Jack C. Doppelt
Sept. 13, 2021
I have the glorious and lifetime benefit of having Margie as my wife, and Sylvie and Noah, now 30 and 28, in featured roles as our kids. The three of them took it upon themselves, with my files and me as unknowing yet not fully unsuspecting email collaborators to contact clusters of former students and colleagues to have them share recollections of our times together at NU and Medill.
There’s prof the friend and voice for life:
The notes were heartwarming, tear-inducing and achy. They also reminded me of the opportunities Northwestern and Medill provided me that I could not have gotten had I chosen any other paths. For these last 35+ years, I got to teach at one of the best journalism schools in the U.S. and I was following in the footsteps or the Grinnell College pros who'd inspired me.
Sarah, who’s now a diplomat in Uzbekistan, suggested that I think of retirement as a re-deployment. Re-wirement has also been suggested. I'm going with Sarah, as I treasure the memories my students recounted for me:
There’s prof the tough guy:
Staci, who'd just entered the grad program as an accelerated master's student, recalled being an AMP depended upon the successful completion of her legal reporting class. She was displeased that I assigned her to the branch courts, which she took to be the bottom-of-the-barrel. She brought up the inequity of her situation as an AMP and I re-assigned her to the criminal courts at 26th and Cal. She got a C on her first story, her first C ever. She complained to her adviser, then Dean Ed Bassett who told her that I was “just trying to toughen her up; that she’d been coddled throughout her NU life. Time now to be a professional.” I was the first person, she wrote, to push her to think outside the box, to focus on the work, not the grade. She received her final grade on her last story in the mail during spring break. It was an A+. My comment: “This story is better than anything I read in the Sun-Times or the Tribune (on this topic). I knew you had it in you.” I’ve been invited to both her kids’ bar mitzvahs.
There’s prof the easy mark:
Apparently I could get emotional in class. Not very welcome now. Felicia recalled that I told her class that a mentor of mine had died. A couple I knew well had gotten a divorce. My voice broke. I got teary eyed. I had graded the students’ assignments. They’d done fantastic work. I was proud of them. I’d brought the class bagels and orange juice. I needed to celebrate and they were whom I wanted to celebrate with.
Antonia recalled that when I brought up an ethical quandary about whether publishing graphic photos was appropriate, I cried thinking about what happened to the kids in the photo.
Lynn appreciated that I listened actively, engaged, suggested, acted, accepted, gave, smiled, and loved. As a result, she thought I made people feel heard; feel worthy; feel included and accepted.
Jenny and Jonah recalled our walks along the lake.
There’s prof the explorer and collaborator:
Hannah to whom I refer by her last name, as she does me, recalled that as a sophomore, she was in the first Immigrant Connect class to have an opportunity to travel internationally and report on refugee experiences across the globe. She wrote that the trip was ambitious in every sense; packing bags of camera equipment they’d never used before and traveling to foreign countries with complex international dynamics. They worked at all hours to find sources, figure out transportation in new cities and understand the nuanced resettlement policies of the region. The trips would have been challenging for any seasoned reporter, let alone a class of 20 journalism students who’d only recently learned to write a nutgraf. Instead of focusing on the size of the undertaking, she recalled, my advice was to find the small, universal moments in the storytelling. I wanted to know about the dinner routines of the refugee families they interviewed. In retrospect, she couldn’t believe Doppelt pulled this off. Two years later, she, another student and I traveled together to a refugee camp on the Burmese border of Thailand to cover stories of Karenni refugees. We discovered that our guide moonlighted as a radio DJ for the camp. The guide proudly led us back to his “station headquarters” and presented us with a stash of CDs. We listened to the music together.
There’s prof the pathfinder:
Jessica described teaching as putting invisible guard rails in place while allowing students to find their own way.
Lauren, to whom I refer by a shortened version of her last name, thought of me as wheedling new opportunities for students. I hadn’t known I wheedled.
Karen, to whom I also refer by her last name, as she does me, took my legal reporting class that was taken out of the curriculum long ago. She started grad school, thinking she wanted to work for someplace "cool" like Rolling Stone and ended up falling in love with legal journalism. She stayed at her first job for years, working under Steven Brill at The American Lawyer.
I was freshman adviser to Marshall in 2010. He was on the cocky side and lost in a cornucopia of course options. I buckled and allowed him to enroll in a couple of 300-level courses. He dropped a higher-level stats class, but the public opinion class catapulted his life’s work. He used the spare time from stats to volunteer for a Senate campaign. He exemplifies the political geek. Working now for CNN, he’s covered the Russia investigation, Trump’s impeachments, voting rights during the 2020 election, and the fallout from the Capitol insurrection. I’m counting on him to keep our governments honest. He just got engaged, on his knees in shorts in 100 degree heat.
Cloee appreciated that while remaining invested in sharpening and honing her skills, I saw the dreamer in her and pushed her toward those dreams, starting at Medill with reporting on the mass resistance and resilience at Standing Rock.
