Joseph Tussman (4 December 1914 – 21 October 2005) was an American educator. He was chair of the

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

department at University of California, Berkeley, a prominent educational reformer, and a key figure in the campus controversy over the 1950s loyalty oath. Tussman was born in Chicago and grew up in Milwaukee. His father, Shleime Tussman, was a second-generation cantor, and his mother,

Malka Heifetz Tussman Malka Heifetz Tussman (1893–1987) was a Ukrainian-American Yiddish poet and teacher. Life Tussman was born in Volhynia in 1893, the second of eight children. As a young child, she was educated in Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, and English. She imm ...

, was an eminent Yiddish poet. He studied under

Alexander Meiklejohn Alexander Meiklejohn (; 3 February 1872 – 17 December 1964) was a philosopher, university administrator, educational reformer, and free-speech advocate, best known as president of Amherst College. Background Alexander Meiklejohn was born o ...

at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Following his graduation from Wisconsin, he followed his mentor west to do graduate work at Berkeley. He served in an army-intelligence unit in southwest China during World War II. After his discharge, he returned to Berkeley. California began to require University employees to sign a loyalty oath in the 1950s, and Tussman was a key organizer of protests. Twenty percent of the Berkeley faculty refused to sign, and 31 professors were dismissed. Being untenured, however, Tussman eventually signed the oath for economic reasons. He said it was the saddest day in his life. Tussman moved to the philosophy department in 1952, leaving in 1955 when denied tenure for insufficient scholarly publication. Over the next few years he taught at

Syracuse Syracuse may refer to: Places Italy *Syracuse, Sicily, or spelled as ''Siracusa'' *Province of Syracuse United States *Syracuse, New York **East Syracuse, New York **North Syracuse, New York *Syracuse, Indiana * Syracuse, Kansas *Syracuse, Miss ...

and Wesleyan and completed his first book, ''Obligation and the Body Politic''. He returned to Berkeley in 1963 and became chair of philosophy the following year. He was a key figure in the Free Speech Movement of 1964. In 1965, Tussman founded the

Tussman Experimental College The Tussman Experimental College was an American educational project at the University of California, Berkeley that lasted from 1965 to 1969. Founded by philosophy professor Joseph Tussman, about 300 students were chosen through a combination of ...

Program (modeled on a program that Meiklejohn had created at Madison), which was offered to 150 students through their freshman and sophomore years and focused on great works written during times of great upheaval. The experiment lasted four years. He then continued to teach in the philosophy department until his retirement in 1983.

Publications

*''Obligation and the Body Politic'' (1960) *''Government and the Mind'' (1977) *''The Burden of Office: Agamemnon and Other Losers'' (1989) *''The Beleaguered College'' (1997)

References

Joseph Tussman obituary.
''UC Berkeley News'' *Charles Burress (October 30, 2005)
Joseph Tussman -- ex-philosophy chairman at Cal.
'' San Francisco Chronicle''
Joseph Tussman memorial website.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tussman, Joseph 1914 births University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty 2005 deaths