When toward the end of our second year in Chicago Georg was offered a position at the State University of New York at Buffalo, I wanted him to accept. When, through the mediation of the dean at Loyola University, I received an offer from Canisius College in Buffalo, another Jesuit institution, there was no doubt that we would move to Buffalo.
As an undergraduate school, Canisius had good standards, not only in the social sciences and in the humanities, but also in the physical sciences and in the school of business administration. My relationships with colleagues at Canisius remained largely superficial, and I met with some hostility. Judy Mendels was the only member of the Modern Language faculty who had something of a record as a scholar. Apart from Georg, there was almost no one in Buffalo with whom I could discuss my scholarly interests. One exception was and still is Regina Grol at Empire State College, who largely works on Polish topics.
When I came to Canisius, the chairman of the Department of Modern Languages did not make a secret of his anti-Semitism. His successor was an Austrian who had served in the Luftwaffe and was convinced that I would have to consider him a Nazi. The third chairman did not like women. The fourth and last made vague remarks about my teaching methods, but never told me concretely what he meant. During the Vietnam War, I was stereotyped by colleagues at the college generally as a “peacenik” and probably a Communist sympathizer, which I never was. My peace activities were also mentioned pejoratively in my personnel file. Nevertheless, after one year I was promoted to associate and eventually to full professor. Since I was one of the few professors who in those years were active scholars, I frequently received faculty grants, but I was very much underpaid. The often heard remark, “You with your rich husband at UB”, offers a clue. I got along well with the students, especially the German majors. After some time, one of my courses was replaced by the directorship of the fellowship office, where I advised students who where headed for graduate school.
During the years I taught at Canisius, 1965-91, the college underwent major changes. The Catholic Church’s list of prohibited books, the Index librorum prohibitorum, was abolished, and the crucifixes disappeared from the classrooms. Gradually the number of required courses in religion and philosophy decreased. The year I arrived was the first year women students were accepted at the college on an equal basis. I was also the first woman professor with children. The number of women on the faculty increased, as well as the number of Protestants and Jews on the faculty. A Protestant minister, a Reform rabbi, and for a while a Buddhist woman, taught religious studies. In the administration and on the faculty there were fewer priests, and when a Jesuit professor left the order to marry and was permitted to continue in his position as professor, no one was surprised.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Two Lives in Uncertain Times, New York: Berghahn Books, 2006, p. 117f