Rayman Solomon is a current professor and Dean Emeritus at Rutgers Law School in Camden, NJ. He also served as Dean of the Law School for 16 years working to hire faculty, expand programs, and reconnect with alumni. Prior to Rutgers, Dr. Solomon was Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Curriculum at Northwestern University School of Law. A wonderful example of a TJ graduate making a major impact, we talk about mentoring, creating change, making an impact, and—of course—TJ history.
[00:00:00] Matthew Troutman: [00:00:00] Thomas Jefferson school, or TJ, in St. Louis, Missouri is a unique place. A boarding and day school with a small community of students from all over the world, our mission asks us as educators to provide the strongest possible academic background. Our mission also asks our students to desire to lift up the world with beauty and intellect. Our graduates go on to wonderful careers after TJ, and this series intends to capture the stories of our alumni.
In this episode, we speak to Raymond Solomon. He's a current professor and Dean emeritus at Rutgers law school in Camden, New Jersey. He also served as Dean of the law school for 16 years, working to hire faculty, expand programs and reconnect with alumni. Prior to Rutgers, Dr. Solomon was associate Dean for academic affairs and curriculum at Northwestern university school of [00:01:00] law.
Dr. Solomon is a wonderful example of a TJ graduate, making a major impact. We talk about mentoring, creating change. And of course, TJ history. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.
Matthew Troutman: [00:01:15] Ray, thanks for joining the TJ conversation series
Rayman Solomon: [00:01:20] you're welcome. Pleasure to be here.
Matthew Troutman: [00:01:22] Where are we finding you today?
Rayman Solomon: [00:01:24] I I'm I'm at at home in Marion, Pennsylvania. I we, we moved here in 1998 from Chicago where I had been for 27 years. And I worked I came here because I work at at Rutgers law school. I came here as a Dean of the law school,
Matthew Troutman: [00:01:44] That's amazing. So it's been hopefully pretty quiet. We're recording this in January of 2021. So we're still in the middle of the pandemic. What's the experience been like teaching or working at school this year?
Rayman Solomon: [00:01:56] I have been at I, I went into my office [00:02:00] last week to get an overdue library book. That was the first time I'd been in my office since March. So the campus has been been closed.
It's yes, it's an unusual time for all of us you know with, without having students around graduation being being virtual orientation being virtual, all of those things are unusual and experiences mixed people think that. Online does not replace in-person education.
There, there are faculty that think that some combination of the two will be where, where we end up. There are, there are definitely advantages to the, to, to to not having to have everybody come in every day. But but I, I'm not sure the learning experience, especially in law schools, I think probably in general, but I think law schools, especially that first year, the socialization into the study of law is important.
And some of that it, it really [00:03:00] does take in-person I think, but we'll, we'll see.
Matthew Troutman: [00:03:04] Have you found any, any wins or any things that might be easier in this time?
Rayman Solomon: [00:03:08] Well, not having in-person faculty meetings has some advantage. So and I I'm on a university committee of Rutgers, as you may or may not know, is is an odd university in that. I think it may be the only state university, which is really one university with three campuses. We're not system there's a campus in Newark in the North new Brunswick, which is just the main campus and Camden in the South where I am. I would drive an hour and a half to new Brunswick for an hour meeting and then drive an hour and a half back where now everything is on zoom. So it's that, that's definitely, that's, that's definitely three hours. It's a win.
I mean our family You know I mean, we're, we're Jewish and last spring Seder was on zoom and less and less Thanksgiving was on [00:04:00] zoom. But where we used to have my wife's family would be like 40 people for Thanksgiving. Seders would be 20 or 30 people.
It was uncertain, but the upside of that was we connected with the cousins who were in California and Washington state on these calls.
Matthew Troutman: [00:04:17] Let's, let's transition back a little way. So let's, let's start, start the TJ story. So going back, I'm kind of curious, how did you find TJ? How did you learn about TJ? How did you end up on campus?
