To the Editor:

When I heard professor Deneen was leaving, I was greatly awed and saddened. Why would Georgetown have let him go so easily? I have watched recently as an unusually melancholy cloud came over the core of the Tocqueville Forum, the organization that he founded and which otherwise represents the most animated and eager students I know at Georgetown. Each of our lives has been touched in profound ways by the work he has done at Georgetown.

The best events that I have experienced through Georgetown were all Tocqueville Forum events. I simply can’t imagine Georgetown without them. Countless lectures, seminars, discussions and amazing trips have all been part of my experience. The Tocqueville Forum is the finest organization at Georgetown I know of; anyone who has never benefited from it has had a sorely lacking education. And I have never met as fascinating, as intelligent, as devoted or as caring a teacher as professorDeneen. Those who have never sat in a lecture by Deneen have never experienced the spell-binding, eye-opening experience that makes every other class drudgery.

Professor Deneen has guided me through every step of the last two years, the most amazing of my life so far. I really can’t begin to recall the countless conversations I have had back home beginning with, “You remember that professor I told you about? Well … ” I count professor Deneen as having been the singular reason I think of Georgetown as a school that changes lives. The Tocqueville Forum really is the place that students at last see the university for what they always dreamed it would be.

Georgetown, you have lost a great teacher and a great man. It is to our impoverishment. ProfessorDeneen, we all will miss you very much.

Chris Mooney (COL ’14)