I remember the first time I encountered Charlie Arnade, the singular USF international affairs professor who died recently at 81. It was in the 1970s, and he was a last-minute substitute instructor in a Russian History course on USF’s St. Petersburg campus.
He spoke English with a hybrid European accent that was – I later learned – totally befitting one born in Germany but raised in China, Bolivia and Switzerland. He wore a dashiki.
Without a lesson plan, he winged it with mesmerizing stories – from cultural crucibles in Arabic countries to the “Rape of Nanjing” to a chance encounter with Che Guevara. Somehow, he wove them into a uniquely memorable, geopolitical lesson.
Later, as a journalist and the USF media relations manager, I was privy to another side of Professor Arnade. He was much more than a Fulbright Scholar who specialized in Latin American studies.
He pulled no rhetorical punches and spoke the truth as he knew it. Back in the day, he was not afraid to protest against segregation. In the mid-’90s, he was an outspoken campus contrarian about the priorities represented by the prospect of big-time football at USF. Academic freedom was no mere abstraction.
Arnade, who was a founding professor at USF, was one of those notably learned, eccentric and colorful characters that universities can never have enough of. Moreover, much of what he knew and taught was what he had literally lived. He was one of a kind.