Zoe recalled with amazement that at age 19, she sat in living rooms with refugees from the DRC and Yugoslavia, asking them questions about their lives and futures.
Julie recalled her independent study in 1992 during which she explored 1st Amendment protections for digital publications and the potential for online publications to revolutionize mass media. She went on to become a founding member of Wired magazine's digital team.
Maudlyne, an immigrant and a refugee long before becoming a student, gushed, thinking of me as a visionary and a changemaker, and viewing "A Social Justice Journalism Approach to Immigrant and Refugee Issues” as pushing boundaries in education and in journalism.
There’s prof the conscience of journalism:
Michael cautioned that journalism can be a shady business. Lots of shortcuts available, plenty of opportunities to sacrifice truth for personal gain…Thanks, most of all, for being such an unerring North Star.
Edie took away that you can do journalism and do good; that you don’t have to be hard-edged and ruthless; that that you can be compassionate and empathetic; and that those traits actually play in favor of doing great journalism.
Linda recalled me urging students to do social justice reporting before the term even existed, as she put it.
For Ezra, who works for NBC News, social justice has always been the foundation to build upon and the lens to look through.
Lynn thought of me resisting the urge to pool in calm waters where like minds gather.
Kevin, who now leads media strategy for a nonprofit that focuses in part on asylum and refugee issues, wrote that his lesson was that journalism need not be a dispassionate, disconnected, staid, or corporate endeavor.
There’s prof the rule bender:
There were encounters I couldn’t do now, and probably couldn't then. Now we're not supposed to discuss students’ distress. We have experts for that. Reshmi recalled that in 1999, the year of Chicago’s biggest snowfall in 50 years, she came to my office to air how she should handle a potential arranged marriage that she wanted no part of. The guy had flown in from Texas over the weekend, they went to a jazz bar where he smoked, and the date went badly. She used me as a sounding board, and at some point, she had a eureka moment. She would call her dad, who was a doctor, and tell him the guy blew smoke in her face all night. Voila, her dad agreed it wasn't a good match.
Belinda, to whom I refer by initial, recalled that I allowed grad students to bring drinks to their final exam – real drinks. She took hers while sipping a beer. I think she made that up. She begs to differ.
Kevin filled in one of the many blanks in my memory by recalling me dancing alongside a live band at a Jordanian café during a Refugee Lives trip to Amman.
Lauren recounted that during the initial year of a short-lived joint program with the law school, I lobbied to bend a fledgling curriculum so she could cover the U.S Supreme Court.
Carolyn reminded me that the first year of Medill’s global program was apparently in 1996. I visited her in Prague for her residency at Radio Free Europe. I came to her immediately after visiting another student in Madrid, who over dinner had broken up a bar fight between Danes and Germans. Carolyn apparently needed to one up him so as we were riding on a bus, she jumped off, pulling me along so she could go bungee jumping. I told her she couldn’t do it as part of the program. It was just getting started, for bungee sake. She said ok, you’re not my adviser, you’re here as my friend, and she went. We’ve been friends ever since.
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| Carolyn bungee jumping (Prague, 1996) |
There’s prof the friend and voice for life:
Lori, who would seek me out when she returned to campus with her dad, her sister, her brother and later her daughter who graduated in 2018, reminding me of the generational perpetuity of a university.
Students are never too long gone to appreciate praise. When Jenny published her first book, I finished reading it in the car. I couldn't get out until I finished a story, and let her know it was like listening to something really compelling on the radio.
Virginie recalled how an NU partnership with Sciences Po in Paris resulted in a dinner in a Russian restaurant in Montparnasse with crazy violinists electrifying the venue and later, in me attending the baptism of her daughter.
Roxana recalled the website, social media, interviews, and rallies on her behalf when she was imprisoned in Iran.
A number of students recounted that for years, they couldn’t get my voice out of their heads. One wrote that my voice surfaces like Jiminy Cricket’s at various decision points in her journeys.
As Danielle put it, I was in her head, talking constantly, urging her to slow down, dig a bit deeper, consider the other side, reject the facile argument, honor the profession. It must have been maddening.
Don’t write off your relationship with students. Max and I hadn’t connected in more than 20 years since graduation. He was at Esquire working on a story that was bananas intense, as he put it, and involved sealed court documents showing up anonymously. We talked it through for hours.
Lynn, who considered me a game changer in her life, has come to know my family well, and described my enchantment with my family as mesmerizing. She gave me a compliment that only a friend for life would know I’d take as a compliment. She wrote I remind her of Jimmy Carter.
It can take years for students, as it did for Leezia, to get comfortable transitioning from calling me Prof Doppelt to calling me Jack. I knew we hit the point of full return when she wrote to convey that she’s proud of me.
Gabi looked to Maya Angelou to advise we all as profs: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
The last words I save for Apoorva who invoked her Buddhist mentor: "Education is to ignite a flame. When teachers burn with a passion for truth, the desire to learn will be ignited in their students’ hearts. When teachers are excited about culture and beauty, the creativity of their students will leap up like a bright flame."
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