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 digital 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.

Editor's Note: Archival catalog descriptions are a terrific genre in themselves. As assembled by professionals toward assisting researchers, students, and library/archives patrons, they are instructive, directive, and useful. But in reviewing the titles of the Banker's Boxes and Electronic Files now at UCI, these perhaps inadvertently if necessarily invite attention, not to mention offer amusement. We challenge you not to be drawn in based only on the implied reductio ad absurdum of the topics and characters (caricatures) Roy investigated. In both "Roy John Bauer Archive Materials in Banker's Boxes" and "Roy John Bauer's Electronic Files" one is impressed with accurate if somehow also deadpan descriptions of naughty, illegal, and almost self-satirizing behavior by leadership at the community college district.

Thanks to Roy's reporting from board meetings, his investigative work, and both sincere and hilarious documentation both press and public attention was drawn to Irvine Valley, Saddleback, and South Orange County Community College District leadership. Due in no small part to his efforts, faculty, staff, and student reformers challenged the power of a once-corrupt union and reactionary board members...and won significant battles for student rights, administrative transparency, academic freedom, and more.

Examples of materials described: "Untitled Notebook," a third compilation by Roy of materials related to the [SOCCCD] Faculty Association and gay-baiting, with op-ed and news-pieces" and "A CD and a film (on discs) that Roy made about the Board and [IVC President Raghu] Mathur" and, my favorite, "Caricatures of Players: Roy's caricatures of District Figures."

Finally, here is the "Brief Description of Content" as composed by UCI librarians:

Collection Scope and Content

The Roy John Bauer Collection (1994-2011) documents Bauer's professional activities as a philosophy professor at Irvine Valley College, journalist, and activist engaged with governance and faculty issues in the South Orange County Community College District (SOCCCD). The collection spans approximately four linear feet and approximately 6 GBs of digital files, and includes bound volumes, newsletters, clippings, correspondence, litigation records, teaching materials, and writings.

A substantial portion of the archive consists of Bauer's publications Dissent and The Vine including bound compilations (The Early Years, Viners and Dissenters, and SOCCCD Dissent) and scrapbook-style collections of district news coverage. These materials highlight Bauer's reporting on faculty union disputes, free speech controversies, district litigation, and the political activities of trustee Steven Frogue. Original graphics and cartoons---some note preserved in digital editions---are included.

...the archive preservers Bauer's philosophical writings, unpublished essays, and teaching notes for courses in ethics, critical thinking, and philosophy. Together, these materials provide a record of Bauer's role as an educator, writer, and critic of higher education governance in Orange County, California.

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