The Third Age at Harvard

About the Book

The Third Age at Harvard is the first history of the HILR, and it has the distinction of being written by the founder, Dean Michael Shinagel, who established it in 1977 and watched it evolve over the years into a Harvard institution and a national model of excellence among learning-in-retirement institutes. At his retirement in 2013, Dean Shinagel was acknowledged as “the longest-serving dean in the history of Harvard,” and in 2019, he was invited to join the HILR as a member by the current director/dean, Tess O’Toole. In writing his HILR history, Dean Shinagel had the advantage of a dual perspective, both from above as the longtime dean and from below as an active member participating in HILR study groups. The scope of his history covers the genesis of the idea for the Institute in 1976 until its move to new quarters under a new dean of continuing education and a new director/dean of the HILR in 2015. The history of the HILR is a story of the exceptional women and men whose dedication from the early years was matched by the directors who served them. From the 92 charter members in 1977, the HILR grew steadily to the 550 women and men who attend today, representing career fields in education, law, medicine, the arts, engineering, government, finance, science, business, the military, and public service. More than two out of five have Harvard affiliations through degrees, careers, spouses, or children, but the majority have undergraduate and graduate degrees from colleges and universities throughout the United States and several foreign countries. The HILR is diverse and cosmopolitan in every sense of the word, and the members are sui generis: they epitomize the motto that “learning never ends.”

About the Author

Michael Shinagel is a graduate of Oberlin College, AB 1957, and Harvard University, AM 1959 and PhD 1964, with honorary degrees from International University of Ecuador (1997), Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (2003), and Universidad Alta Direccion, Panama (2008). He served with the US Army in Korea (1952–54). While studying for his doctorate at Harvard, he was associate director of the Office for Graduate and Career Plans as well as a teacher in the freshman English program, the Harvard Extension School, and the English department’s tutorials. He taught in the Cornell University English department (1964–67); the Union College English department, where he was chair and rose to full professor (1967–75); and at Harvard as a lecturer in university extension and a senior lecturer in the department of English (1976–2020). His teaching career spanned sixty years. His administrative career after his early years at Harvard included acting assistant dean of admissions at Cornell (1966–67), chairman of the English department at Union College (1967–73), and at Harvard director/dean of continuing education (1975–2013), director of Summer School (1976–80), director/dean of university extension (1975–2013), and master of Quincy House (1986–2001), for a half-century of academic administration. He is the author or editor of eight books, ranging from Daniel Defoe and Middle-Class Gentility (Harvard Univ. Press 1968) and A Concordance to the Poems of Jonathan Swift (Cornell Univ. Press 1972) to The Gates Unbarred: A History of University Extension at Harvard (Puritan Press 2009), Holocaust Survivor to Harvard Dean (Xlibris 2016), and The Third Age at Harvard (Xlibris 2021). In retirement, he is an active member of the HILR along with his wife, Marjorie North.