The Irreplaceable Value of Mentorship: Honoring Prof. Bill Shapiro
I entered Oxford College with a plan to major in Finance. I enrolled in Prof. Bill Shapiro’s class, POLS 101, because my sophomore mentor preached about it, and I was impressionable. It filled a requirement in the least and could be interesting. I received the lowest grade I’d ever gotten on his first “pop quiz” and immediately regretted it.
I spoke with Bill about it since my inclination as a perfectionist was to drop the course. I told him I enjoyed the class and I was learning a lot, but it might be the case that I was not equipped enough to balance the thought required in the course with the responsibilities of all my other courses. He shared an insight with me then, which, looking back, has shaped my own philosophy about life. He said intelligence has nothing to do with success in his course; the students who do well simply do the work. By work, he meant they read, come to class, and ask questions.
It seemed simple enough. Bill had a way of speaking with a lighthearted seriousness that was both persuasive and approachable. I opted to trust him and finish the course. I’m glad that I did because Bill’s influence as an instructor taught me how to choose courses that made me think. His course is why I chose political science as my major. Lo and behold, I liked thinking for myself. Thinking, writing, conversing — each of these are pleasures in themselves. Bill believed that these are the loftier goals of education worth preserving and sharing with each and every student who happened to find their way into his classroom. Through his mentorship, I found my voice as a teacher and scholar — one that I would never have discovered pursuing a Finance degree.
Like so many of Bill’s students, I have become an educator myself, disseminating this idea in my own classroom whenever I have the chance. I defended my PhD in political science in July, and I so wish I could have shared that big day with Bill in some way. I am 100% sure if he’d been alive and well, I would have received the best comments on my dissertation from him.
I saved several of my papers in his courses and looked at them recently. I don’t think I realized then how effective his comments were on papers. They were succinct, thoughtful, constructive, and so very human. They are the sort of comments that ChatGPT, for all its capacities, won’t be able to achieve.
Much to my surprise, I became Bill’s Teaching Assistant for the course and learned the content inside and out before the time I left Oxford. At Emory as well and in the years that followed my BA, Bill continued to provide guidance at pivotal moments. He embodied the irreplaceable value of mentorship that wasn’t controlling but deeply supportive.
Bill’s simple yet profound advice to “travel while you’re young” transformed my worldview. It shaped my academic journey and led me to explore more than 40 countries, live on two new continents, and ultimately establish a capacity for a career in Europe. Coincidentally, I currently live in the same country in which he completed his doctoral research as well as the same country that once rejected his and his family’s very existence.
Bill never talked about these personal facts of his life in his classes — though he could have. Instead, his focus in class was always on his students’ ideas and those of thinkers he considered far worthier of reflection than the non-thinking path of Nazism (although we worked to understand Nazism too).
Dr. Shapiro was a rare professor who gained rock star status but didn’t lose sight of what he could do that really mattered.
Even recently, before Bill’s retirement, he facilitated an amazing opportunity for me. He agreed to take his first and only sabbatical in 43 years, but only if Oxford hired me as his temporary replacement.
It was honestly because of this experience that I stayed the course in my PhD program. I established then that no matter the environment, I really love teaching in the social sciences. I knew then most fully that I had found my own voice, distinctive also from Bill’s, a feeling far worthier than a degree in Finance would have ever awarded me.
Bill wasn’t without his flaws. He was extraordinarily obstinate, nosy, and quite socially awkward sometimes. But his stubbornness was most evident when he believed he was protecting his students, and his self-ascribed “nosiness” (he followed all his students on Facebook!) was his way of ensuring we could show up in class and thrive. His social awkwardness, well, that was just Bill.
I learned the way through Bill’s quirks, when I temporarily joined the ranks of Oxford’s faculty. The trick was to speak to him in the language of one of his own courses. In one instance, where he was being particularly prickly about some unsolicited advice I was providing him to be a better colleague, undoubtedly with notes of “political correctness” in his ears, I finally told him he was being “a difficult woman” and only getting away with it because he was a white man. He was oddly flattered but shut up finally and did the right thing.
Quirks aside, he was truly a Great teacher and mentor with timeless wisdom.
Unlike the humorous adage, “Do as I say, not as I do,” Bill’s message was do neither as I say, nor as I do. You do you. I will support you however I can. This is, of course, in my own words. His would have been: “My opinion and twenty cents can get you a Starbucks coffee.”
I lacked parents who had such intuition about the guidance young adults arguably need in their early twenties. Without his knowledge, Bill filled that role for me.
From Bill’s teaching, I learned to challenge my pre-existing beliefs consistently. I gained the confidence to express myself and perhaps most meaningfully of all, to pursue a life of the mind.
I did not keep in great touch with Bill the last few years (he was hard to get ahold of!), but I honestly believe Bill did not mind. He would have been happy to know my research is currently based in Germany, not far from where his whole life might have been (or ended) in a different set of events. Bill was one of the lucky few Jewish families who escaped the terror of Nazi Germany. Of those few who did, he was similarly committed throughout his life to live a good life and share it with others.
I also think it noteworthy that Bill never talked about his personal past in this light. I knew about his connection to his Jewishness; he certainly was not ashamed of it. But he never victimized his own narrative in the classroom. Instead, he shared the narratives of theorists who most profoundly shaped him and his thinking.
Anyone who took Dr. Shapiro’s class on Machiavelli’s Prince or Shakespeare’s Tempest, for that matter, might have picked up on his interest in the role of chance or luck in politics as well as our everyday lives. It was luck that crossed my path with Bill’s, but it was his hard work and dedication to teaching that sealed our fate.
I know Bill believed in soul mates, his being his wife Anne. I never had the chance to ask if he believed in kindred spirits. But I consider Bill Shapiro one of mine — that is, someone with whom I shared an unspoken, intangible bond of respect and understanding. Bill left not a “mark” on my life but a foundation for ordering and establishing the type of life I want to live — one with kindness more than rightness, commitment more than intellect, and gratitude for the people who showed us a way more than those who tried to show us the way. It is a life with quality time we have with the people in our lives, far more significant than a Finance major could have ever bought for me.
I want to conclude with the same words and sentiment with which Bill ended most of his holiday letters:
“I would think it remiss if I did not mention the shoulders of those who have passed on and have helped us to get here. We think of them all and we miss their presence in our lives as we are aware of their shadows over us all. May they all take their places in the stream of life and their memories forever be a blessing.
Auld Lang Syne,”
Mary, one of too many of Shapiro’s mentees to count
