University President’s Memoir Tells of Growing Up Jewish in Rural South

Experience is the Angled Road: Memoir of an Academic by R. Barbara Gitenstein; Virginia Beach, Virginia: Koehler Books © 2022; ISBN 9781646-637515; 223 pages; $17.85

SAN DIEGO – The “Memoir of an Academic” subtitle of this book threw me off.  I thought it would provide insight into academic politics, particularly as manifested at The College of New Jersey, where author Gitenstein served as president from 1999 to 2018.

There were some references to her tenure as president as well as to her undergraduate days at Duke University and her doctoral studies in English and American literature at the University of North Carolina.  We follow her to her first job as an assistant professor at the University of Central Missouri, and then on to SUNY Oswego where she chaired the English department and was appointed as assistant provost.

Locals interested in San Diego State University will smile in recognition at her mention of Stephen Weber, who was president at SUNY Oswego before taking the same position at SDSU.  Weber had asked her to become his assistant at Oswego but she opted instead to become assistant provost.  Weber accepted her decision graciously; “In fact, Dr. Weber remained a mentor and supporter throughout my career,” Gitenstein wrote.

From Oswego, Gitenstein moved to Drake University in Des Moines, serving as the provost – her last stop before the presidency of The College of New Jersey, which has a student body of fewer than 10,000 students.

Most of Gitenstein’s memoir probes in depth her relationship with her parents, siblings, and grandparents and their relationships with each other.  The family saved the letters they wrote to each other and Gitenstein quoted from those letters frequently.

We learn that her mother traded the excitement of New York City living for the security of marriage to a fellow Jew who lived in the rural town of Florala, Alabama, where he ran a family-owned shirt and underwear factory.  Being one of the largest employers in the area, he was wealthy, influential, and accepted by the leaders of Florala, where you could count the number of Jews in town on your fingers.

Although Gitenstein’s father was esteemed by the townspeople, he was not happy.  She concludes he was a closeted homosexual, whose fits of anger may have been triggered by his inability to ever express his sexuality in the rural, overwhelmingly Southern Baptist community.

Gitenstein’s older brother Mark is an attorney who served as U.S. Ambassador to Romania and later as our nation’s ambassador to the European Union.  Earlier in his career, he was an aide to then-Senator Joe Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff.

Mark helped his sister navigate the tempestuous marriage of their parents and to deal emotionally with their mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s disease.  A younger sister Susan completed the family.

The family was respected but their Judaism was not.  When one of Gitenstein’s grandmothers died, some townspeople declared heaven was closed to her as she hadn’t accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior.

Mark’s wife Libby converted from Christianity to Judaism, and when Gitenstein married Donald Brett Hart her side of the family desired and his side feared that he too would convert to Judaism.  There was a lot of opposition to the marriage on both sides, but Gitenstein and Hart did it their way.  There is no mention of Hart converting, but there is a reference to their attending High Holy Day services together.

Gitenstein’s career as a student was during the late 1960s, when anti-Vietnam War protests raged on campus.  As a student, she participated in the anti-war demonstrations.  Published before the current wave of student protests, her memoir is silent on how as a university president she might have responded to the demonstrations.  We’ll hope to hear more from her on that score.

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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via sdheritage@cox.net