Deceased April 7, 2016
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In Memory
Joe Morton (one of a number of our classmates who left college and returned to graduate after military service) died of cancer on April 7. Joe knew first-hand from his childhood the terror of war, which eventually would lead him to study peace as a distinguished professor of philosophy at Goucher College in Maryland.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Joe fled as a child to the United States with his parents and sister to escape the Holocaust, according to an account in Goucher Today magazine. After graduation from Amherst, where he studied Greek and Latin, Joe received his doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University and joined Goucher in 1963. There he served as chair of the philosophy department from 1978 to 1988, founded the Peace Studies Program in 1991 and taught until his retirement in 2000.
Joe’s participation in anti-segregation protests in Baltimore and in the 1963 March on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King fueled his dedication to addressing many social problems. He joined with students in antiwar protests, worked to improve conditions of the homeless in Baltimore and spent summers driving around the country to examine various cultures, most notably those of Native American communities.
“Joe was always ready to review and critique beliefs that he held to bring himself to a better understanding,” Goucher colleague John Rose observed in a report by Jacques Kelly in the Baltimore Sun. “I know many instances where Joe reflected, started from scratch and arrived at an utterly transformed view on a subject. Joe was one of the most intellectually brave people I have ever known.”
As a teacher at Goucher and as a classmate at Amherst, Joe was gentle, thoughtful, warm and without pretense. On his office door he kept a sign befitting his philosophy and practice: “Live simply so that others may simply live.”
Bob Asher ’57