Rayman Solomon: [00:04:33] Well my story starts with my brother, my older brothers. So I'm the middle, middle son of three boys. My family came to Helen, Arkansas, which is in, when I was growing up a town of about 20,000 people on the Mississippi river, south of Memphis. And it's part of the of the Delta it's cotton growing it's blues music.
It's [00:05:00] one of the homes of the blues. My older brother was born in 45. I was born in 47 and my younger brother was born in 49. And my older brother, David was going into the, was in the seventh grade going into the eighth grade. And it sort of a combination of things at least my understanding, I mean, I think several things were going on.
One was Helen was the segregated city, as I said, it was, it, it was the sociologically. It was probably about a 50% black when I was growing up. And there was a black high school and white high school. It as you may remember, Brown vs board of education comes down in 54 and Arkansas was one of the States that was that resisted and in 1957, the governor or fathers refuse to allow blacks to integrate central high school in little rock.
The president Eisenhower sent troops in and they integrated the school. It was ugly. But part of, all of the [00:06:00] fallout of that was that they. Defunded for awhile, they closed public schools. So the theory being that if Arkansas didn't have public schools, they didn't have to integrate them.
And the schools are sort of being run private as private schools, the public high school, the white public high school. And this was all happening when my brother was was in the seventh grade eighth grade. And he, he was was in, is very smart. And they, they didn't my parents were getting.
Worried about he was bored in school and they wanted him pushed and it didn't seem like the Arkansas public schools were going to provide the education that he needed. So my parents started thinking about a private school. So this is in 57. And my both, both of my parents had graduated from Washington university in St. Louis. I had an aunt who lived in St. Louis in a U city in those days. They were looking around; my father, after Washington university, had gone to [00:07:00] Harvard law school. He graduated class of 39. The depression came, he probably would have moved to the big city to Memphis is what he, what he wanted to do.
When my father was discharged from the army, my mother was pregnant with my older brother and he, my father did what it's a sort of depression era mentality. You did what you did to earn a living. I mean, in my generation, we would probably would have just gone off and. You know, gone to the big city anyway, but he, he needed to support a family and the families who'd been, which had been in Arkansas for a hundred years at that time wanted him back home to be their lawyer.
So he went back home and started a law practice. What my parents knew when they were looking for a prep school they were not interested in in an eastern prep school. Like, my father had not enjoyed the people from Andover and Exeter, et cetera that he had met.
Well, it had at Harvard and, and they didn't want a religious school. Cool. Because we were Jewish and they didn't want a military school. [00:08:00] My aunt had her through one of her friends, Sunday about Thomas Jefferson. So they interviewed at that time The school was what? 12 12 years old. No 46. Yeah. Yeah, it
Matthew Troutman: [00:08:12] 12 years. Yep.
Rayman Solomon: [00:08:14] 11 years old. And Robin McCoy was the headmaster and Daws Potter and Ruth were both there and a few other faculty and my brother was tested and accepted and he went so when I was in the seventh, he skipped the seventh. The idea was that, that he went straight from seventh grade to, so when I was in the seventh grade I was tested, interviewed, and I went, and then my younger brother lives they've went two years later.
So the three of us all went. We found Thomas Jefferson because it fulfilled what. My parents wanted out of the school, which was a boarding school that was non-sectarian, which was modeled off [00:09:00] of the eastern schools, but had none of the pretense of the eastern had none of the social life of the eastern schools.
So my, my brother's class started probably with six or so in and you know, some people came in to sophomore year, but people dropped out. My brother's graduating class in, in that would have been 62 was two my brother and his roommate. A number of people I mean, th th there was a whole system of academic warnings, probation, and the dismissal, and it had to do not with an absolute but rather if the faculty would meet at the end of each quarter, I guess it was. And after grades were done and would discuss in the issue. I mean, obviously I wasn't in the room, but the discussions were, was the person living up to their potential where they skating. I can't remember now how many started, but we had various people leave for academic reasons.
