By Rick Vacek | October 4, 2023
When Dr. Nils Roemer was a teenager in what was then West Germany, his parents sent him to Great Britain to learn English.
A portion of his language education was administered at, of all places, a London train station.
As Roemer and his friends carried on a jovial, animated conversation, he couldn’t help but notice the faces of the people around him. They weren’t amused. Instead, their swiveling heads indicated that they didn’t like hearing a conversation in German … even though World War II had been over for decades.
“We were just kids, and we very quickly had to realize that what they were responding to was not us being innocent little kids but us being German,” he said. “What I got from that is a very deep understanding that we have a lot that we have inherited – good, bad, complicated, difficult. We sit between that and what we want to become as individuals and as societies.
“I think that’s possibly why I ended up in education. Because this is a place where it is not about what limits or constraints are placed upon us in terms of where we come from; it’s all about the opportunities that we can create.”
Roemer is grateful for his multitude of opportunities in 17 eventful years at The University of Texas at Dallas.
He thought he had reached the pinnacle a year ago when he was named dean of a remarkable higher education pairing. The School of Arts and Humanities (A&H) and the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communications (ATEC) were combined to form the School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology (AHT), beginning with the fall 2022 semester.
But that height was transcended this summer by the Harry W. Bass Jr. Foundation’s $40 million gift to the University. That meant another new name for his school – the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology – and even more opportunities, celebrated in a ribbon-cutting dedication on Sept. 28.
The timing of the gift was as jaw-dropping as its amount.
“Maybe we were dreaming that at some point someone would recognize how outstanding this place is,” said Roemer, Stan and Barbara Rabin Distinguished Professor in Holocaust Studies and also Arts, Humanities, and Technology Distinguished University Chair. “But for it to happen in one year … normally, it is something that happens in a dean’s life after you’ve been in my job for over 30 years.”
He knows that his dual role is equally special. He also is director of the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies, the University’s internationally acclaimed beacon of light founded by Holocaust scholar and survivor Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth in 1986.
What struck him the most when he interviewed at UT Dallas 20 years after the center’s founding was the way all the administrators talked about the need for the Metroplex to have a university that matched its economic and demographic growth.
That was underscored in his conversation with Ozsváth about the Holocaust and its legacies. She stopped the car she was driving to declare, “I just love Dallas. Dallas constantly changes and always innovates.”
“From her perspective, it probably was really liberating to be in a city that doesn’t seem to be tied to the history of a city like Budapest or Berlin,” he said. “It has this energy and dynamism. We have the perfect formula for constant innovation because we are so different, we are so diverse.”
Variety is also evident in the majors of students who take Bass School classes and join its many other related activities. Long gone are the days when the arts and humanities were filled almost exclusively with writers and poets. It’s a totally different story in today’s world, and the opening chapter at UT Dallas set the tone.
“I truly believe this: When Arts and Humanities was created in 1975 as one of the founding schools in a STEM environment, there was a recognition that the arts and humanities would be critical, not just to the majors in the school, but to the education of all the students on our campus,” Roemer said.
“That is where the arts and humanities ought to be in the future. We’ve got to get away from thinking that this is just about the future Metropolitan Opera stars or the new professors of literature. The old separation of STEM versus the arts, from the perspective of the students, makes far less sense these days because a lot of our STEM students had theater in high school. They may have been in band. Some of the mathematically inclined often were in the orchestra. Because we’ve constructed the world of education as a map to a career, we’ve created this dichotomy.”
That was demonstrated last spring when Roemer traveled to Spain with the UT Dallas Chamber Singers. About two-thirds of the students were in STEM-focused majors.
“When you see them sing, they’re discovering their voice, they’re building a tremendous confidence, they’re onstage performing in front of strangers, and they also have a profound understanding of what they can accomplish if they work together on something big,” he said. “It translates into any other occupation or role they take on. It’s also what education is going to look like in the future.”
It was a full-circle moment for Roemer, who saw so much change growing up and has continued on that path during the height of UT Dallas’ growth. “My timing was perfect,” he likes to say about his arrival on campus.
He appreciates how much the University’s willingness to embrace new ideas has changed him for the better, too. And he can’t wait to see what happens next.
“Change can sometimes be challenging to some,” he said, “but sometimes it can also be empowering.”
Amid all those new opportunities, however, it also helps to have a firm grasp of how the past can affect the present and the future. That’s what keeps you on track.