Ryan Goldstein ’93 remembers his first Dartmouth class in detail. He took a seat in a Reed Hall classroom at 10 a.m. on September 18, 1989, for the first day of Emergence of Modern Japan. Today, Japan is still his primary focus:
“I live full-time in Japan. I speak Japanese every day. I run our law firm’s Tokyo office. I collect Japanese antiques. The whole course of my life traces back to that first class I took with Professor Ericson in my freshman fall,” says Goldstein. “What made Professor Ericson such a remarkable teacher was his ability to make history feel alive and relevant, particularly by showing how modern Japan is still uniquely shaped by its Edo period traditions.”
In gratitude, Goldstein has endowed a fund to help underwrite Department of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages curricular and co-curricular activities. Expenses covered by the fund include field trips, student research grants, seminars and workshops, and visiting speakers.
Goldstein is naming the fund for Ericson to celebrate his service as a teacher and mentor. The formal recognition must wait, however, because Dartmouth endowments can’t be named for current faculty. Ericson is in the midst of Dartmouth’s three-year program to help faculty transition into retirement, meaning the fund won’t be named until the end of the academic year when he has finished teaching. In July 2028, it will become the Steven J. Ericson Fund for Asian Studies.
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