Remembering Doug Langston
Professor Emeritus Doug Langston passed away on November 9, 2024. His tenure at New College spanned five decades. Below is a memorial message from his longtime colleague and former New College President Gordon E. “Mike” Michalson:
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Our colleague Douglas Langston, a member of the New College faculty across five decades, lost his courageous battle with Lewy Body Dementia in the early morning hours of November 9. He had turned seventy-four just a few weeks earlier.
Doug set a remarkable record of accomplishment as a teacher, scholar, and administrator at New College. Having earned a Ph.D. in Religion at Princeton, as well as a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of California at Irvine, he was able to offer a particularly wide range of courses to generations of New College students. His scholarly breadth naturally put him in demand as a thesis sponsor and baccalaureate committee member. In addition to his numerous journal articles, Doug authored two books exemplifying his range: God’s Willing Knowledge: The Influence of Scotus’ Analysis of Omniscience, and Conscience and Other Virtues. The quality of Doug’s scholarship resulted in his being recruited to edit a Norton Critical Edition of The Consolation of Philosophy by the 5th-6th century author, Boethius, a volume that included Doug’s Editor’s Introduction.
Doug’s scholarly work also earned him a year as a Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard and another year as a Fulbright Scholar in Finland. While at Harvard, he was pleasantly surprised to discover that the office he’d been loaned for the year was that of a very prominent Harvard faculty member who happened to be on leave. Doug took special delight in telling friends that, upon opening a large desk drawer for his own possible use, he found it filled with empty liquor bottles.
Doug’s contributions to campus life at New College don’t end with his teaching and scholarship, for he also established a rather remarkable record as an administrator. He served as the Chair of the Humanities Division from 1985-88. Later, upon my departure from the Dean and Warden’s office in 1997, Doug was appointed the Dean and Warden on a one-year interim basis while the USF administration designed a new, single position for leading both New College and USF-Sarasota. When the search for the new position began, then-USF President Betty Castor sought me out to see if I could talk Doug into applying, which of course spoke volumes about the job he was doing. I knew he was too smart to do that, though I didn’t put it that way to President Castor. Doug did, however, agree to serve as the Associate Dean and Warden in 1998-99 to provide some institutional memory for the incoming Dean and Warden, though only for a year.
Doug’s success and skillfulness as an administrator on an interim basis was clearly in evidence when he was appointed the interim Dean of Cook Library in 2008, just as the academic year began. This appointment was of course totally unexpected, but it became necessary when the person hired as the interim Dean following the retirement of veteran Dean, Joan Pelland, abruptly resigned his position for family reasons after only one week on the job. Doug not only accepted the position on very short notice, he immediately found creative ways to address library staff morale issues, winning praise from the staff in his first month for the style of his leadership.
One final point to make regarding Doug’s administrative contributions to New College involves the fact that the “Langston Rule” is the only rule in our handbook named after a faculty member. Doug took quiet delight in that fact.
Due to his low-key demeanor and apparently serious manner, people often missed Doug’s sense of humor. But students clearly didn’t miss it, as anyone would know who ever read his student course evaluations, which invariably contained references to “the professor’s droll sense of humor” that naturally made the challenging material more interesting and the classroom an amusing and welcoming place.
I first met Doug in the fall of 1972, when we were among the seven students starting the Ph.D. program in Religion at Princeton, with five of us pursuing the department’s Philosophy of Religion track. Unlike some of us in the arriving group who already had graduate degrees or work experience, Doug arrived directly from Stanford, where he earned his Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy as well as election to Phi Beta Kappa. The five of us bonded quite well, sharing not only much of our coursework but also regular social occasions that included weekly pizza dinners in the home of one of our professors. I suspect that our camaraderie was further enhanced by the Religion Department’s policy of using a Pass/Fail system instead of grades, eliminating any tendencies toward competitiveness.
The combination of Doug’s relative youth and his quiet demeanor made him easy to misunderstand or even to mistake his manner for unfriendliness. I received an important lesson in reading his demeanor when, in October of our first year at Princeton, Doug and I found ourselves on Barnegat Bay on the New Jersey shore, buzzing across the bay in an outboard boat at about twenty-five knots on a chilly but windless and cloudless day. At one point, Doug turned to me and, with an expressionless look on his face, shouted, “This is really fun!” In that moment, I absorbed the lesson about not judging a book by its cover, translated now into human terms.
Along with our classmates, I gradually learned that Doug’s capacity for friendship included a readiness to be genuinely helpful. As a Friday seminar ended early in our first semester, class members began talking about various weekend plans. I grumbled something about car trouble, and Doug immediately asked if he could help. It turned out that Doug possessed very handy mechanical skills that he was always prepared to share with anyone needing help, whether it was a car problem, a plumbing issue, cutting down a dead tree, or fixing a dining room chair. Nothing was ever an imposition on him.
Doug’s natural instinct for helpfulness could also be a little over-the-top, as I discovered years later after moving to Sarasota. My spouse Susannah was in labor with our son, Elliott. I was nervously trying to remember what I’d learned in birthing classes at the Sarasota Memorial Hospital when I heard the front door open, followed by someone speaking softly to our two dogs. Dashing to the living room, I found Doug getting out the dog leashes and saying that, under the circumstances, he thought the dogs might need a walk. I was too stunned and nervous to have a reaction, but I was very annoyed when, about fifteen minutes after Doug left, the doorbell rang, and I went to the door in agitation ready to tell Doug to leave us alone. It turned out to be a Jehovah’s Witness making her missionary rounds.
I’ve left until last my imperfect efforts to do justice to Doug’s family life and to his profound devotion to his wife, Connie Whitesell, and their son, Nat. Doug and I shared certain life experiences that, in retrospect, insured a strong personal bond despite our different outlooks on many matters. We both had first marriages that ended in divorce, and we both had the good fortune to have second marriages to strong and very genuine women with professional lives of their own, as well as good senses of humor (luckily). And each of us had a son, both of whom have grown up to be kind and thoughtful young men possessing an impressive moral compass.
Shortly after Nat was born, at a time when I was teaching at Oberlin, Doug and I were catching up over the phone when he happened to say, “parenting is really hard.” At the time – and not yet a parent myself – I thought Doug’s comment was obvious to the point of triviality. In retrospect, and now well into parenthood myself, I consider his simple remark to be genuinely profound and reflective of Doug’s own deep commitment to parenting. Indeed, with the advantage of living and working for thirty years in the same community as someone I’d known since 1972, I increasingly grasped the importance for Doug of the responsibilities and intimacies of family life. Over the long term, he struck me as deeply engaged in domesticity itself, perhaps symbolized in a small but telling way by the great pride he took in his pie making.
While it’s true that Doug was an unusually important figure in the history of New College, I have little doubt that he was himself more deeply rooted in the day-to-day commonplaces of family life. That’s why it was so painful to witness his gradual decline due to a dreadfully cruel ailment, the effects of which were of course felt above all by Connie and Nat. I’ll let the “Acknowledgments” section of his tellingly titled second book, Conscience and Other Virtues, suggest the understated way in which Doug conveyed deep emotion through simple comments:
“I owe much to my wife, Connie Whitesell, and our son, Nat. It is hard to live with someone who loves the intellectual life but feels drawn to the practical. I have learned about virtues and wisdom in living with them. I am afraid that much of this learning comes from my failures of virtue and their loving forgiveness. It is perhaps small consolation that I dedicate this book to them.”
Mike Michalson
Emeritus Professor of Humanities (2001-20); President (2001-12), New College of Florida
Dean and Warden (1992-97); Professor of Humanities(1992-2001), New College of the University of South Florida