By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Professor Lawrence Baron said today that he is relinquishing the job he has held for 18 years as director of the Jewish studies program at San Diego State University, while remaining on SDSU's history faculty. 

The scholar said there were personal and professional reasons for his decision, which will lead to the installation later this year of Professor Risa Levitt-Kohn as the fifth director of SDSU's Jewish studies program, which has been known as the Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies.  Baron's three predecessors, including now Congressman Bob Filner (D-San Diego), each served one year in the position before Baron took it over and gave the program its strong identity in San Diego's  Jewish community.

In an interview, Baron said both he and his wife, Bonnie, have had some health concerns—his wife's problems in her digestive tract causing four recent hospitalizations, including two surgeries, and Baron's own pancreatitis landing him in the hospital one of the weeks when she also was there. As a result, "I've had to cancel seven community speaking engagements in the last three months."

Additionally, he said, San Diego State's administration had decided, with the permission of the Lipinsky family, to drop their name from the title of 

                                                                                                                       Lawrence Baron

the institute in order not to give potential donors the false impression that the Lipinsky family is totally underwriting the expenses of both the on-campus Jewish studies program and the department's extensive outreach efforts off campus.

Henceforth, he said, classes simply will be identified as offerings in the Jewish Studies Department, while off-campus Jewish-interest lectures and symposiums will be identified as offerings of an "institute" with a name still to be finalized, but which will not include any identification with the Lipinsky family.

Baron said the children of the late philanthropists Bernard and Dorris Lipinsky remain committed to San Diego State University where a clock tower, hospitality room, scholarships for financially disadvantaged students, and an endowed lectureship in performing arts are named for one or both parents.  

However, whereas the endowment donated by Lipinsky over two decades ago once generated sufficient interest to pay  expenses for both on-campus and off-campus activities, it no longer does so today.  The donation was made when prudent investors commonly could earn between 8 and 9 percent interest on their money, whereas today earnings below 5 percent are more common, he said.

As the proceeds have been diminishing, the institute's expenses—in salaries for additional personnel, and for various expenses—have been increasing.  New fundraising efforts, involving new program naming opportunities, are considered the best way to bridge the gap and to keep building for the future, he said.  

The Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies pioneered a visiting Israeli professorship, which Baron said is a program now being copied by numerous American universities. Much of the earnings from the Lipinsky family endowment will  be earmarked in support of  that program, Baron said. SDSU is hoping to find a donor who will be willing to combine names with the Lipinsky family to give that fund a new name.

Because he has been associated  for 18 years with the "Lipinsky" Institute—even to the point that new acquaintances sometimes mistakenly call him "Professor Lipinsky"— Baron said he believes the new directions in fundraising can be better sold in the community by someone else.  He said that Prof. Levitt-Kohn, a specialist in biblical studies, is a perfect choice to succeed him. 

"She has done my job before, when I was on sabbatical," he noted. Additionally, as the curator for the July-December 2007 exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls planned at  San Diego's Museum of Natural History, Levitt-Kohn has made good connections in the community.   Furthermore, she has proven to be a popular speaker on the community  lecture circuit, as well as a participant in speakers programs sponsored by such communal organizations as the  Agency for Jewish Education.  When the controversy raged over Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ, for example, Levitt-Kohn teamed with a professor of Christian studies and another historian in panels to provide context about the times depicted in the movie.

Baron said as the director of the Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies, he maintained a busy schedule of off-campus appearances, including serving as commentator at Jewish movie nights at various synagogues, lecturing on the Holocaust, and introducing numerous scholars brought to San Diego under the auspices of numerous endowed lecture programs.

These lectureships, named in some cases for the benefactors and in other cases for persons the donors wished to honor, reflect a variety of Jewish-interest subjects attracting the attention of scholars from throughout the world.

Among these are the annual Galinson-Glickman Symposium on Contemporary Israeli and Middle Eastern Issues; Robert Siegel Memorial Lecture, which features a talk about some aspect of modern Jewish life outside Israel; the Dorsha Wallman Lecture in Modern Torah Interpretation; the Al and Norma Cooper Lecture in Modern Jewish Politics;  the Dorothy Stuzane Lecture in Women in Judaism; the Maurice Friedman Lecture in Modern Jewish Thought; the Abraham and Ida Nasatir Lecture in American Jewish History, and a  Dorris Lipinsky Lecture on Jewish Performing Arts.

In addition to all that, Baron administers another fund—donated by Dorsha Wallman in Baron's name—to bring focus on current-day ethical issues.  The fund has helped to underwrite lectures and panels by other scholars on cloning,  genocide reparations, and ethical issues facing presidential candidates.

The Lipinksy Institute for Judaic Studies and the Jewish Historical Society of San Diego jointly maintain an archive on local Jewish history.  Baron also serves as president of the Western Jewish Studies Association, an academic group founded at a conference at San Diego State in 1994.   In December of this year, SDSU will help host the national convention of the Association of Jewish Studies when its members convene at the Manchester Hyatt Hotel.

During Baron's tenure, Jewish Studies was elevated from a minor subject with perhaps eight course offerings per semester to a full-fledge major with 16 offerings per semester on the SDSU campus, and a tele-monitoring program to allow students to participate remotely in Jewish studies courses offered at state universities in Chico, Long Beach, Northridge and San Francisco.

Typically, a tenured professor like Baron is supposed to teach three courses per semester. As director of the Lipinsky Institute, Baron earned "two course releases"—meaning his Lipinsky Institute activities were counted as the equivalent of teaching two courses.  So he taught only one course per semester.   By taking over the position of adviser to the graduate students in SDSU's history department, Baron will earn back one of those releases, meaning he will be expected to teach two classes per semester hereafter.

Baron said he really is looking forward to instructing students in a variety of history topics, not just in Jewish topics, despite successes in that field. Baron's recent book on Holocaust movies, Projecting the Holocaust into the Present,  won him an invitation to lecture later this month at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Jerusalem.  Before he came to San Diego State, he taught a course in modern German history.  "Think of it," he said, "the last time I taught that course, there were two Germanys."

Not only that, but children born the year Baron took over as director of the Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies are now preparing for their high school graduations in a few weeks.