For details on Ron Grele’s memorial on Jan 13, 2024, click here.

Mary Marshall Clark, Director of the Columbia Center for Oral History Research

Ronald J. Grele, former director of the Columbia University Oral History Center for Research, former associate professor in the Columbia History Department and past president of the national Oral History Association died peacefully surrounded by family and friends in his New York City home on December 13, 2023.  Beloved by friends, family, students, and colleagues scattered far and wide, Ron shaped the oral history movement in the United States and around the world with his intellectual rigor, passion, and generosity.  Ron served as director of the Columbia Center for Oral History Research (then called the Oral History Research Office) from 1982-2000. As director, he used his expansive interdisciplinary knowledge and networks around the world to build a field made up of curious fieldworkers, brilliant academics and researchers, activists, and community-based workers from Harlem to Chinatown who helped define and expand the field of oral history for generations. 

As editor-in-chief of The International Journal of Oral History in the crucial years from 1981-1985, Ron engaged hundreds of oral historians in international conferences to write up their fieldwork and encouraged them to try their hands at developing oral history theory in interdisciplinary ways.  Current students still use the IJOH to inspire their own fieldwork and to devise interpretative frames. Ron was president of the OHA from 1987-1988 and took a leadership role in defining ethical standards for the practice of oral history nationally.  He traveled the world to present at oral history conferences and participated in the founding of the International Oral History Association.   In 1994, Columbia held a defining international conference that, for the first time moved international conferences beyond Europe and was inclusive of African, South American, and Latin American participation.

Ron also helped establish the Columbia University Summer Institute in Oral History, a two-week intensive training institute that has drawn thousands of students and scholars interested in oral history for over 27 years.  Through the Columbia History Department, Ron taught the graduate course Oral History Method and Theory to overenrolled classes. When at last the classes became too full, Mary Marshall Clark and Peter Bearman convinced the University to hold a full master’s degree program in Oral History [OHMA] that began in 2008.  Ron taught in OHMA along with close colleagues and leaders in oral history from the 1970s, Alessandro Portelli and Luisa Passerini. The interdisciplinary scholar Ann Cvetkovich, a former Rockefeller fellow with the Center in a Humanities program Ron co-founded in the late 1990s, currently teaches a course in OHMA with Mary Marshall Clark.  Most importantly Ron’s book, Envelopes of Sound, inspired students that they could learn to interpret fieldwork for themselves in their own cultural contexts which at the time was a radical thought and a thoughtful prediction of how oral history would grow.  Ron is a legend even to the students he did not directly teach. One student, learning of his death, wrote:

I can't believe that Ronald left! I am so sad to hear this! I am so lucky that I got chances to meet him at our workshops and see him asking questions seriously with bright eyes. Even though I have never talked to him one on one, I still feel connected with him in some way. His death is like a grandpa's death to me. A grandpa from the family of oral history. I will mourn him in my way and share this sad news with some Chinese colleagues who are influenced by Ronald's works. I am sad. From: Xiaoyan Li, graduate of the Oral History master’s program, 2018.  

Ronald Grele, right center; OHMA student Xiaoyan Li, far right.

Prior to coming to Columbia Ron directed the Oral History Program at UCLA and served as Research Director at the New Jersey Historical Commission and Assistant Director of the Ford Foundation Oral History Project. He began his career in oral history as an interviewer and archivist at the John F. Kennedy Oral History Program, housed at the John F. Kennedy Library. He was awarded a Fulbright teaching appointment at the University of Indonesia and has conducted workshops and seminars on oral history throughout Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Fascinated by the potential of oral history to intervene in production of historical memory, Ron worked with his former student Peter Maguire, author of Facing Death in Cambodia, to train oral historians working at the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-CAM) taking oral histories of Khmer Rouge atrocities that were not publicly acknowledged for decades.