We graduated, [00:10:00] I think, eight, which was one of the larger classes at that time in the, in the school. And it was a four year program. Two is ninth through 12th. So, you know, there were 25 to 45 students at one time. Probably And I mean, th there was probably a handful were from St. Louis. I think we may have had one, I don't remember a day student, actually, they may have but
Matthew Troutman: [00:10:27] everybody was asked to board, I
Rayman Solomon: [00:10:29] bored. Right. Cause cause one of my, one of my classmates Al Litzow so lived in Webster groves and boarded. But I would say there were most of the kids were people like me, who, who were from Oklahoma Arkansas, Louisiana well, Rick Levy was class ahead of me, but then there was Dick Tatum was in my class who was from who was from Homer. Walter Frank was from, and my roommate Mike Johnson, doc [00:11:00] Johnston was doc was from McComas, Illinois, small town across the river. And Walter was from East St. Louis, and Fred Lynn was from Detroit. So there, there were Campbell Howard was from Oklahoma city. And we had the Berry twins were from Stillwater, Oklahoma because Robin had grown up in Oklahoma. So there was a connection, a lot of Oklahoma kids. The school was sort of it was integrated. Irv Williamson, I think was the only African-American while I was there.
But most of, most of them were white collar professionals. You know I think doc Jack Johnson's father was a Dr. Walter. His father was a Dr. Campbell's father was a doctor you know lawyers you know P people like that who were looking for who were mostly from small towns and were looking for a better educational environment for their kids.
Matthew Troutman: [00:11:52] It's interesting to hear that there are so many Yeah. I don't know if this, the, the right term, but echos that I, that I hear from from [00:12:00] policy, from ethos, from student population, that's still carries through today. So as an example, we still meet quarterly actually eight times a year.
We meet eight times a year as a faculty, and we do discuss every single student. We go through every every grade and then talk a little bit about how they're doing in the community. But I think the, the the impression that I get having been part of those conversations is very much one of support.
So what do we need to be doing to help support this student or challenge this student to, to succeed. And that's, that's where I hear the conversation really being focused and that the other resonant part was just the student population where we do we do have a number of students from, we have more day students.
We have about 50% of our population in general come from St. Louis and, and go home every day. The other 50% come from all over the world. But I think there's that shared understanding that you know, every parent is, is sending their kid to TJ because they, they want [00:13:00] something better for their kids in terms of education, in terms of outcomes.
And I think that's a, that's a shared that's something that does go back to the beginning of the school.
Rayman Solomon: [00:13:10] Right. Right. And, and we did have one my class, I think he just came our senior year. Luis Lichauco came from the Philippines
do they still have the board up above as you came in the when used to come in the front door immediately to your right was a phone booth, which is obviously no longer there w where, where you would call home on Sunday night.
But then there were the boards up above the, the, the archways with the
Matthew Troutman: [00:13:37] Top student and, yeah, so I don't know when this happened, but it was sometime just before my time that they came down and I think it was, as far as I know, I could be incorrect about this. It was a space issue.
I want to ask about what the experience you had at TJ was like in particular, what it was like to be a sibling. But also just any experience that you had [00:14:00] at TJ that was memorable or sticks with you today.
Rayman Solomon: [00:14:03] Yeah, there, there are a couple, actually one bad one. My first year I lived in the, in the Gables, I guess it was. And I ruined with actually I think because I was a sibling I, I ruined with another sibling Marshall Meade Sedge Meade's brother they were from California.
But so Marshall and I roomed together that first quarter and during that time, and we got along fine,it would have been the 1960s world series. And I don't want to appear innocent in this story, but there was a Chuck Tomlinson. Chuck was in our class and I guess I was a Yankees fan. He was a parrots. I don't know what, anyway, we got into it. And I was just kind of ragging him and he got, he lost his temper and he stuck me with the pencil and the leg or something. I don't know it was, it was minor, but it was, I mean, it wasn't like we had a fistfight. But actually my brother's the [00:15:00] person that graduated with my older brother. Jim Robinson was our kind of like he lived in, he lived in the dorm with us.
