(Herb Shore, physicist, leftist, professor, and founding member of the San Diego DSA chapter recently died. He is survived by his long-time partner, Virginia Franco. What follows is a recognition of his passing by Gregg Robinson.)
Herb Shore was a nerd’s nerd, and a leftist’s leftist. I mean those in the best sense of both words, and for Herb they were mutually reinforcing.. I have never met a person more dedicated to truth, evidence, and logical discussion, and but who also had a deep love for equality and socialism. That is, Herb was one of the last surviving “Enlightenment” intellectuals.
His version of socialism was based in the belief that there was a truth to be reached through science and evidence. When current intellectual fashions turned to post-modernist relativism, Herb maintained his enlightenment belief that truth was the only secure basis of any future good society. I will always remember that mischievous grin of his over a cup of coffee or a bottle of beer as he took apart a conservative argument or explained how a socialist explanation was superior.
Years ago he and I were on a panel in which we debated two conservative libertarians. Herb demolished their worship of market fundamentalism cloaked in scientific verbiage. He would listen to them, smile, stutter a little, and then take them apart. When they retreated to abstract hypotheses of island-based economies of barter, Herb confronted them with the mathematical realities of today’s market inequalities. When they invoked claims of “freedom of choice”, he hit them with the emptiness of those choices when a single family, the Walmart heirs, owned more wealth than 40% of the entire country.
I remember hearing him speak of growing up in the left-wing socialist culture of New York as well as the equally left-wing culture of the UC Berkeley physics department of the early 1960’s when he was a graduate student. Herb spent an evening explaining to me the philosophical and political implications of “Quantum Mechanics” in a way that puts the recent film, “Oppenheimer,” to shame.
He and Virginia at first seemed such an odd couple. He was a New York Jewish intellectual with old left roots in the labor movement and academia, she was a Latina from a poor background whose politics were based in the emotional confrontation with racism and the need for social justice. But those very different backgrounds and commitments were the opposite sides of the same coin: He filled their home with ideas and intellectual debate, and she filled it with people and a gut level commitment to the causes they both supported.
Some of my fondest memories are of the countless leftist discussions that took place in their home. One in particular sticks out for me. It was a study group organized around Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the 21st Century. There was food, beer, and a conversation that went on for hours. I was impressed with how Herb effortlessly explained the math that Piketty used to support his argument. But even more impressive to me was that when I looked over his shoulder he had what must have been the only copy of that 685 page book in all of San Diego County in which every page had underlining’s and margin notes. For Herb, that kind of reading was his version of an aerobic sport.
I will always miss that time in their home and the exposure to Herb’s hunger for ideas and socialism.
***
Gregg Robinson: As this is my first post on the Jumping Off Place (JOP), let me provide a little of my background. I have been a longtime sociologist at Grossmont College where this year I was named Faculty Member of the Year.
I have been involved with progressive causes all my life, particularly those connected to education and poverty. In the past I served as co-chair of the San Diego Affordable Housing Coalition, I was a founding member of the Ocean Beach Grassroots Organization, and I served on the Peninsula Community Planning Board. I currently serve on the County Board of Education and I am active in the San Diego Democratic Party.
My past writings have largely been for academic journals, but in my writing for the JOP I hope to tie current community events to deeper trends in our society, particularly those relating to poverty, homelessness, education, and growing economic inequality.
 | A guest post by
|