In addition to being the author of Envelopes of Sound: The Art of Oral History (Prager, 1991, second edition), Ron was also editor of International Annual of Oral History: 1990: Subjectivity and Multiculturalism in Oral History (Greenwood, 1992).  Ron worked with a group of oral historians in Europe and the United States to document the 1968 revolution. These interviews were the basis of the book A Student Generation in Revolt: An International Oral History (Pantheon Books, 1988). He received his doctorate from Rutgers University and taught at Lafayette College, The California State University at Long Beach, and Kingsborough Community College. Ron served as a consultant on number of oral history projects and museums and historical agencies. He completed projects on the history of the Garrett Corporation in Los Angeles, McKinsey & Company, and the Boston Consulting Group. He has conducted biographical interviews for the Columbia Center for Oral History Research with women graduates of the Columbia Law School including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, along with hundreds of life histories over the years.  He also conducted numerous interviews in his retirement for the Columbia Center’s Rule of Law Project, the Carnegie Corporation Project, and the history of the Atlantic Philanthropies. Ron volunteered to conduct interviews for a community history project documenting the social and cultural history of Harlem. Ron had an abiding devotion to community history projects, and devoted years of volunteer service to the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas. He will be remembered as an oral history enthusiast who inspired thousands of conversations and publications about oral history as an art as well as a discipline, and permanently established oral history education at Columbia University.

The inaugural Pedagogy of Listening Lab cohort.

When thinking about the role of listening in education, we typically conceptualize teachers as speakers and students as listeners. However, scholars in several disciplines have demonstrated that listening can have a much more complicated (and beneficial) role in pedagogy.

Columbia University is home to a number of fields that have cultivated unique approaches to listening-focused pedagogy, such as oral history, narrative medicine, and social work. These centers, despite their proximity, have not been brought together for an interdisciplinary exploration of listening-based pedagogies—until now.

Directed by Liza Zapol, The Pedagogy of Listening: An Interdisciplinary Teaching Lab will bring together faculty, researchers, and students from different disciplines at Columbia University to advance understandings of pedagogies of listening.

In practice, this will include monthly meetings between faculty, fostering oral history exchanges with students and alumni, observing peer teaching, engaging in interdisciplinary discussions, and developing a pedagogical toolkit.

At the core of this lab is an understanding that teaching is an experiment in equality—not in the sense that teachers must forfeit their knowledge or authority, but that teachers can approach teaching from a place of mutuality and transparency. With this understanding, the lab will explore practices of listening that value the knowledge and experience of the learner and contribute to more inclusive teaching practices.

This lab was proposed by Liza Zapol (OHMA), Amy Starecheski (OHMA), Sayantani DasGupta (Narrative Medicine) and Ovita Williams (Social Work) and is supported by a 2023 Office of the Provost’s Teaching and Learning Grant.

"We teach students how to listen, and we model holistic listening in our classes," says Zapol. "This lab is an opportunity for us to interrogate how we teach these skills." In doing so, the lab hopes to transcend traditional modes of instruction by weaving listening into the fabric of teaching—recognizing that listening extends beyond aural and verbal modes of expression. Zapol says the team has begun this work by, "experimenting with how to create a space for listening, where we can exchange stories as educators and as people, and share how we are navigating these challenging times."

Ultimately, the program's goals are outward. "Through listening closely to each other's knowledge and experience, we're crafting new ways to bring these tools to others within the academic sphere," says Zapol. Coming out of the relationships and learnings from this year, the lab hopes to grow course cross-listings at Columbia and host ongoing programming for faculty across disciplines and schools.

To learn more about The Pedagogy of Listening and its inaugural cohort, visit the project’s page.

Last week we learned that journalist, oral historian, and Columbia alumnus Jeffrey H. Brodsky passed away on July 26, 2023, at age 49 after battling Parkinson’s disease for the past decade. As we receive the news of his passing, our community is reflecting on his many important and enduring contributions to oral history at Columbia University and beyond.

We first met Jeff when he joined the Oral History Master of Arts (OHMA) program at Columbia as part of its inaugural cohort. Jeff’s contributions, both through his own practice and the support of others’, would shape the OHMA program for years to come. Mary Marshall Clark, Director of the Columbia Center for Oral History Research and Co-Founder of the Oral History Master of Arts Program, reflects on Jeff’s time at Columbia:

Jeff and I had spent several months talking about what he might focus on for his thesis, bouncing ideas around. He was determined to find a thesis idea that was original and unique. One day while crossing campus I heard Jeff yell out as he ran towards me, “I found it, I found my thesis topic! I am going to interview politicians about their first campaigns!” I realized in the moment how brilliant it was, because it would capture the process of ‘becoming,’ the essence of what we do as oral historians. 

For his thesis, Jeff conducted over 80 oral history interviews in which politicians recounted their first political races. Those interviewed included Governor Mike Dukakis, Senator George McGovern, Civil Rights advocate Jesse Jackson, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield. The finished historical retrospective was published as a multi-page feature in The Washington Post and on NPR.

