing research and writing about a number of projects that I have intended to do over the years, but never started because I was always too busy to work on them. I also must confess that I relish the prospect of sleeping later, traveling more, and indulging my ambition to watch more movies and review them outside an academic setting, but never so much that I don’t lose the luxury of free time to get in touch with my inner indolence.”
Baron’s most recent project was editing the anthology The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema. Prior to that he wrote Projecting the Holocaust into the Present, telling how the Shoah has been portrayed in cinema.