One of the first things that strikes you about Howard Solomon's office is the light and airy quality of the room. Two wall-size posters celebrating the millenium in French hang there, books are opened all over the round table in the middle of the room, and hanging plants and stained glass adorn the area in front of the windows. The shelves are lined with history books, and behind the desk hangs a framed certificate of recognition from the LGBT center for, "speaking up, speaking out, being creative, and just being fabulous!"
The certificate frames Solomon's long and distinguished career at Tufts. Professors laud him as "a model of professionalism," and students appreciate his emphasis on promoting "good class discussions."
Solomon was born into a working-class family in Newcastle, PA, where his father worked as a kosher butcher. His family was among a handful of Jewish families amid "subtle, but real" anti-Semitism. Solomon calls it the world of "Ozzy and Harriet" with typical '40s and '50s values. He was the first member of his family to go to college.
Soloman, however, won't take credit for his achievement, instead dismissing his success by placing himself in the generation that benefited from a boom in American education and corresponding increase in graduate grants. The money was not just used to send scientists to study biology and physics, but for students to study language and culture.
For Soloman, education was a way to escape. "I was a double minority, in a time when there were no words for 'gay' and 'coming out,'" Solomon said. He immersed himself at the University of Pittsburgh, studying, of all things, the Court of Louis the 14th. The subject had nothing to do with his upbringing or personality, but "there are no accidents," Solomon said. It was as far away as he could travel from both himself and his upbringing.
Solomon's identity was the fount for the classes he teaches at Tufts. He always wanted to teach, and began instructing classes that stressed the nature of working people, sexual identity, and new perspectives on history. "His lectures emphasize that history is not merely just events, a country's government or nominal facts about a nation's military or economy, but how the events of the past have affected real working people both in the past and present," said Rishi Gandhi, a student in Solomon's Europe Old Regime class. "Overall, he is an engaging person to talk to, and he is very concerned with student's overall learning progress."
After getting his undergraduate and graduate degrees in 17th century French history, Solomon began teaching at NYU in what he calls "the world's greatest job." Solomon was in Manhattan during one of New York City's most exciting eras, a time when Greenwich Village was the place to be for intellectual radicals - the sister city of San Francisco during the '60s and early '70s. But after being mugged three times in four months, Solomon took it as a bad omen. When a position opened up at Tufts in October 1971, he grabbed it.
Solomon's accomplishments during his years on the Hill read as an impressive resum?©: He was dean of undergraduate studies and academic affairs from 1976 to 1982, chairman of the history department from 1983 to 1988, academic dean of Talloires for one summer, and creator of the LGFaculty and "Writing Across the Curriculum" programs. Solomon helped run and direct the University Symposium on the Millenium and Y2K during the late '90s, and for five years lobbied for the Faculty-Executive Committee, a liaison between faculty and administration, for which he served as its first chair.
There is more to the laundry list of accomplishments than meets the eye. With a mischievous grin, Solomon tells about his first week as the dean of undergraduate studies. "Up until this time, there were separate files for the women in Jackson College and the men at Tufts University," Solomon said. "I made the radical act of taking the women's files from one room and putting them in the other room along with the men's files," he said, adding that the position gave him a chance to shape Tufts undergraduate experience and counsel students.
Solomon came out as a homosexual in 1982 and helped create the first queer history courses, such as a class about social marginality in Western Europe. He co-chaired the LGFaculty, of which he is immensely proud, helping the body lobby for partners' health benefits, the University's anti-discrimination policy, and Judith Brown's position as LGBT center coordinator. Tufts was one of the first schools across the country to have this position.
Leila Fawaz, professor of Lebanese and Eastern Mediterranean studies and director for Eastern Mediterranean studies, says the University Symposium on the Millenium was one Solomon's most successful initiatives. "He did a superb job with it," she said.
Fawaz not only calls Solomon "wonderful, humane, caring, and knowledgeable," but says he's a person that can "get things done" creatively, with wit and intuition.
History Professor George Marcopoulos agrees, citing Solomon's "empathy for others, his erudition, his superb teaching, and his fine sense of humor." Solomon, Marcopoulos says, has been a wonderful colleague.
Professor Jeanne Penvenne, a fellow historian, agrees. Solomon, she says, is also "wonderfully funny and mischievous."
"If I sit near him at almost any function I begin to remember the wonders of being a child in church - everything struck us funny and we weren't supposed to laugh," Penvenne said. "He never fails to crack me up, whether with his notorious jokes or his dry wit."
Solomon has also received praise from his students. Matt Malatesta, a student in the Europe Old Regime course, says that from the first day Solomon has made him feel at ease. Solomon "immediately made me feel at home in the class, made me feel comfortable to voice my opinion on the material," he said. "He interacts with us and brings the subject to life. He doesn't just mindlessly lecture."
As Tufts students and faculty members love Solomon, he loves Tufts back. In fact, Solomon couldn't imagine a better place to be. So why is he leaving while still in his teaching prime? Solomon's answer is simple: He lives in Maine.
Solomon moved to northern New England with his partner in 1987 and made the decision to stay. When he decided to stop commuting to Tufts, he was lucky to find a job in his new state. In Maine, Solomon will compile the LGBT archives as a scholar-in-residence and adjunct professor at the University of Maine. The adjunct professor position was offered just weeks after he made the decision to leave Tufts. "It was a certain blessing, the wearing commute. It's very comfortable to stay as a teacher, and it was a risk financially to leave, especially with the stock market as it is," Solomon said.
But the scholar-in-residence and adjunct professor position provides him with an opportunity to do something new, Solomon says. He describes the new project as a "creative way to break the double silence [of homosexuals] and write down their histories."
"Traditionally it's said that there is no life except in cities," Solomon adds. "I want to show how there has been an LGBT presence in small communities."
Solomon looks forward to the upcoming year, when he will be on the MA Turnpike and 495, traveling and interviewing people.
Before he leaves Tufts, Solomon says he has a message for young Jumbos: "Don't double-major. Take classes across the board," he said. "Don't get stuck needing to take a course and not being able to take that really juicy one, one that appeals to you."