He was sort of like the upperclassmen there or something. Anyway, they were, he was nervous because of the, you know, they thought it might be infected or something, you know, lead poisoning or something. Anyway Robin was out of town and Robin came back and You know, told us that we would have both been thrown out if, if, but for fighting, if, if he had been there and that weekend or something like that.
And it was, I mean, it was, it was like a a minor thing, but my whole life would have been different than, you know, if Robin had been there that weekend instead after that, the next three or four years, you had to sign a pledge or something, acknowledging that if you got into any, you know, any fight or something with anyone you could get thrown out or something, and I think we had a month's worth of doghouse. I dunno if that's silly,
Matthew Troutman: [00:15:56] it does. Yeah. And our student pledges still exist here. So [00:16:00] you have a legacy and policy.
Rayman Solomon: [00:16:02] I tell the story.
So Lillian bigs was the secretary. And in those days you your parents would put, I don't know, probably $50 a semester on an account, and you could go on Friday. To Mrs. Biggs and get $5, I think was a max. You could withdraw what time may have been like three, but and, we would walk over to Crestwood Plaza which was not, it's not that close, but we would walk there or if the upperclassmen could borrow a car there, there was people that were designated drivers. I think for, cause when I was a senior, I drove a Robbins. Robin had a Cadillac. I mean, you know, and if there were class, if we were going to the art museum or something, we would, I would drive.
But anyway, there were, there were various people that had some cards. So occasionally on Friday night someone would do a run to steak and [00:17:00] shake the one just beyond the 66 underpass and
Matthew Troutman: [00:17:04] Yeah.
Rayman Solomon: [00:17:05] yeah. And, and would get. Bring food back for everybody. So, you know, you needed a dollar for that or whatever it was, you know, 70 cents or whatever for food.
But the story I tell is that, you know, that I, for four years, I, at the beginning of my educational career I got $5 a week or not even a week, but every so often from Lily and bigs and then fast forward I went into academia and TIAA Cref was my was my pension and Lillian son, John is a graduate of TJ, distinguished graduates.
TJ was the president of TIAA Cref and there was a precipitous 1990s when the precipitous drop in the market. And including the value of my TA Cref. And I said, I made the joke that my life had come full circle because when I retired, I was going to get [00:18:00] $5 a week from Johnny Biggs having $5 a week from his mother.
I did tell him that story once. I don't know that he thought it was So my freshman year I went from being probably about five four and weighing 175 pounds to being what I am now, five, five, nine and a half.
And I went down to that one 55, one 60, something like that. My, my freshman year at TJ.
And my parents drove in and I was doing doghouse or something cleaning up because it was getting ready for graduation. And I was. Doing gardening of some sort near the front gate or something. And they drove by and they didn't recognize me
So TJ had these long vacations. It was like a month at Christmas and a month in the spring or three weeks,
Matthew Troutman: [00:18:55] It's a, it's about three weeks
Rayman Solomon: [00:18:57] three weeks rain.
And [00:19:00] they would require a daily reading assignment where you had to write 50 words or 25 words or something that were you
Matthew Troutman: [00:19:09] right. We've chunked it into weeks, but it's very similar now. Yeah.
Rayman Solomon: [00:19:13] And my I guess it was my junior year. We read varieties of religious experience with William James.
It was probably the most painful thing I ever to do because, you know, you're reading like five pages a day of this book, which is impenetrable to begin with. So anyway, I mean, I, I got through it so fast forward. I'm a second year graduate student in history, PhD student in history at the university of Chicago and the famous Southern historian, John hope Franklin who was on the faculty, went on leave and they invited a wonderful intellectual historian, William R. Taylor who had written a just a brilliant book, cavalier in Yankee sort of [00:20:00] intellectual history of antebellum South to teach for the year. And he was just a wonderful guy and a bunch of us liked him and Chicago was on a quarter system. So we had in the first quarter, it said second quarter.
