The Nance

I was not familiar with the word nance until I looked it up after the announcement that Nathan Lane would be coming back to Broadway as the lead role in The Nance. A nance is an effeminate man and is sometimes also used to describe a gay man. I finally made it to The Nance last week and found, as is predictable, that Nathan Lane is terrific in the lead role, especially the comic aspects but also the sad aspects. I try to see Nathan Lane in whatever he does on Broadway and I am yet to be disappointed. He is a consistently brilliant performer, and for me The Producers and The Adams Family are just two examples of huge talent.

The Nance is an entertaining production but ultimately a very sad story. Nathan Lane plays Chancy Miles, a nance, both on and off the stage. For the early part of the story, Chancy’s life and success flourishes as a result of his vaudeville talent as well as a chance encounter with Ned. The encounter takes place in a Greenwich Village Horn & Hardart Automat. Automats rapidly disappeared when I was a young kid but I was one of many who were fascinated by having the food in little compartments, behind glass doors and just a nickel and a dime away. I’m clearly dating myself by remembering Automats, but when the last one in New York (42nd Street and Third Avenue) disappeared in 1991, I felt it was a real loss.

As The Nance evolves, Chancy and his behavior both on and off stage clash with increasingly conservative anti gay values and laws. He gets arrested, ultimately loses his job, and worst of all, he loses his significant other. Furthermore, vaudeville is dead in New York and Chancy can’t go elsewhere to work because of his parole board restrictions.

It’s nice to fast forward at moments like this and reflect on what has been a significant decline in discrimination in recent years. An African American President, and gay marriage are just two examples of what for me is a more free, more open, more tolerant world. I’m pleased to be alive at a time like this.

But I think we also have to remember what did happen, and be vigilant in making sure that progress is expanded and not eroded. We need to admit what we have done wrong. Our society and all societies have made and are still making mistakes. To airbrush history and sugar coat mistakes so that we look perfect and always virtuous is to deny reality. We have not always done the right thing, both at home and abroad. The mistakes we have made are serious, though overall our progress and our good work has been impressive.

In educating our kids from an early age, through lifelong learning, we need to pay special attention to teaching reality, the good, the bad, and the ugly. What we have accomplished and what we still have to do, is less likely to be taken for granted if we know where we started.

History Continued and Appreciated

In last week’s blog, I talked about the importance of remembering key individuals in the history of an institution.  Remembering key events and how those events happened is also critical and here, too, higher education doesn’t do well.  All too often key events are mentioned briefly and clinically only in Board of Trustees’ minutes and in more detail, but often with substantial inaccuracy, in student newspapers.

Two examples come immediately to my mind.  A number of years ago, I decided to recommend that Hofstra establish a School of Communication.  We had strong majors in this area but Communication wasn’t receiving the time, attention, or the resources it needed as part of our liberal arts college.  Our President at the time was supportive and was, in fact, willing to make the recommendation immediately to our Board of Trustees. Following this route, we could have a new school immediately.  I suggested instead, that we go through the entire shared governance process, feeling that for the school to have faculty support required their investment in the process.  We did go through this process and it was a grueling two year effort with unfortunately too much time spent on attempted turf protection by some of those favoring the status quo.  But at the end of the day, we had our School of Communication and given the process we followed, very substantial faculty support.  Now how has this process been memorialized on our campus?  Very briefly is the best answer.  A two-year effort resulted in a University Senate resolution, a Faculty resolution, a student newspaper article, and a President’s report to the Board of Trustees approving establishment of the School.  Details were almost non-existent; nuances were missing in action; and different positions taken were glossed over.  No doubt this was helpful to fostering a sense, going forward, of collegiality.  But if we are to learn from the past, the information must be there to learn from.

Much more recently, when our new president took office, he made an almost immediate courageous decision that will help the institution for decades to come. That decision was to not build a $50 million plus performing arts center.  This arts center was not designed to serve our students.  It would not provide us with music rehearsal space or dance studios or any other academic facilities. Rather it was to be a professional arts and entertainment venue that would possibly run a deficit yearly in the millions of dollars in addition to the millions that would be spent yearly to cover the cost of construction. Clearly the performing arts are very important and we have a robust educational program and quality venues and facilities in support of that program.  And professional performances are a valuable resource for the community but they are certainly not mission critical for the University.  And the costs involved in the arts center would have diverted resources and attention from what was mission critical, the best possible education for our students.  Our new president’s decision was enormously popular with the faculty, but received very little attention in our student newspaper and a relatively brief mention in our Trustee minutes.  A defining decision for the institution and yet there was hardly a recorded history mention.

We know that every institution has defining events and yet  we can be equally certain that the history of these events is often relegated to minimal mention.  In understanding an institution, we need to know  what happened when and why and how.  A brief mention records the event but the full meaning and impact may be lost for all time.  For institutions as well as for our students, there is value in a history requirement.

Every Department Should Be a History Department

Recently I was asked to sit for an oral history interview covering my years at Hofstra.    Since my years at Hofstra go back more than half the time the University has been in existence, I enjoyed talking about and recounting key happenings.  At the same time, I was asked to suggest names for special 75th anniversary awards to those key individuals who made a major difference in the development of Hofstra from 1935 to the present.  Having been here so many years, I was able to suggest individuals who clearly made a difference but who are also mostly forgotten today.  True, these individuals, if they were faculty members, will likely be remembered by their students.  Or they could be remembered for their scholarship. But what if they were administrators, or faculty who championed or created key programs?  Who would know? Who would remember?