In memory of Dr. Carol C. Harter, President Emerita of UNLV and founding Executive Director of the Black Mountain Institute
Dr. Carol Harter passed away on September 14, 2023, in San Diego, CA, at the age of 82. As many others have noted, she was a legend, a visionary, and a tenacious fighter who always put students at the heart of her vision for the future. She was the longest serving president of UNLV, and the first woman in that role. During her presidency, she oversaw the creation of 100 new academic programs, over half of them at the graduate level, as well as the construction of 17 facilities on campus, including Lied Library, the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs, and the William S. Boyd School of Law. In terms of national impact, the advancements she championed have elevated UNLV to R1 status, making it one of fewer than 150 “very high research activity” institutions in the country recognized by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Closer to home, the Carol C. Harter Classroom Complex Building was named by the Nevada Board of Regents when she left the presidency, after UNLV’s undergraduate and graduate student leaders formally requested that a building be named in her honor.
One cannot walk across campus without seeing the results of her devotion and dedication. In person, Carol was an incandescently generous source of insight, hilarity, and practicality in all matters, including (though not limited to) politics, fundraising, and the cultivation of an engaging and productive literary life. She was a mentor to many, and in the hours and days after her death I found myself reaching out to writers with whom I share the good fortune of having once been a Black Mountain Institute (BMI) PhD fellow—an unusual position, and a special one, supported by both the English department and BMI, which Carol helped to create and sustain with donor support as the best funded creative writing PhD fellowship in the country at the time. Carol then acquired Witness for BMI in 2007, with Amber Withycombe, BMI’s then-Assistant Director, as the new editor, and creative writing graduate students have worked on the magazine ever since.
The first time I met Carol, I was on my first day in the office as a new BMI PhD fellow. The walls of Carol’s office were full of diplomas, commendations, awards, and framed photos of her with famous people, including Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Bill Clinton, and Mikhail Gorbachev. Her presidential-looking doctoral regalia was hanging in readiness behind the door, and the room was full of light from a wall of windows overlooking pine trees and the desert colors of the campus landscape. Carol was in the middle of writing some very candid criticism in response to draft legislation affecting the higher ed budget in the state. She was glamorous, powerful, and engrossed in her work. I was a newly arrived graduate student assistant wholly out of my depth. She welcomed me warmly, and genuinely, and one of the first things she told me was that BMI was just getting started and that everyone involved would have to pitch in and help swab the decks. The original BMI staff was small: Carol; Richard Wiley, BMI’s Associate Director and co-founder; Amber; and Maritza White, BMI’s Administrative Assistant. Shortly after this first meeting I found myself entrusted with driving TWO Nobel laureates to dinner after a BMI event on campus. From the parking lot behind the Lied Library, I could see the glow of brightly lit strip casinos against the sky as Wole Soyinka and Derek Walcott fastened their seatbelts inside my car. I drove so carefully that evening, suddenly aware and in awe that I was taking part in something much bigger than myself.
And from then on, from the shared GA office we could see, daily, the close-up examples of what a writing life might look like. We saw visiting writers with year-long fellowships to finish second or third books, senior humanities scholars visiting from overseas, literary luminaries in town for a board meeting or masterclass, and public intellectuals in conversation with each other on a broad range of topics at BMI’s free and open literary panel events. This welcoming and participatory ethos was there before Witness came to UNLV, before the first mid-career fellows arrived. The time that I and others spent at BMI as PhD fellows working on Witness and providing literary event support cemented the fundamental significance of writing, publishing, editing, teaching, and service in our lives. Being part of BMI gave us opportunities to learn the ropes, to exercise our discretion and judgment, and to make a contribution while participating in the world of letters as if we belonged there already, because Carol made it possible for us.
I and others were incredibly lucky to get to work for Carol Harter so directly, lucky to be there to pitch in and help swab the decks. I’ll always be grateful for her gracious mentorship, her tireless example, her candor, her amazing laugh, and everything she taught me about the rewards of working long hours in the service of a worthy mission, and of creating opportunities for others to pitch in and find themselves in the work as well. The beautiful issue of Witness that you are now reading, edited and produced entirely by the excellent editorial staff, is the most recent example of Carol’s continuing legacy.
– Maile Chapman