We decided actually someone who later became a very prominent corporate lawyer. She organized a reading group for four or five of us with Taylor to do intellectual history. So we're about spent the fifth week of the quarter or something like that. And somebody suggested maybe he suggested that we read varieties of religious experience.
And I said, just flat out, said I won't do it. And he looked at me and he sort of puzzled. And I said, I won't read this book. And he said, why ? I said, well, when I, I went to this school where I had to read five pages a day and write a report on it, and I said, I'd never pick it up again. And I'm not going to.
And he looked at me and he said, my [00:21:00] God, you went to Thomas Jefferson. And he explained that there were four of them at Harvard. There was Robin, Graham, Taylor, and Merrill. And that Robin had the kind of educational background to start the school. Taylor had the sort of administrative ability, I think Meryl had the money and he was the fourth and they said to him, you know, why don't you go get a PhD, do something else.
And, but, so he knew of, I mean, he, he was there at the founding quote unquote. I mean, he never came to St. Louis, but he was one of the original I guess when they had discussions , he was part of the group. But he was sent off to do graduate work and then found his way into academia.
But, but it was really, it was quite funny because, I mean, he, he was totally shocked when I, that he had made, but I was totally [00:22:00] shocked that he wouldn't have any knowledge of this school.
Matthew Troutman: [00:22:03] That's fascinating. Such an interesting, interesting coincidence there
Rayman Solomon: [00:22:08] I mean my freshman year roommate at Wesleyan was was doc Johnson was my roommate at TJ and Walter Frank was also there, bill Rowe and Rick levy were also there. And as was Phillip Reuter Von Reuter
Matthew Troutman: [00:22:24] Harvard and Wesleyan were the kind of big names from the sixties. New college came up a little bit later, but,
Rayman Solomon: [00:22:31] right. The new college was founded because actually but I can tell you that story. I know why new college came up. I don't know if you know the story, but my class at TJ 64 was the last handshake deal. So we came back in late August, early September, whatever it was. And my senior year Robin called me in and told me that my older brother was at Harvard. Robin told me I was going to Wesleyan. [00:23:00] Now.
My parents had never heard of it. I didn't know anything about it other than it bill had gone. And the story was that Robin had soured on Harvard because he thought that, I dunno, I dunno what it was they were doing whether it was the new curriculum or whatever. But Robin had soured on, on Harvard and, and wanted thought that Western was, was a stronger place.
And it was true that the president of Wesleyan at that time, Vic Butterfield who actually stepped down my freshman year or at the end of my freshman year, but was really the old school. He was a classics sort of guy. So the admissions Dean Robert Norwine came to St. Louis in the summer and, you know, stop by TJ and say, "who do you have for me?" and We were admitted. So I had to, I had to fill out an application, but it was a done deal. So, and I had never seen the school. I never, I didn't, you know, it wasn't, there was no online those days. So [00:24:00] I think I may have gotten a catalog or something and seen a couple of pictures. So when I,
Matthew Troutman: [00:24:04] and something.
Rayman Solomon: [00:24:04] when I set foot on campus in, in September of 64, I had no idea what I was getting into really,
Matthew Troutman: [00:24:14] And that's what you mean by that. The handshake was kind of the agreement before, even an application and, you know, at, in those days it would have been pretty
Rayman Solomon: [00:24:22] I had been, I had been accepted. Maybe he saw our transcripts or side,
Matthew Troutman: [00:24:26] Sure. Yeah.
Rayman Solomon: [00:24:28] but, I think it was pretty much a handshake deal. And and the reason new college was that nor wines last year at Wesleyan was my class.
We were the last class he admitted and our class was called Norwine's revenge because we a terrible class and they, they fired Norwine and hired someone new Norwine became the admissions Dean at new [00:25:00] college.
Matthew Troutman: [00:25:00] wow , I didn't know that, that connection. I didn't know. That's where it
Rayman Solomon: [00:25:04] that's, that's, that's where, that's where I in I'm assuming that otherwise it was no cause Kramer and and Hall went
to
Matthew Troutman: [00:25:13] Hall and Darragh yeah. That's right.
