Professor Gary Weaver: 46 Years at AU
Building bridges, bringing change
Photos by Jeff Watts
As an American University undergraduate, Weaver was a good student. He had to be. He was among 81 students admitted to the School of International Service (SIS) in 1961, a school so challenging that students with less-than-stellar grades were quietly asked to change their majors. SIS intended to be one of the nation's top schools of international affairs-a goal it would achieve-and its earliest students had to be talented, like Weaver.
But the academic life just didn't seem to suit him. He decided, instead, to move to Mexico. "I really thought I was dropping out of school. I didn't think I was coming back," said Weaver.
Something happened in Mexico that sent him on a lifelong path of scholarship and back to AU, where he would meet his wife, watch his daughter be baptized and graduate, and teach generations of students. But in 1963, the "burned-out sophomore" was teaching English under a fake Mexican name. "I didn't know what I was doing there in Mexico, except running away from AU," he says.
Then he learned that a writer he admired, social psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm, happened to be teaching at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Mexico. Weaver managed to get into the class.
Fromm turned out to be an inspiring teacher who answered questions insightfully, in several languages, and always seemed able to bring out the best in his students. One day, Weaver got up his courage to ask Fromm for his autograph. "I don't give autographs," Fromm said, "but I'll have a cup of coffee with you."
They spoke for hours. "That really put the bug in me," Weaver said. He decided to return to the United States and his studies at AU. His experience in Mexico had given him a fascination with the complexities of communication between cultures and races, which would become the subject of decades of scholarship and teaching.
By the late 1960s, Weaver had finished his master's at SIS, was working on his doctorate, and had begun teaching. The atmosphere was electrifying, and it suited his rebellious temperament.
In 1968, the campus was in tumult, and a group of students wanted a course exploring the issues of the day: the Vietnam War, civil rights, and the student movement itself. Weaver agreed, and helped to create a groundbreaking course called The University and Revolution that included such then-innovative notions as pass-fail grades, independent research papers and projects, oral reports, and the study of controversial contemporary writing.
Weaver, in the meanwhile, was living through the cultural changes and tensions in a very personal way. Since the mid 1960s, he had been dating a woman he met as a student on campus-but she was black. When they decided to marry in 1971, interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia, where they lived. They held the ceremony at the National Cathedral and moved to Northwest Washington, D.C., where their house was egged, his wife's car had a swastika carved into it, and their Volkswagen had nine rifle bullets pumped into it.
"We survived it," he says. "Rather than turning me off, it made me determined to dedicate my life to helping people understand each other."
The key, to him, lies in intercultural communication. His passion for the subject has impacted generations of students, who consistently give his courses the highest ratings-and often return, years later, to say hello or even introduce him to their own children studying at AU.
Weaver's daughter was baptized at the Kay Spiritual Life Center and earned her bachelor's at AU, where she was inspired to go into science by the late chemistry professor Nina Roscher, and went on to pursue a doctorate.
Former Students Cheryl Chappin, AU Director of Accounts Payable, and Charles Pardue, AU Assistant Registrar, greet Weaver at the SIS Fall Dinner on Nov. 14, 2007
His extensive scholarship has earned many plaudits, and he has been active in university affairs for decades, most recently as chair of the Faculty Senate. But his favorite part of academic life has been teaching. It's fun to teach graduate students, who are motivated and mature, he says. But undergraduate teaching is most rewarding, because they're not just struggling to learn a subject. Like the "burned-out sophomore" who headed to Mexico in the early 1960s, they're also struggling to mature and to find a meaningful path in life.
"They need the very best," he says. Many on campus would agree that they find the best in Gary Weaver.
Excerpted from "Gary Weaver, 46 years at AU: building bridges, building change" by Sally Acharya, American Today, November 27, 2007