THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

133rd Editorial Board

Editor-in-Chief Will Kubzansky

Managing Editors Katy Pickens

Alex Nadirashvili

Senior Editors Augustus Bayard

Caleb Lazar

Peter Swope

Kaitlyn Torres

Post- Magazine

Editor-in-Chief Kimberly Liu

News Metro Editors Emma Gardner

Rhea Rasquinha

Jacob Smollen

Julia Vaz

Science & Research Editor

Haley Sandlow

Senior Science & Research Editor

Gabriella Vulakh

Arts & Culture Editors

Aalia Jagwani

Finn Kirkpatrick

Rya Vallabhaneni

Sports Editor Linus Lawrence

University News Editors

Sofia Barnett

Charlie Clynes

Emily Faulhaber

Grace Holleb

Sam Levine

Neil Mehta

Haley Sandlow

Kathy Wang

Digital News Director of Technology

Swetabh Changkakoti

Opinions

Editorial Page Editor

Head Opinions Editor

Alissa Simon

Opinions Editors

Anika Bahl

Bliss Han

Melissa Liu

Jackson McGough

Multimedia

Illustration Chief

Ashley Choi

Photo Chiefs Elsa Choi-Hausman

Dana Richie

Photo Editors Mathieu Greco

Claire Diepenbrock

Lilly Nguyen

Kaiolena Tacazon

Social Media Chief Sahil Balani

Social Media Editors

Julian Beaudry the line and gave a brief story in front of everyone to the time that he first saw the individual recruit in high school and realized that he wanted them to be a Brown Bear.”

During that game, Bruno “came out with a lot of emotion and played together,” Wojcik said.

Martin “encourages us to play with a lot of freedom and share the ball,” Aaron Cooley ’25 wrote in a message to The Herald. “When you can get that level of trust from your coach, it gives you confidence in yourself, something that can easily be lost throughout a season.”

“Once (players) know you love them and care about them … you can challenge them in a way that helps them be more confident in themself,” Martin said.

Sorrentine said that he knows Martin will “cherish” his recent accomplishment, but “knowing him and his competitiveness and who he is, (eventually) getting to the NCAA Tournament will be way more important than this honor.”

This season, Bruno fell short of their goal of making the Ivy League Tournament, losing to Yale in a game that would have guaranteed them a spot.

But this disappointing conclusion “doesn’t take away from the progress we made as a program,” Martin said. “I’m very much process-oriented, and I think that we took another step forward.”

Next season, Martin aims to bring Bruno to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1986.

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Emily Faulhaber

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Editorial: herald@browndailyherald.com Advertising: advertising@browndailyherald.com ognized that George Morgan was right.”

In the months following his passing, The Herald spoke with several of George Morgan’s former students, friends and family members, who said he left behind both a transformative career that allowed students to pave new paths to success, but also a lasting memory of intimate personability, intellectual curiosity and warm acceptance of all.

Interdisciplinary studies and academic mentorship

In 1958, George Morgan proposed a course titled “Modes of Experience: Science, History, philosophy and the Arts” to University president Barnaby Keeney — one of the first “University Courses in Interdisciplinary Studies.” The courses offered students the chance to explore academics from different angles — creating the ethos that characterizes Brown today.

But the connections he drew impacted more than the University’s learning environment — they shaped lives, former students and colleagues said.

Janet Cooper Nelson, chaplain of the University and George Morgan’s longtime colleague, said he made students feel seen and valued.

Cooper Nelson said that for Kate Frank ’60, George Morgan was the “first person who made her feel like what she had to say was important.”

“He looked at her and said, ‘I don’t know if you understand just how important your ideas are, and I really want to hear more of them,’” she said.

“Kate said that no one had ever welcomed her in that way,” Cooper Nelson added.

Frank, who met George Morgan in her sophomore spring while interviewing for a spot in his class, said that his teaching convinced her she could succeed in math and unlocked a new way of viewing mathematical inquiry.

“I’ve never known someone with such a depth of listening,” she said. “I didn’t have to hide my serious side. And I developed ideas and had experiences, even with scientific material, that I would not have ordinarily engaged with because I had

Metro

already decided that I couldn’t.”

Another student of George Morgan, Fred Marchant ’68, remembers going through the same selection process as Frank in order to earn a seat in one of his renowned classes.

“I really loved talking with him,” Marchant said. “I don’t remember what we said, but I remember it being a meaningful conversation …which I always found with George.”

Through George Morgan, Marchant was introduced to what it meant to be an interdisciplinary academic.

“Here was a man who was an applied mathematician, raising ethical questions about 20th-century literature and art, as well as philosophy and social sciences,” he said. “George conveyed over the course of a couple years that there were these profound human questions that didn’t fall neatly into disciplinary categories.”

