Kneller, John William (32585456): Difference between revisions

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'''John William Kneller''' (15 October 1916 – 2 July 2009) was an English-born American Ritchie Boy who served at [[Camp Ritchie]] during World War II and later became a scholar of French literature and the fifth president of Brooklyn College.

John William Kneller was born on 15 October 1916 in Oldham, England, to John W. Kneller and Margaret Ann Truslove, the youngest of five brothers. At five he immigrated with his family to Worcester, Massachusetts, and he later became a U.S. citizen. He graduated from Clark University in 1938.

During World War II Kneller served at the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, and worked as a translator for the U.S. Army Air Forces.

After the war Kneller earned an MA (1948) and a PhD in French (1950) at Yale University and was a Fulbright Scholar in French literature at the University of Paris in 1949–1950. From 1950 he taught at Oberlin College, rising from French instructor to professor, department chair, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and provost. In June 1970 Clark University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters. He was the fifth president of Brooklyn College from 1969 to 1979, bringing his horse from Oberlin to ride in Prospect Park; during the 1970 student strike after the Kent State shootings and the Cambodian Campaign, students occupied his office, and he suspended classes while keeping campus buildings open to students and faculty. From 1979 to 1995 he taught French literature at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where he co-chaired the Henri Peyre Institute for the Humanities, and he was managing editor and then editor-in-chief of the ''French Review''. In 1999 the French government made him a Commandeur of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques. He was married for 61 years to Alice Bowerman Hart, and they had a daughter. Kneller died at his home in Westport, New York, on 2 July 2009, aged 92.