In thinking through my friendship with Asher, three things come to mind. The first was his personal kindness. In the early 1970s, not that long after he had moved to the University of Surrey, I was teaching at the equally new Civil Service College in London where one task was to organise guest visitors to the newly recruited ‘high-fliers’ course. This was a difficult audience of young, bright graduates containing
some whose disinclination to work or take seriously the courses we offered was
only matched by their arrogance. Asher’s sharp mind, wonderful sense of humour
and ability to dress up important points in anecdote always went down well.
After one such session, I let slip that I was thinking of moving on whenever
something came up. Quick as a flash he said, ‘why not join us at Surrey?’ which
I duly did. He was always immensely kind and supportive to me even though the
department was going through growing pains and he had to endure a less than
positive attitude from the university administration throughout much of the
time I was there.

The second memory is of someone with infectious enthusiasm. One important role I had at Surrey was to help design and then to become the first course director of a new M.Sc. programme in Social Research. Because it originally ran only part-time, the course embodied two weekends away when about 70-80 students and staff descended on a congenial hotel. Even though Asher was deeply involved in university politics, as well as in teaching and running the department, I can never remember him missing one of these occasions. The same was true of guest seminars or other meetings. The third memory follows from this and that is of someone who was a remarkably good leader and administrator. Having suffered in later academic life from a number of others for whom this could not have been said, brought home to me how he had the knack of always getting the best out of all of us. Years later, on visiting him in North London, he would offer trenchant advice on how to deal with some difficulty or other which I always found very valuable. It is a cliché but he will surely be greatly missed.



Malcolm Cross