Norma Thompson

Senior Lecturer in the Humanities 

Norma Thompson, A.B. Bowdoin College, Ph.D. The University of Chicago, faculty member at Yale since 1992: During the course of your Yale career, you have been the heart and soul of the Humanities program, a foundational teacher in Directed Studies, and a devoted administrator at the Whitney Humanities Center. 

Your own work reflects the commitments that have shaped you. A scholar of ancient and political thought, your early book, Herodotus and the Origins of the Political Community: Arion’s Leap, argued Herodotus’ understanding that stories shape our world and become the core of community. It won plaudits as “one of the finest contributions to Herodotean scholarship in the last twenty years.” Your 2001 book, The Ship of State: Politics and Statecraft from Ancient Greece to Democratic America, argued that the political health of organized political communities–from the ancient polis to the modern state to contemporary democracy—requires, and has always required and had, a balance between masculine and feminine qualities. 

In addition to your scholarly work, in 2006 you published Unreasonable Doubt: Circumstantial Evidence and an Ordinary Murder in New Haven, your recounting of a 2001 New Haven trial on which you served as jury foreman. The book recounts what transpired when some jurors were not persuaded by truth, the jury deadlocked, and you were led to reflect on the way people form judgements. The book, a critic said, “teaches us, brilliantly and painlessly, why judging, as opposed to simply knowing, is an essential part of a responsible human existence.” The book was so well-received that it was republished in 2011 as Unreasonable Doubt: Circumstantial Evidence and the Art of Judging. 

Your passion for the humanities has been evident in all you have done at Yale, including your work as DUS of the Humanities Program, your devotion to Directed Studies, where you have taught for over thirty years, and as the associate director of the Whitney Humanities Center, where you worked closely with Maria Menocal, and all its directors to create a vibrant space where teaching and thinking could flourish. Along the way, as a devoted Berkeley College Fellow, you were twice interim Master of the college, once for a term in 1994–1995, and again for a full year in 2006–2007. In all of this, you were supported by your late husband Charles Hill, Distinguished Fellow in International Security Studies, and famed teacher of Grand Strategy, who was a constant intellectual and personal confederate and companion. 

As you retire, Yale offers you its profound gratitude and best wishes, and we know you will continue flourishing in life as well as on the tennis court.