Peter R. Pouncey (October 1, 1937 – May 30, 2023) was a British-American author, classicist, and president of Amherst College. He was known for his wit, his erudition, and his sophisticated works of both academic analysis and fiction.
Biography
The son of a British father and a French-British mother, he was born in Qingdao, China.[1]
At the end of World War II, after several dislocations and separations, his family reassembled in England. Pouncey was educated there in boarding schools and at Oxford. For a time, he studied for the Jesuit priesthood but ultimately experienced a loss of faith.[2]
Shortly after obtaining a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1969,[3] he was appointed assistant professor of Greek and Latin in the Classics Department. In 1972, he became Dean of Columbia College. As Dean, he was a forceful advocate of coeducation, going so far as to hold a faculty vote without the knowledge of the university's president, William McGill. McGill rejected the proposal, due to concerns about the future of Barnard College. In September 1972, Pouncey officially recognized a student lounge for gay students, thought to be a first in higher education.[4] In 1976, Pouncey resigned as Dean.[5] As a professor in Columbia's Classics Department, he produced a number of notable works of scholarship, including the book The Necessities of War: A Study of Thucydides' Pessimism, which won the university's Lionel Trilling Award.
Pouncey had two biological children and one step-child. He was married and divorced three times. His second wife, Susan Rieger, author of The Divorce Papers and The Heirs, is a former administrator at Yale and Columbia Universities. Their daughter, Maggie Pouncey, is the author of the novel Perfect Reader. His third wife, Katherine Dalsimer, is a Clinical Professor of Psychology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and an author.
^Nelson, Stephen James (2000), Leaders in the crucible: the moral voice of college presidents, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN978-0-89789-742-6, pages 29–30.
^McCaughey, Robert A. (2003), Stand, Columbia : a history of Columbia University in the city of New York, 1754-2004, Columbia University Press, ISBN978-0-231-13008-0, pages 527–528.