Let's talk a little bit about your experience after TJ.
Rayman Solomon: [00:25:19] I mean, I, I developed at TJ and Larry Morgan was my American history teacher. I really was became interested in American history. And then I went to went to Western and I, I thought I was going to be a math major. And then I took freshmen calculus at Wesleyan and decided that not only was, I didn't want to be a math major, but math didn't want me that department didn't want me.
So was American history major there. And then I got out of, I graduated in 68 from Westland and was intending to go to law school was accepted at Cornell and it pin, I was accepted off the wait list at Penn because my class was the most [00:26:00] vulnerable class in terms of the draft, because the lottery went in, in 69 and deferments ended in 68.
So we couldn't, my choices were going to Canada, becoming a rabbi, or becoming a doctor. And I had adislike for blood. And I wasn't going to go to Canada and my mother was dead set that I not become a rabbi because she thought being a rabbi's wife was the worst job in the world and nobody would marry me if I became a rabbi.
And I didn't want to do the national guard because it would have been six months of training, which wasn't a problem. But then every month you'd have to come back.
But the Navy reserve did work because it was a year of active reserve in Arkansas and then two years of active duty. And then you were done. So , did training. I spent, I took some American history graduate courses for six months in Memphis and would drive down on once a week [00:27:00] to Helen and spend the night with my parents and went to meetings.
And then I went on active duty and I got on a ship. Well in the, in the, in April of that year, there a little known fact, there would've been some sabotage by Navy people on the East coast and a ship that was supposed to go to Gulf of Tonkin was decommissioned, was out of commission.
So, We were sent on an emergency basis. So we went to I was in the Gulf of Tonkin for 30 days. And then we, we went to Hong Kong for RNR for four days, came back to the Gulf of Tonkin and that was the Cambodian invasion. And we were scheduled to go back to the U S after a week on the, in the golf. Instead we sailed for two days in a one mile box pattern and ended up they find him, let us go. Or otherwise I would have been there another six months, but and then I got out of the service.
I [00:28:00] could have gone to back to law school Cornell and readmitted me Penn lost my file because it was a flood in the admissions office. So they admitted they had a moral obligation, but they weren't going to, but I decided I wasn't going to go to law school.
I wanted to be a. Get a PhD in history because in those days it was exciting being on a college campus was, or is it protesting? So I went I applied for graduate school and what I was going to be an urban historian because I had taken some classes at Memphis state when I was there and I fell in love with urban history.
And Richard Wade was at the university of Chicago. So I applied there. He was the foremost urbanist, American, urban historian. I applied there and got in. And when I was traveling that summer before going to school I saw in time magazine the story, and he'd said, Richard Wade of CUNY.
And I said, Oh, this stupid time magazine. No, he had left to [00:29:00] go to CUNY graduate school. And nobody university of Chicago told us. It took them 10 years and typical university Chicago fashion to find the right urban historian to hire. So I was looking for a field and a young a young guy was hired by the law school, a PhD, not a JD. Stanley Katz and Neil Harris.
Who's a wonderful intellectual historian said, why don't you go over and talk to Stan? So I did. And my second year of graduate school, I took a number of his courses and another course at the law school and decided that this is what I wanted to do was American legal history. In those days basically to be a legalist story and you didn't need both degrees but one year of law school was helpful because it taught you as they say to think like a lawyer.
So I did that. So I, I applied to law school, but I couldn't just take a year of law school. So I had applied to law school and got in and did the first year. And it was at a time [00:30:00] when nobody was getting a job in American history. It was one of those periods where nobody was getting hired. And I realized that when Edward Levy son, who was a distinguished student of Bernard, Bailyn the most distinguished American historian, didn't get a teaching job, that little me was not going to get a catering job. So I had a year and I loved law school. I had had a great experience. It was intellectually challenging siding, and I thought get a law degree and, and finish my PhD. So when I finished law school, I was ABD.
