7/7/2015
BTK
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Behind the Key
John Roth
Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Founding Director
of the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, Claremont McKenna College
Pomona College, 1962
Philosophy, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
In a few words, my passion is to do what I can, as a liberal arts teacherscholar, to resist mass atrocity crimes and other abuses of human rights.
If money and time were of no concern, what would you do for the rest of
your life? Write, teach, and spend time with family and friends—all of which I do
in “retirement,” a time that for academics, so long as our wits remain, is like an
extended sabbatical.
What course in college had the greatest impact on you and why?
The course in college that had the most impact upon me was not one that I took but one that I taught for decades. It
concentrated on the Holocaust and genocide.
Tell us a little about your first job after college. My real first job after Pomona College and then Yale Graduate School was
at Claremont Men’s College (now Claremont McKenna College). I began teaching there in 1966 and stayed for more than
forty years. During that time, in 1988, I was privileged to be named the U.S. Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).
What was the best advice you were ever given and who gave it to you? Decisive advice came from Frederick Sontag, my
Pomona College philosophy teacher and colleague, who encouraged me decades ago to read the writings of Elie Wiesel. I
did that and my life—personally and professionally—changed immensely.
What are some of your favorite pastimes and activities? I played baseball in college and continue to follow baseball with
much interest. Presently, nothing beats spending time with my brilliant violin-playing granddaughter, Keeley Brooks.
If I were a book, I would be Albert Camus’s novel, The Plague, or his reflection called, The Rebel.
7/7/2015
BTK
As a Phi Beta Kappa member and liberal arts and sciences graduate, why do you think the liberal arts are important?
How has your education or membership in Phi Beta Kappa impacted your life, personally or professionally? The
liberal arts, especially as they are practiced in the small, residential liberal arts college, have been at the heart of my life.
Their power is unsurpassed when it comes to raising key questions, arousing curiosity, stimulating inquiry and
dialogue, promoting respect for evidence and criticism, and deepening ethical, political and spiritual insight. Mass
atrocity crimes and other human rights abuses are unlikely to be resisted effectively unless the dispositions honed by the
liberal arts are supported and expanded. Holders of Phi Beta Kappa keys must be in the vanguard of that work.
Sign up to be the next Behind the Key member.
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