"I never felt burdened by the hell that was my early life, or if I did, I repressed it,” Isaac Kramnick writes in his memoir. “Repression and denial, when they work, can be effective coping mechanisms, the backbone of resiliency.”
A renowned scholar of political thought and history, Kramnick, who passed away in December 2019, served on the Cornell faculty for more than 45 years.
Cornell University
Isaac Kramnick chatting with students in 2008
At the time of his death at age 81, a memoir he’d written—tracing his early life, from his birth into an unstable family through several foster placements and his undergraduate days—remained unpublished. Now, a longtime colleague and friend has helped bring the book—Foster Child: A Midcentury Jewish American Boyhood—to print.
With the blessing of Kramnick’s family, Ross Brann, the Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies, pitched the book as part of his department’s “occasional publications” series, served as its editor, and contracted with Penn State Press to print it.
Dan Rosenberg/Provided
From left, MFA students Gerardo Iglesias, Sarah Iqbal and Aishvarya Arora listen to observations by two young poets at the Ithaca Children’s Garden.
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Semiconductors are at the core of the economy and national security. Their importance makes them a target. Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, discusses how Cornell is helping to keep the semiconductor supply chain safe.
Doug Nealy/Unsplash
The Peace Arch, situated near the westernmost point of the Canada–United States border in the contiguous United States, between Blaine, Washington and Surrey, British Columbia.
