This is the email everyone in the ILR school received this morning.

Dear Students,

It is with great sadness that I write to tell you that Professor Clete Daniel died suddenly at his home in Ithaca yesterday.  Information is still being gathered and will be shared with the ILR community once arrangements have been made by his family.

This sudden loss is a shock to us all.  We know that many students have been touched by Professor Daniel through his courses as well as the credit internship program.  Counselors in the Office of Student Services are available for support.  Please reach out for support within ILR and campus wide (CAPS in Gannett, Let’s Talk sites across campus and EARS Peer Counselors) and to offer support to one another as we deal with this terrible loss that comes during a year of many losses.

Sadly,
Laura Lewis
Director of Student Services

I had Professor Daniel for ILRCB2010 – Labor History last semester and wrote a blog entry about him in November. From talking to other students and faculty today, it is obvious that so many people loved his great sense of humor and the warm personality he exuded. I remember being really intimidated by professor’s office hour last semester, but the first time I visited him, I felt so incredibly welcomed (even though I had little love for the CB2010 class itself).

Today, emotions ran high in ILR as some professors observed a minute of silence while others, choked with tears, excused themselves from the classroom momentarily.

I have a habit of writing down interesting quotes from class, and I have an especially interesting array of gems from Professor Daniel:

“You’re paying my very handsome salary to be here.”

“I raise bullshit to a high art!”

“I talk a lot of people out of going to law school. In fact, every time I do that I put it on my tax return as a charitable contribution.”

On the nickname ‘D-minus Daniel’, “That’s a hurtful slander! It used to be D-plus Daniel!”

There is a community support meeting tomorrow, Tuesday, April 19 in Ives 217 from 4:00 – 5:00pm. Professor Daniel, you will be sorely missed and it was a privilege being in your class.

There is a point to this, I promise. My professor, Dr. Cletus “D-Minus” Daniel, is the epitome of an old-school, grey-haired, tweed-jacket wearing, all-knowing academic. His dress sense – full suit and tie every lecture – is impeccable. There is in fact an entire Facebook group called “We Love Clete” dedicated to him, in which one student wrote,

“Clete is, by far, the best dressed professer [sic] in all of Cornell, if not the world. I was talking to him about a credit internship and all the while I was thinking, “Damn dude! Your tie compliments your suit compliments your jacket so well! How do you do it?”

He is also a known hard grader – hence the “D-minus Daniel” nickname – and assigns thousands of pages of readings (a portion of which I’ve done to date). Another student so poignantly wrote

“Don’t let the Winnie-the-Pooh-like voice lull you into a false sense of security; do the reading or your ****ed.”

One thing I find incredibly amusing about this labor history class is the random, unexpected connections to ILR/Cornell. Once, Prof. Daniel started talking about Myron Taylor, an influential labor figure, and sensing all the raise eyebrows in the class, added on as a footnote, “yes the same guy our Myron Taylor Hall down the street is named after. He donated a lot of money”. Or in another class, an overview of a feisty union organizer ended with, “and after her organizational work with the Teamster Local, she came to the ILR school and taught for x years”. The class usually goes, “whoa”, and then revel at just how close history hits home.

Just now, I was taking notes for my term paper from an assigned book*. Out of the blue, the author QUOTES MY PROFESSOR IN THE BOOK. *facepalm* the world of labor is a small and inter-connected one. At least now I know I’m using the right book. If only I had more time to do the paper that was assigned at the beginning of the term.

* American Workers, American Unions by Robert Zieger & Gilbert Gall. READ IT if you’re in this class, it’s going to help you on your final.