Professorships

Chair to Honor Perkins

HISTORIAN: In addition to serving as chair of the Department of History, Perkins was Rochester’s city historian from 1936 to 1948 and was the first president of the Rochester Association for the United Nations.

An effort to create a professorship in honor of Dexter Perkins, the noted professor of history who helped launch the department’s graduate program to prominence, is under way.

Robert Kirkwood ’56 (PhD), whose academic and administrative career includes serving as dean of Washington College in Maryland, has pledged and donated a total of $635,000 toward the Dexter Perkins Chair in History.

Kirkwood and his late wife, Mary (Corky) Moore Kirkwood ’48, were students of Perkins.

“Corky and I were profoundly grateful for the experience we had as his students and friends,” Kirkwood says. “A chair in Dexter’s name will honor him and remind future generations of his many achievements.”

An authority on the Monroe Doctrine, Perkins was one of the nation’s most distinguished historians. He joined the Rochester history faculty in 1915, chairing the department from 1925 until his retirement in 1954. During that time, he worked with then President Alan Valentine to establish the graduate program in history. He died in 1984 at the age of 94.

The history department is asking alumni who have special memories of Perkins to contact the department through Theodore Brown, Chair, 368 Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627.