Dr. Eric George Widmer (January 16, 1940 – January 18, 2025) was an American

scholar A scholar is a person who is a researcher or has expertise in an academic discipline. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researcher at a university. An academic usually holds an advanced degree or a termina ...

and

educator A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...

. He was born in Lebanon where his American mother was on the faculty of the American University in Beirut. He was educated at Deerfield, Williams, and

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

. After finishing his Ph.D, he joined the faculty at

Brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing and painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors Orange (colour), orange and black. In the ...

teaching Chinese History and would then go on to spend much of his career there as a dean. He then served as

Deerfield Academy Deerfield Academy (often called Deerfield or DA) is an Independent school, independent College-preparatory school, college-preparatory boarding and day school in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1797, it is one of the oldest secondary schoo ...

's 54th Headmaster from 1994 to 2006, and was succeeded in that post by Margarita O'Byrne Curtis. He left the school to assume the position of founding headmaster at King's Academy in Madaba,

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

, which began its first academic year in fall 2007. He spoke six languages including French and Chinese. He was married to Dr. Meera Viswanathan, a longstanding member of the East Asian studies and

comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

departments at

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

, who now serves as Head of School at the Ethel Walker School. His children included the historian and writer Ted Widmer. His mother, Carolyn Ladd Widmer, was the first Dean of the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...

School of Nursing (1942–1967). Widmer died January 18, 2025 in Simsbury, Connecticut.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Widmer, Eric People from Beirut Deerfield Academy alumni Harvard University alumni 20th-century births Heads of Deerfield Academy Williams College alumni Brown University faculty American expatriates in Lebanon American expatriates in Jordan Living people Year of birth missing (living people)