Mary Marshall Clark continues:

Jeff was a truly talented interviewer, able to open up dialogues that politicians and journalists rarely spoke about. Jeff represents the curiosity and creativity of OHMA students, as well as the fortitude to follow through on their dreams.

As part of his Oral History master's thesis, Jeff Brodsky interviewed White House Correspondent Sam Donaldson, US Senator Ron Wyden, and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffet.

After graduating from OHMA, Jeff continued to capture and preserve critical memories of leaders in politics, journalism, and business. Expanding and internationalizing his thesis work, he interviewed a dozen world leaders about their formative political experiences and campaign memories. In 2012, Chief Executive magazine commissioned him to interview executives on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. He also conducted extensive interviews with Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Kann, the former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of Dow Jones, and television news veterans Sam Donaldson of ABC and Bob Schieffer of CBS.

Jeff’s work will become available through the Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Collection at the Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC). Kimberly Springer, Curator for the Oral History Archives at Columbia, comments on the impact of this collection:

The Jeff Brodsky Oral History Collection will be monumental not only in the scope and access he was able to achieve with his narrators in creating primary source materials, but also in demonstrating the range of considerations for oral history as a dynamic methodology. OHAC is incredibly grateful that the Brodsky family and Jeff took into consideration the archival and preservation aspects of his contribution to the field.

Jeff and his family have also supported the work of OHMA students through the Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Award. Announced in November of 2015, this award is given to one or more students annually whose thesis makes an important contribution to knowledge and most exemplifies the rigor, creativity, and ethical integrity that OHMA teaches its students. To more fully acknowledge the depth and breadth of excellence in OHMA theses, in 2022 the Brodsky family generously decided to expand the award and extend the funding for five additional years, allowing us to honor several students and their work each year.

2022 Brodsky Award winner courtney scott’s I Am Your Nanny’/I am [not] your [m]other. Through film, poetry, collage, photography, and edited audio, Scott explores the experiences of career nannies working in New York City

In the eight years it has been awarded, the Brodsky Award has allowed us to amplify work that, like Jeff's, pushes the field in new directions, from using AI to analyze oral history collections to writing speculative oral histories of the future. The Brodsky family's vision in creating this award has significantly deepened our practice of oral history, and we are grateful for the opportunity they have created.

Amy Starecheski, Director of the Oral History Master of Arts Program

As we reflect on Jeff’s legacy at Columbia and beyond, we invite you to engage with his work and on the work that his legacy has inspired and enabled.

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The Brodsky family asks that donations in Jeff’s name be made to:

Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications
P.O. Box 4114
Manchester, NH 03108

The Columbia Center for Oral History (CCOHR) and INCITE are pleased to announce a new oral history project in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign, which will focus on the HRC’s mission, achievements, growth, and role in the LGBTQ movement. The project will collect and archive approximately 150 hours of audio and video, recorded over the course of 80 sessions with 40 narrators consisting primarily of HRC founders, staff, and board members.

These interviews will center on the organization’s most transformative moments, like the early AIDS crisis, marriage equality, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and the expanding focus around diversity and state work, with the recognition that these developments are crucial not only to the organization’s history, but to that of the LGBTQ movement more broadly. The project asks, just as the HRC has asked: what can a single organization tell us about a social movement and social change? How do historic moments shape organizations and vice versa? How do institutions with diverse constituencies reconcile competing needs and agendas for a forward-thinking movement, all while effectively responding to consistent external attacks?

As the field of oral history has shifted from a focus on the past to helping organizations evolve in the present, part of CCOHR’s central mission has been to address human rights challenges that dynamically link the past to the present and future. This project aims to continue that work, by promoting public knowledge about the unique history of the HRC in a way that can inform and contextualize the pursuit of equality moving forward.

Image courtesy of SAPIENS/Wikimedia Commons.

Congratulations to OHMA Co-Director Amy Starecheski, Ph.D., recipient of the Will the Next Margaret Mead Please Stand Up? Award from popular anthropology publications SAPIENS and Allegra. Her winning piece, "The House Society on Avenue C," includes edited excerpts from her oral history interviews with New York City squatters on the Lower East Side.

To learn more about Amy's work, check out her book, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City (2016), just released from University of Chicago Press. Congratulations, Amy!