Merton Kahne
Renaissance Man

Consider the image of a teacher and a student, sitting under a tree, perhaps, talking. That kind of learning may seem a far cry from giant lectures in halls like 26-100 and 10-250. But it was just that kind of direct, wide-ranging, one-on-one conversation with Merton Kahne that was one of the most important parts of my MIT education.

Like all MIT students, I had my share of lecture courses. I learned an enormous amount about poverty, labor economics, public finance, and comparative economic systems by sitting in traditional classes and reading articles and textbooks. But I also spent many hours chatting with professors and administrators individually, about coursework, about MIT, about the Vietnam War, about life. As a Course XIV major, I dropped by the offices of economics professors to talk about issues that interested me and about their research. As a student representative to the faculty committee on educational policy, I chatted with professors about how the Institute shaped its policy and how it could improve it. As a reporter for the Tech and a student activist, I spent hours talking to deans and other administrators about MIT’s role in society and the nature of protest.

Many professors were hospitable. Sometimes they invited me and my classmates to continue our conversations at their homes in Cambridge or Belmont or at their summer homes. There were no problem sets or final exams, but it was education, too.

But the professor who stood out most was Merton, then MIT’s chief of psychiatry, who also taught an undergraduate research seminar about education. Merton—we called him by his first name, even then—was the quintessential renaissance man: wise, thoughtful, well read in many fields. He always had an air of cynicism, but underneath, he was deeply concerned about students, MIT, America, and the world. I quickly fell under his spell and grew attached to him and his wife, Hilda Kahne, an economist who also became a role model for me.

It was Merton who first pointed me to the work of novelist and short story writer Doris Lessing, Merton who showed me that just because an institution like MIT had a policy in place did not mean that it worked well, Merton who came to rescue me from my nearly empty dorm one intersession as I unhappily tried to finish several overdue term papers.

Today, I am fascinated that someone so erudite was able to take 20-year-olds so seriously. Merton was the ultimate teacher, one who cared about his students and made time for them. He provided the personal guidance as well as the intellectual.

Merton is now professor emeritus and assistant program director at MIT’s Clinical Research Center. I remain friends with him and his family. And to this day, I still think of him as a master teacher. I am no longer across campus from him. But when I am stumped, I call him.

By Karen Arenson ’70, a reporter for the New York Times.