“When a person of important and substantial achievement visits the university, it offers an opportunity to provide our students with a model of what one can make of a life,” explained Dr. Susan Cole, president of Montclair State University, on the occasion of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s campus visit this weekend. The 84-year-old lover of Shakespeare (Ginsburg performed in a mock appeal of Shylock in a production in July 2016), was in the Garden State for a panel discussion on the bard’s work before taking in a performance of The Merchant of Venice, starring her grandson, Paul Spera.
Cole holds that visits to the school from worldly figures like Ginsburg can be just as inspirational as the theater. “Justice Ginsburg is the second woman to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court, an accomplished jurist, an advocate for women’s rights, and an example of the uses of education,” she added. Decked out in her signature lace gloves, Ginsburg spoke alongside Professor James Shapiro and Professor David Scott Kastan on the merits of Shakespeare’s work and impact, before everyone moved into the Alexander Kasser Theater for the main event. What was the highlight for Cole? “[Seeing] a grandmother proud of her grandson,” she said of Ginsburg, “and defying the prejudices we have about age in our society.”