Tuesday, November 16, 2021

My dad, William J. Hempel, has photo from a 1952 College Debate! His mentor was Ted Mitau (news to me!!)

 

 It doesn't seem that long ago to me for some strange reason even though it's twenty years before I was born. haha.

https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=macalestertoday

 So he was only 19 years old....

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 https://themacweekly.com/73584/features/founder-ted-mitau-shaped-the-political-dialogue-on-campus/

 In the 1930s Mitau attended school for engineering in Eastern Europe but never finished his degree. Due to amplifying anti-Semitism in Germany, he obtained a student visa and traveled to the United States in 1937.

His mother did not emigrate with Mitau. It was only after World War II that he learned that his mother had died. The location of Rosel’s death, at the Czech concentration camp Theresienstadt, remained unknown until after Mitau’s death in 1979.

Mitau arrived in New York City in 1937 and connected with relatives. He worked in a kitchen while he attended New York University. Later he transferred to Macalester where he graduated in 1940.

WOW - that's the NYU connection? Wild.

 He emphasized the personal responsibility of the constituent to make the world better. “I don’t belong to this cynicism school of politics. If we get good politicians, we will have good leadership and we will have a good society,” Mitau said in an interview with the Star Tribune.

 This is what Sartre means when he claims that humans are responsible for both their own and others' freedom.

OH so that's why my Dad told me "freedom is responsibility" - it was from Sartre - he had that big book of Sarte. I bet he read it at Macalester.  Being and Nothingness.

The Ted Mitau Lecture series on Macalester youtube channel 

New York University Law School graduate: William J. Hempel ’58
(LL.M. ’59)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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