That type of big-picture thinking later became a principle of Marchant’s life’s work as a teacher “across disciplines … in a variety of contexts,” he said, citing the interdisciplinary graduate program he was a part of while studying at the University of Chicago and his penchant for teaching English courses that incorporated history and philosophy.

Moral compass and core values

Marchant also shared that George Morgan’s teachings influenced the development of his own moral compass, recounting an experience he had as a lieu- tenant in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1968.

“I was in a position on Okinawa to be sent to Vietnam,” he said. “And that was the same time as the My Lai Massacre … where 500 civilians were slaughtered. And the revelations of that came about and I said to myself ‘I’m not staying. I did not join to commit atrocities.’”

This led Marchant on a months-long journey that concluded with him becoming honorably discharged as a conscientious objector.

“Every step along the way,” Marchant said, “George Morgan was with me.”

“George Morgan had a more significant positive influence on Brown as an institution than any other professor in Brown’s history,” said Jeff Bercuvitz ’84, who similarly felt that George Morgan played a key role in shaping his values.

“professor Morgan was clear that at least a critical part of a university education is to humanize us — to help us feel, to connect, to make meaning, to grow as a person,” Bercuvitz explained. “And at the same time, do the essential and often dangerous work to create a more just, peaceful world.”

Family memories and unconditional love

According to Bercuvitz, who maintained a close relationship with Morgan and his wife, Barbara, post-graduation, “you can’t understand or appreciate George Morgan without understanding George and Barbara Morgan.”

Through George and Barbara Morgan’s relationship, Bercuvitz could see love as something gentle and unconditional.

Bercuvitz recounted George and Barbara Morgan scouting out their burial plots while still in good health. “They’re walking on Blackstone Boulevard — they were big walkers, they knew everyone in the neighborhood those days — and they lay down together, holding hands and looking up to try and imagine their perspective from their graves,” he said.

“After Barbara passed (in 2009), George was never really able to experience quite the same level of joy,” Bercuvitz added. “It showed me what it meant to really love your partner.”

Bercuvitz noted that the Morgans’ relationship also reached George Morgan’s students: “They always had people over in their home, and we would have these amazing conversations,” he said. “And it really meant something to those generations of students … (who) came out only to George and Barbara as gay and lesbian, and found some of the only people on campus who could affirm them as who they were.”

Alexandra Morgan told The Herald that her childhood was framed by these close relationships her family developed with Brown students. Born an only child, she remembers her father’s students as “these big brothers and big sisters.”

Alexandra Morgan was grateful her parents “never excluded” her from those lively environments: Years of “grownup talk” taught her “academic concepts and the ideas and names of authors and thinkers.”

Alexandra Morgan recalled her father often playing the grand piano during these gatherings. “I would come in with my blankets and pillows and curl up under the piano to listen as they spoke,” she shared. “If my mother told me I really had to go up and go to bed, I’d sometimes sneak back down and sit on the landing next to the living room so I could still hear their music and their voices.”

She remembered her father as a wonderful piano player, a thoughtful art consumer and an endearingly hapless chef: She didn’t realize her father “couldn’t cook until after my mother died because he was always in the kitchen, helping her.”

Advocacy and ‘doing the right thing’

After a meal, Alexandra Morgan remembers how her father would always accompany her mother to the kitchen, arms stacked with dishes, while the rest of the men sat in the living room, drinking and smoking cigars.

“people would say ‘no, no, no, that’s okay, the women will do it,’ and he said, ‘I ate the food off of these plates. Why shouldn’t I help?’”

Alexandra Morgan also recalled her father joining in on various forms of student advocacy during his time on campus.

One day in the early 1960s, University students were rallying to take a bus to march with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement.

Alexandra Morgan said that several of her father’s students planned to join in on the protests, but that it was shaping up to be “a very dangerous march.”

While George Morgan was unable to attend the march, he was there to see his students off at 3 a.m. “They were just so shocked,” Alexandra Morgan said. “And my father shook hands with his students and said, ‘You’re doing the right thing.’”

Today, George Morgan’s legacy is carried on by dozens of former students, friends and colleagues. Through weekly Zoom meetings, affectionately referred to as “Morgan Salons,” the group — self-labeled “Morganizers” — ensure that George Morgan’s legacy endures through discussions of life, poetry and memories of the man who brought them all together.

Bercuvitz urged students to contact Cooper Nelson if they wish to learn more about George Morgan and connect with a wide alumni network “of the Morgan community.” professor Morgan certainly had a greater influence on my thinking and my life than any other person,” said Bercuvitz, who noted that at Morgan’s 95th birthday celebration — a gathering of almost 100 people — dozens of attendees echoed the same sentiment.

“He changed not only the lives of a lot of individuals,” Bercuvitz said, “but many of George’s students went forward to create or transform fields of their own and have made meaningful differences in the lives of thousands of others.”