So I thought I got a job writing the history of the United States court of appeals for the seventh circuit as part of its bicentennial. And I wrote a book that was published by the government. And then my wife was coming up for tenure. We didn't know where we were going to be.
She, I got tenure fortunately, and I went to work as the I at the American bar foundation, which is a research Institute, connected nominally with the [00:31:00] ABA. And I stayed there for eight or nine years as a, as a scholar, as a research scholar and worked on court of appeals appointments, federal, federal courts in general worked on judicial ethics.
And the ABF moved from the university of Chicago campus to the Northwestern law school campus downtown. Northwestern was looking for an associate Dean for administration.
And a number of the people there said, you should really do this. So I did that and was hired and I served for four years as the administrative associate Dean and then became the academic associate Dean. And began to realize that, you know, if I was gonna do this and this just a matter of ego I'd rather be head of some, I'd rather be the Dean than an associate Dean, my whole career.
I was made this offer at Rutgers to be the head of, to be the Dean of the law school at Camden. [00:32:00] And I started in 98. My wife got a job in the Rutgers German and Slavic department. We moved with our two kids by then we had two, two, two girls and we moved here in 98 and and have been here. And I was Dean from 98 to for 16 years to 2014, then became the campus provost at Camden. It was a newly created position. And I did that for sort of 18 months.
And then I was appointed a university professor which is what I am now. And it sort of allows me to teach what I want to teach what I want to teach. And I, you know, I, I, I had a at the time I think I was the fourth longest serving Dean in the law Dean in the U S at that time.
And the average time for a Dean is like three and a half years.
Matthew Troutman: [00:32:46] It's actually very similar to a head head headship. I think the average is somewhere around four or five.
Rayman Solomon: [00:32:51] Yeah. And I always say it's like cancer survivor rates being dean that the number is three and a half or four years. But if you [00:33:00] make five, you're more likely to make 15.
We did a lot during my, my time. I built a building we Needed desperate. And we needed a modern building and we renovated the old building and built a new building. And we hired a number of faculty. And then the, probably the, the biggest thing that I did beside the building was I was the co architect of a merger of the Rutgers, as I said, is one university, but it had two law schools, one in Newark and one in Camden and we worked a merger.
Matthew Troutman: [00:33:31] I'm just kind of curious, is there any difference in the campuses? Are there a different focuses
Rayman Solomon: [00:33:35] The answer was the merger made sense because the answer was no, but historically the answer was yes, Newark was the most clinical law school in the country, in the sixties and seventies, they were part of the after the Newark riots in 67, 68 they were, they, they became the most experiential they were grounded in, in, and a [00:34:00] lot of their students went out and did, did public interest stuff and, and in new work.
And that was their reputation. Camden. There was a period where we were like the satellite campus in Newark, but we became independent. In 67, the university was going to close us down because we were small and not growing.
we were founded at the time, a quite unusual model. And so the genius of the founding Dean, we were modeled after the elite private universities and we're focused much more on scholarship, not on clinical and, and on national scholarship . And then there was a whole revolution later in law schools where there was a sort of homogenization.
But so we had a distinctive academic culture, which is what attracted me to the job in the first place, which, because I'd been at private law schools, my whole career. And the fact that it, you didn't have to convince people [00:35:00] that scholarship was important was something that I cherish, but I also relished the, the public interest, the public service, part of the mission of a public law school, which a private law school doesn't. And so we greatly expanded the clinics. When I under, under my Dean shipment, we expanded the pro bono program. And that involve students in. Providing free legal services for people, tier programs and that so that recently a scholarship program was created that's named in my honor by an anonymous donor who to create a program for high achieving students who are, have demonstrate in an interest in public service. And there'll be three classes. So it'll be a total of nine in uh, in any given year. And it it's it bears it it's, they're called Solomon scholars.
Matthew Troutman: [00:35:56] That's amazing.
Rayman Solomon: [00:35:57] that I'm really proud of but it, it [00:36:00] carried on the mission that I was tempting.
