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She was a
teacher to me throughout her life, and I, as a learner,
remain powerfully in her debt. For me Ann was an
extraordinary example of irreverent intelligence. I am not
sure where the irreverence came from initially, but it
manifested itself in her fundamental populist heritage that
contained an abiding responsibility to ask after the ways of
authority to ensure that ordinary people with very specific
needs obtained from organizations that to which they had
rights. In this package irreverence was always focused,
rarely idle, and to my experience never misused or applied.
Her ability to exercise it with precision make her a superb
critic of the many aspects of society, most appropriately
the educational system and our own university structure and
its outcomes. Ann's intelligence was a
sort that one could only envy. Schooled in the very best
social theory and well mindful of a mid-century American
history that many of us have neglected to our potential
peril, she was able to bring to new situations an analysis
that brought richness and depth to our contemporary efforts
to readdress what she often recognized as repetitive
problems dressed up in new language and perceptions. Ann
understood clearly one of the fundamental components of all
education and higher education in particular: it does not
matter how many times one says something: what matters is
who is listening, their ability to make use of the
observation or insight, and the need for every generation of
learners to go through the process anew. She was a teacher to me
throughout her life, and I, as a learner, remain powerfully
in her debt. But, as we all know, her
primary value lay in the reality that she was a wonderful
person: generous of heart and spirit, funny, warm and
compassionate. She gave more to every life she touched than
she took from them, and more than this, I suspect we cannot
say of our fellows.
Honolulu,
Hawaii