To the Williams community,
I write with the promised commemoration of former Professor of Mathematics Neil Grabois, who passed away on October 7, at the age of 88. While at Williams, Neil also served as Dean of the College, Dean of the Faculty and Provost (twice) before leaving in 1988 to become president of Colgate University. It is part of our tradition to issue memorial notices following the death of any former Williams senior staff member.
Born in New York City in 1935, Neil earned his B.A. from Swarthmore in 1957. While there he met his future wife, Miriam, and they married before his senior year. Neil then earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963, specializing in algebra and the theory of rings.
After a stint teaching at Lafayette College, Neil was hired by Williams. He later speculated that his recruitment might have been influenced by his thesis adviser at Penn, David Harrison, who was a Williams alum. Neil achieved tenure in 1968 and, somewhat unusually, was appointed dean of the college by President Sawyer just two years later.
It was a time of much change at Williams, and Neil was directly involved in matters as diverse as the transition away from fraternities, the move to co-education, and efforts to address concerns raised in the Hopkins Hall occupation and student strikes over the secret bombing of Cambodia, among others. Neil, who was Jewish, reported also being sought out by students concerned about anti-Semitism on campus. In 1975, he signed a recommendation to the Trustees that the Board retroactively award Williams degrees to four women students who had fulfilled all the requirements for graduation but, prior to co-education, had only been granted “certificates of completion.” The Board ultimately accepted his advice and granted diplomas to Katharine Mills Berry ’57, Elizabeth Stoddard Phillips ’61, Linda Freeman Armour ’62 and Judith Husband Kidd ’64. The Williams Record published a nice history of this episode in 2022.
The deanship was also the beginning of a long, effective administrative career for Neil. He was known for bringing a sense of calm, compassion and good humor to even the most stressful situations. This quote about his decision to accept the deanship, taken from a 1998 oral history, captures these qualities nicely:
“John [Neil’s predecessor as dean, Brown Professor of History John Hyde ’56] tried to persuade me not to take the job. He thought it was a thankless job, emotionally demanding, and that the problems that students were exhibiting were of such a profound character that the job was more than any human being could carry. Frankly those were exactly the reasons why I thought it would be a fun job to take.”
After five years of his “fun” job as dean of the college, Neil was appointed by incoming president John Chandler to be dean of the faculty, in which role he served from 1975 to 1977. In 1979 he was named provost. He and the new dean of the faculty, future Williams President Frank Oakley, worked together “like two halves within the senior administration,” as Neil later recalled.
The late 1970s and early 1980s were yet another time of significant challenges in higher education, with inflation rising into the double digits. As provost, Neil was responsible for allocating funds under great pressure. He tried to make sure everyone was treated fairly, even if that sometimes meant asking them to bear their fair share of unavoidable cuts. Ever the mathematician, he also developed new methods for assessing faculty workloads and the burden that departments felt from service obligations of their faculty. Somewhat unusually, he continued teaching during his provostial term. As Webster Atwell—Class of 1921 Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, Frank Morgan recalls, “Neil was a wonderful teacher, who even when provost taught linear algebra and held long office hours on Sundays.”
Neil’s colleague Bill Lenhart, A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Computer Science, Emeritus, says, “During my pre-tenure years, I somehow got appointed as chair of the faculty compensation committee. Neil was serving in the Provost’s Office and I would meet with him from time to time to discuss the work of the committee. I recall one of the meetings having little real business to conduct, and assumed that Neil would just cut it short. Instead, he said: Bill, do you know much algebraic number theory? I admitted that I didn’t and he spent the next hour regaling me with an off-the-top-of-his-head crash course. While I no longer remember the content of that conversation, I can still vividly recall the enthusiasm and insight on evidence as he spoke about ideas that he thought—and convinced me—were beautiful.
Perhaps unsurprisingly in light of such enthusiasm, Neil devoted a sabbatical to teaching mathematics at MIT after finishing his term as provost. He returned to Williams in 1981, initially as department chair and then, starting in 1983, serving a second term as provost.
During this period Neil was also very involved in accreditation work by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. In 1987 he chaired the accreditation team that reviewed Colgate University. He must have made a strong, positive impression on our colleagues there, because in 1988 they selected him as their 13th president. He thus joined a cohort of Williams senior administrators from that era who went on to become distinguished college or university presidents, including Frank Oakley (Williams), Steve Lewis ’60 (Carleton College) and Michael McPherson (Macalester College).
Neil continued there as president and professor of mathematics until 1999. Colgate’s own memorial provides a nice summary of his years there. In 1999, he moved to the Carnegie Corporation of New York as vice-president for program and strategic planning, later joining the teaching faculty at NYU and Teachers College at Columbia University. He was a board member of both the Jewish Foundation for the Education of Women and the Michael Wolk Heart Foundation. He also served as a trustee at Smith College and at Swarthmore, where he is honored with the Neil R. Grabois ’57 Professorship of Natural Sciences and Engineering.
For many years, Neil and Miriam kept their house on Southworth Street and maintained many close friendships from their time here. Nancy McIntire, Neil’s close Williams colleague and friend from the Dean’s Office, who later retired as assistant to the president for affirmative action and government relations, says, “I still hear Neil’s ‘Hello,’ with a lilt in the middle, and see his warm smile. I always admired his calm and enthusiastic responses to almost any challenge. It was such a pleasure to be his colleague, his neighbor, and his friend.”
“One of the things that I have always found refreshing about Williams College, and special about it,” Neil once wrote, “is that the faculty was exquisitely attentive to where students were, what they wanted, and to their views.” Neil Grabois exemplified that quality of attention in his distinguished career, at Williams and elsewhere, and he will be missed by many.
Neil is survived by his wife, Miriam, sons Adam and Daniel and grandson, Charlie. Our thoughts go out to them and to all of Neil’s friends, former colleagues and students.
Maud