Matthew Troutman: [00:36:02] That's amazing. Yeah. Congratulations for that. That's a, that's a big deal for you for the school and, and for the future, having this, this kind of guaranteed commitment to Social change in the future. That's amazing. Well let me take the opportunity and I can, we can just kind of address any question we didn't get to that you wanted to touch on, but I did want to ask one big final question.
And you know, that's, how do you live the mission of TJ by lifting up the world with beauty and intellect?.
Rayman Solomon: [00:36:38] I guess one way to answer this might be in this I think involves my brothers as well. So the town that we grew up in Helena, arkansas. Is in Phillips County Arkansas, and the County was the site of what is believed to be one of the deadliest, if not the deadliest race [00:37:00] massacres in us history in 1919.
And I think that what we my older brother David had was really the driving force in this with actually a Harvard classmate of his who grew up in a different County in Arkansas. And the African-American federal judge in Helena we dedicated in 2019, and in October of 2019 a Memorial.
That to the, all of those who were murdered because it was something that's never been talked about. I mean, if you go to the civil rights museum in Memphis, 60 miles away when they dothe history of, of race relations in the South, they don't mention it. It's not one of the, you know, I mean, Tulsa is known and East St. Louis and, you know, various riots and 1919 was so it's, but Elaine's never talked about. And in some sense, it's part of this idea that racial relations are still [00:38:00] difficult in the, in the town. And you know, without acknowledgement, it's Bryan Stevenson's basic point. In in, in all of his work on the lynching museum and all of this is until we acknowledge our past, we can't get past our past.
We dedicated the Memorial to my father. As I said, it's a, it was a biracial group that did this. It wasn't just us. We dedicated to my father and it was, and we, we donated the money for it. And I, I think that that is part of this You know, idea that we have a a mission , we have responsibility and you know, it, it, I mean, I think that both, it's interesting architecturally, there's a film on it. That one on the making of it, then the film won some prize or was a runner-up and a national contest. That's one of those things that is required, but beauty and work, but I think it's the social responsibility part that, that does tie into, you know, [00:39:00] my TJ.
It's family it's, it was TJ Wesleyan. It was Chicago. You know, it was my own. But I think, but I think also the, the, the TJ, a wealth awakened and intellectual curiosity in me that has been motivating throughout my throughout my life.
The idea of the, the, the sort of fact-based thing the fact-based emphasis was something that, that has stayed with me. I mean to, I mean, I assumed that, I mean, I know that through the years that you, it's not quite the same Pedagogy that we experienced when we were there, but I still know the first five lines of the Illiad
Matthew Troutman: [00:39:43] there you go.
Rayman Solomon: [00:39:44] Well, I still know, I still know more dates like the founding of Harvard, the founding of you. I mean, I, you know, the, the American history date was, I mean, that was great. When w when in, in these, in discussions in class or something, when it, cause I could pull up all those of those things and, [00:40:00] and they're Shakespeare in quotes, I still sort of CoLab it.
Matthew Troutman: [00:40:05] we still do memory work, but it usually comes with putting that in context and in a lot more discussion about the critical, critical thinking in terms of not just the, the prose but the poetry that might be involved in something like Shakespeare, that the meter that the emphasis. Yeah, it there's a lot.
I've learned a lot just sitting in on those classes.
Well, I think that's you know, that, that feels like a really strong place to end for today.
If you'd like more information about TJ, please go to tjs.org, or you can find us on social media. Look for Thomas Jefferson school on Facebook or TJ underscore S T L on Instagram. If you want to help by contributing to TJ to help support us in delivering our mission or to bring more conversations like this one, go to T J s.org/giving.
If you know, an alumna or alumnus who would be interested in participating in this [00:41:00] conversation series, or know somebody who should be, please reach out to me at mtroutman@tjs.org.
Rayman Solomon: [00:41:08] I mean, my general responsibilities as Dean is to help students or help potential applicants get where they should go, not just as a salesman for Rutgers.