Holocaust Survivor to Harvard Dean:

About the Book

Michael Shinagel’s inspiring memoir, Holocaust Survivor to Harvard Dean, traces the highlights of his remarkable career from childhood in Vienna, Austria, to his family’s terrifying exodus from Hitler’s Europe (1938–1941), refugee life and public school education in New York City (1941–1951), a false start in agriculture at Cornell University (1951–1952), service with the US Army in Korea (1952–1954), college on the G. I. Bill at Oberlin (1954–1957), doctoral studies on a national fellowship and academic administration at Harvard University (1957–1964), and a fifty-year academic career of teaching and administration at Cornell University (1964–1967), Union College (1967–1975), and Harvard University (1975–2013). At his retirement in 2013, he was acclaimed as the longest-serving dean in Harvard history and as one of the transformative leaders of the university. The memoir shows how Shinagel’s entrepreneurial management style enabled him to innovate with new initiatives and new academic programs for the benefit of both the internal Harvard community and the external community of adult learners in Greater Boston. With the advent of distance education, the reach of the Harvard Extension School became global. He spends his retirement years as a distinguished lecturer in Extension at Harvard, teaching graduate seminars on satire and the English and American novel, directing Extension master’s theses in literature, and participating in professional development workshops on leadership and decision-making in the Division of Continuing Education. He continues to serve as a lecturer and study group leader on Harvard Alumni Travel Tours around the world.

About the Author

Michael Shinagel received his AB degree in English from Oberlin College and his AM and PhD in English literature from Harvard University. He has taught at Cornell University and Union College, where he was professor and chair of the English Department. In 1975, he returned to Harvard as the new director of Continuing Education, and at his retirement in 2013, he was acclaimed as the longest-serving dean in Harvard history and as one of the transformative leaders of the university. At Harvard, he was a senior lecturer on English in the English Department for more than thirty years, a lecturer in Extension for forty years, and master of Quincy House for fifteen years. Among his many administrative roles were his service as president of the Harvard Faculty Club, a member of the board of freshman advisors, associate director of the Office for Graduate and Career Plans, chair of the faculty committee in dramatic arts, member of the faculty council, member of the committee on commencement parts, director of the Harvard Summer School, and dean of Continuing Education. His publications include Daniel Defoe and Middle-Class Gentility (Harvard University Press), A Concordance to the Poems of Jonathan Swift (Cornell University Press), the Norton critical edition of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (W. W. Norton), and The Gates Unbarred: A History of University Extension at Harvard, 1910–2009 (Puritan Press). He remains a distinguished service lecturer in Extension at Harvard, teaching graduate seminars and directing master’s theses in literature in the Extension School as well as teaching professional development workshops on leadership and decision-making in the Division of Continuing Education.