Shapiro, William
SHAPIRO, William, PhD
William Shapiro, PhD, passed away on Monday, December 4, 2023 at his home in Oxford, Georgia after a more than yearlong struggle with progressive supranuclear palsy. He was 77 years old. Dr. Shapiro was born in Toulouse, France – the son of Holocaust survivors who moved to the United States with then-three-month-old William in December 1946. He spent the first years of his life in Brooklyn, NY before coming of age in Rockaway Beach – where a chance encounter one blustery morning left him with a lifelong fear of sharks. He earned his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College and his MA and PhD in Government from Cornell University – a process which was prolonged by his conscientious objection to the Vietnam War and his alternative service at the Cornell Law Library. His first teaching job out of college was at Kenyon College, where he met his future wife, Anne Munroe Shapiro – who never let Dr. Shapiro live down the A- he gave her in his course. After brief stints inspiring students at Kenyon and then working at the American Enterprise Institute, in 1979 he applied to a job opening at Oxford College of Emory University. At long last, Dr. Shapiro had found his home. In 1986, he convinced Anne to join him in Oxford, where they raised two children and countless numbers of animals – horses, donkeys, mules, goats, sheep, turkeys, and of course, Toulouse geese. The only thing he loved more than his students was his family, to whom he was a tirelessly devoted husband and father. Anne was the love of his life, and he never truly recovered from her death from melanoma in 2005. Still, even after her passing, Dr. Shapiro continued to do what he did best: teach his students. For 43 years, Dr. Shapiro challenged, inspired, nurtured, and educated generations of students at Oxford, where he won every teaching award the college offered, including the Emory Williams Award, the Mizell Award, and the Fleming Award. When asked once why he had stayed at Oxford for so long, he replied simply and profoundly, "In my soul I am a teacher." Dr. Shapiro had planned to never retire – he would often joke that the chalk would have to be pried from his cold fingers – but his disease slowly and cruelly robbed him of his ability to articulate his formidable intellectual insights. Still, even in his last months, he thought of the classroom, dictating new thoughts on Locke's Two Treatises of Government and Nietzsche's influence on the Harry Potter series, whilst never tiring of discussing current trends in international relations. He is survived by his son, Jacob Logan (Megan) Shapiro of New Orleans, LA; his daughter, Leah Shapiro (Jake) Mason of Monroe, GA; his granddaughters, Anne Love Shapiro and Caroline Munroe Mason; and legions of colleagues and students whose lives he changed and minds he opened. The funeral will be a graveside ceremony in the Shearith Israel section of Crest Lawn Memorial Park, at 2000 Marietta Blvd., NW, in Atlanta, GA, at 2:30pm, Thursday, December 7. A celebration of his legacy will also be held in the coming months at a future date to be announced at Oxford College. In lieu of flowers or other demonstrations of sympathy, donations can be made to The William and Anne Munroe Shapiro Endowment at Oxford College, which was created in 2017 to provide academic materials and books to Oxford students. Dressler's Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.
View the obituary on Legacy.com
Funeral Home Information
Dressler's Jewish Funeral Care
3734 Chamblee Dunwoody Rd.
Atlanta, GA
30341
