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Faculty News
Derryfield Author: Making Sense of Evil
In April of 2022, Dr. Brandon Gauthier, Director of Global Education, published his first book, Before Evil: Young Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and Kim. Derryfield supported this project through a grant from the Kamborian Fund. We asked Dr. Gauthier to share thoughts about his experience.
The origins for this book started with my doctoral dissertation, “The Other Korea: Ideological Constructions of North Korea in the American Imagination, 1948–2000.” I was exploring the issue of how Americans could make sense of North Korea. Certainly the regime is reprehensible, but how do we make sense of evil? I then applied this line of investigation to not only Kim Il Sung, but to other dictators— Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Mao.
Just a little under four years: July 2018 through April 2022.
Believing in the merit of my subject matter, and in my case, coming to terms with how evil unfolds. Just because you believe your ideas have merit, doesn’t mean your idea is going to find a home. My book is a blend of styles—it is a mixture of academic and popular in its approach to my subject matter. My biggest obstacle was not my writing style, it was simply that major publishers said the subject matter was too much of a risk.
Essentially, I applied the same project management approach that we teach to our kids—you have to be willing to work on something every day when you have a several-year plan. You have to figure out how to divide a thousand-sided project into little pieces. You have to push yourself in order to achieve a long-term goal. Most importantly, you have to believe in what you are doing. You have to ask yourself, “Would I still do this work, even if no one ever reads it, or even sees it?”
I worked at length during the summer, but also tried to work every day from 3:00 4:30 p.m. on campus at the end of the school day before I went home. If kids came by and asked what I was doing, I explained I was trying to achieve something that takes years. A quest! As teachers, we want to encourage our students to achieve something big in the world.
Yes! It is on a similar theme. It is about another historical figure whom I think should be understood through a different lens.
Retiring Faculty: Mary Karlin
This spring, Derryfield celebrated the retirement of Dr. Mary Karlin after ten years of service to the School. Karlin has been an anchor in the classroom, having created some of the most popular courses in the history department, including “Riots, Revolutions and Reforms.” In the process she’s become one of the most beloved teachers at Derryfield in any department, even if she’s also been given the “hardest grader” award.
History teacher Ryan Tanner-Reed, in his tribute to Karlin, gave a synopsis of her career path.
“Mary Karlin had a somewhat circuitous route to the classroom at Derryfield. She started out in independent schools as a student at the Governor’s Academy. Then, she went on to Colgate University where she got her degree in Russian studies.
Before she became an academic, Mary tried her hand at working in the insurance business with John Hancock, which sent her driving all over the state researching deeds and titles in a preinternet age. Realizing that she didn’t really want to be doing either, she found herself back in the classroom, pursuing a Ph.D. in political science, with a concentration on Russia.
Unfortunately, her subject, the Soviet Union, dissolved halfway through her process. This presented…a challenge. But after considering several different dissertation prospecti, she settled on the role of oil and commodities in Russian history, earning her doctorate in 2002.
Then Mary turned her attention to raising her daughters Lily and Lucy. It was through them that Mary finally found her way to Derryfield— as a parent. She first met many of her current colleagues as the teachers of her daughters.
As Mary’s daughters neared graduation, she began to think about re-entering the workforce. She decided she wanted to teach. She came to see the chair of the DS history department for advice. To her surprise, he suggested she could be mentored (most significantly by our own Lindley Shutz) and offered that she could teach a class. No pay. No interview. Just a class on political science. So Mary offered that course and it got immediate interest from students and she was off to the races.
Mary asks much of her students, but they rise to the challenge. She knows how to push them beyond what they think is possible, but get them to fly instead of falling. She knows how to walk them through the impossible process of writing a paper with three explanatory ideas and an umbrella idea. A generation of Derryfield students have learned to write a “paper for Dr. Karlin” and, in the process, they’ve learned to write for real.
More than anything else, Mary has raised a generation of political scientists. It feels like every former student I talk to these days tells me they’re majoring in “poli sci.” Derryfield has certainly produced more political science majors in the last ten years than in all of its previous history combined. That’s probably the greatest testament to her impact here.
Wise, humble, and highly committed to her craft, Mary is a role model for all as a career-long learner and team player. Derryfield will not be the same place without her.
