Even though it has been over 50 years since I was graduated from Columbia College, it took me less than a split second to come up with my "best teacher" nomination: Professor Boris Stanfield.

Why? More than anything else, he taught me how to think.

As a transferee to the sophomore class, it was the luck of the draw that put me in his Contemporary Civilization II course section. After that, I took every course he taught, including Soviet Economics, to which he once brought (for our class of less than a dozen) Alexander Kerensky, formerly a minister in the Russian provisional government before the Bolshevik revolution. Professor Stanfield was a member of that provisional government as well.

I cannot forget the only "full length" lecture he ever gave (it was always class participation, not lecture), which was on the day following the death of Stalin. I remember that day in CC like it was yesterday, and recalled it for many years afterwards, because his insights that day became realities as time went on.

He always called the roll at the start of each class (and we were always "mister" for the roll and when called upon in class), even on that eventful day after Stalin's death. We all groaned as if to say, "On no! It's business as usual today!" It wasn't, and we were all mesmerized by what he had to say.

I also remember the first class after Christmas break when he returned from giving a lecture at the University of Havana (pre-Castro), and he told us how he was heckled and how he challenged the hecklers to come to the stage and debate him. They didn't.

But in spite of his having been a part of history and knowing so many of those who made history (he apologized to us for not having met Hitler), it was his ability to cut to the chase that had the greatest effect on me. When responding to a question from him, if after the first few words out of your mouth he knew you were headed in the wrong direction, he would say, "Enough of this intellectual masturbation!", and call on someone else.

But most of all, for blue book exams, he would write a number in parentheses next to each question. That was not the point value of the question. That was how many sentences you were allowed to have as your answer - and heaven help you if you had a "run on" sentence.

Back then, the New York Post published the Pogo cartoons by Walt Kelly. One in particular that I remember was on Veterans' Day (probably called Armistice Day then), where Pogo says in the last frame words to the effect, "We've got it all wrong. We should observe silence all year long so that we can think of something to say for one minute on Veterans' Day."

Boris Stanfield must have loved it.