Celebrating Professor and Activist Roy Bauer

November 20 marked exactly two years since Roy’s passing. Even now, I can’t really accept that he’s gone. But Roy’s work lives, courtesy of UCI archivists Krystal Tribbett and Audra Eagle Yun. These two have secured four Bankers Boxes of his papers, and an iCloud folder with a complete hard copy collection of DISSENT (later Dissent the Blog) in UCI’s Orange County archives. Having Roy’s work safe and accessible there gives me particular pleasure; for it was in UCI’s Philosophy Department that Roy and I met, fell in love, and became lifelong friends.

It fell to me to organize Roy’s work, and I took it on gladly, but with almost paralyzing doubts. How do you capture the life’s work of an irreplaceably unique person, and contain it in boxes and files? I felt an overwhelming weight and responsibility: to make Roy’s work accessible to everyone (because it’s important and excellent); to honor my beloved pal; to confront full-on grief in recognizing what we had lost; but also, maybe, to find solace in preserving everything we could. For me, it was a labor of love and grief and public service, all at once.

It was a project that I could manage only in limited chunks of time, because it was endlessly entertaining and moving. I’d read DISSENT and talked with Roy about his battles (and the emotional toll they took) over the years, but reviewing the written record was still a revelation. I’d often have to stop to laugh out loud, overcome at Roy’s accounts of the idiocy of District leadership. (In one tense meeting, “A chair squeaked, horribly…. There were no more questions. After the meeting, Raghu had the chair dragged out back and shot.”) Personal revelations grabbed my heart. (Roy dedicated one DISSENT to Buster, our beloved cat who preceded Teddy Bear.) Roy’s genius for satire and original graphics is on display in the electronic files and, even better, in context in the hard copies of Dissent and The Vine that are in the Bankers Boxes.

Sorting it all brought on a powerful mix of emotions. Elation at Roy’s excellent thinking and writing. Admiration for his commitment to clarity, fairness, precision, reason, decency. Amazement that someone so hilariously brutal when skewering corruption was also so compassionate and kind. Love for his mind and his heart. Endless sorrow that I can’t talk about it all with him.

It was humbling to realize that Roy didn’t just belong to me and his friends; he belonged to the world. (Of course he did!) News pieces were a powerful reminder. The OC Register, LA Times, and other national and regional media covered Roy’s activism in depth, with the OC Weekly an especially treasured ally. (My favorite: Matt Coker’s “The Evil of Froguenstein,” with its magnificently monstrous cover.)*  Knowing how widely Roy was appreciated by people we respected filled me up: I am so proud of my friend.

There is much more in the files: lectures and course booklets Roy wrote for his students, philosophy essays in progress, handwritten notes as he travelled by train to L.A. for the Brown Act legal hearings; legendary civil rights attorney Carol Sobel’s personal correspondence with Roy; litigation documents; his wonderful 2012 Sabbatical Report. The Report is a series of short, incisive essays about language, free will, religion, and human foolishness. They are all, of course, suffused with Roy’s values and style. (See “Peevish Conservative Musings About Words;” “Boggled;” “Ethics and the Blues.”)

Roy didn’t just care about goodness and truth; he embodied goodness and truth. His passing was an unfathomable loss to everyone who knew and loved him. But his thinking, his humor, his goodness and character and heart and mind, are accessible to anyone who cares to look. For this, I send endless thanks to Krystal Tribbett and Audra Eagle Yun, and to Andrew Tonkovich, who was there for Roy to the end and who spurred me to preserve Roy’s legacy.*

*Roy would want you to know that, in the loving care of his sister, Annie, fourteen-year-old Teddy Bear is alive and well and thriving.

Kathie Jenni is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Redlands, where she taught for 37 years. Her academic and personal pursuits have long focused on animal ethics and care; she has published in animal ethics, environmental ethics, and moral psychology. Her own favorite works include "Vices of Inattention" (The Journal of Applied Philosophy), "Empathy and Moral Laziness" (Animal Studies Journal), and “The Moral Responsibilities of Intellectuals” (Social Theory and Practice). Kathie founded the Human-Animal Studies program at the University and directed it for twelve years. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of two Inland Empire animal rescues, and volunteers to comfort frightened cats who have lost their persons to death or nursing homes. Kathie lives in Beaumont with six beloved felines, but Orange County still feels like a second home to her.

Bio Photo Credit: Andrew Castro/University of Redlands